Robin Pack talks with her entire face, animated and happy. Her slight, slender figure holds a powerhouse of energy and enthusiasm. Like her #TinyBakeshop, Robin occupies a small space with a big impact.
“I went tiny because I wanted to surround myself with fewer things and only those which meant a lot to me,” she says. “After years of caring for my mother in a big house with a big yard, I felt as though I had too much stuff.”
Pack describes herself as a home baker.
She brings her hobby to the Sunday Market each week with a 
beautifully presented table filled with lovely treats made from fresh local fruit, by hand, in the tiny kitchen in her tiny house at Park Delta Bay. “I am not a professional,” she notes. “I’m just providing the fruits of an enjoyable past time, at a modest price to make up for what I spend on the very best ingredients that I can afford.”
Originally from Colorado, Pack moved to California after college to start a thirty-decade teaching career. She laughs as she notes that as a child, she wanted three things: “To take care of babies in the nurseries, to be a baker lady, and to teach kindergarten.” With her two pups Jack and Louie, her long history of teaching little ones, and now her Tiny Bakeshop, she has attained all three of her goals. The joy of accomplishment shines from her eyes as she talks about the “Menu of the Week” or describes baking with her students.
Pack’s love of home-baking started with her sister’s decision that they should go around their neighborhood taking orders for the cinnamon rolls which they made from the Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys & Girls. “Soon we had orders from twenty-five of our neighbors,” she remembers. “We spent Sunday morning baking cinnamon rolls, then riding around in our mother’s car delivering them.”
Later in life, Pack would take goodies to dinner parties. Working women, with less free time than their stay-at-home cohorts, would ask not for the recipe but the product. She’d make things for their holiday meals or office parties, eventually developing her current habit of finding the freshest local ingredients and seeing what she can make from them. “If I didn’t pick the fruit myself, I got it from the stand up the roadway,” she remarks.
This week’s menu includes apricot and peach mini-pies and her signature Boston Cream pies. The apricots come from a local tree. Organic farmers in the area sometimes give her boxes of fruit from which she creates her delectable wares. She asks $6.00 for the mini-pies, less than she might want if she were running a commercial kitchen, but a fair price, she thinks, for the Sunday Market crowd. She can also take orders, and hopes to continue her home-baking projects with seasonal fare year-round.
Pack mentions that as much as she enjoys living tiny, the kitchen poses a challenge for the serious home baker. “I store my specialty pans in the oven,” she says. “On baking day, everything comes out and it’s a mess. Thankfully, when I finish, it all goes back in its place.”
For Pack, “going tiny” meant a chance to divest herself of an excess of material goods, to reduce her carbon footprint, and to focus on quality rather than quantity. “Everything around me has meaning,” she emphasizes. “Just as I hoped: Fewer things, and only those which pack a punch, in style, in sentiment, and function.”
Pack enjoys the creativity of home-baking. “Bavarian cream, that’s a magical thing,” she explains. “Simple ingredients like milk and eggs with a few strokes become something grand. The ordinary becomes extraordinary.”
Pack brings her signature home-baking to a center table at the #SundayMarket. You can find her menu online each Wednesday evening and order ahead to reserve your selection, or stroll down Market Row and take your chances. But come early! She often sells out by mid-afternoon, and you do not want to miss the wonders of the #TinyBakeshop. So come on out and meet this very special #TinyBakerLady.
Editor’s Note: Robin Pack’s Tiny Bakeshop shares a #SundayMarket spot with Pattie “the Grill Lady” Whitaker’s beautiful bracelets and Melissa Stolte’s Lavender Lovelies, home-made products using fresh lavender.
See you at the #SundayMarket, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. through August 30th.
P.S.: Plans are afoot for a fall reprisal, at which Robin Pack will likely be selling seasonal goods made from local pumpkins.
