The College Confectionista has her degree, no debt and a new TV show

Anamaria Morales is a ball of energy, eagerly anticipating the next objective in her business and her life.

The 24-year-old started baking cheesecakes in high school to pay her way through UC Berkeley as Sonoma County’s “College Confectionista.” She toppled that goal and graduated in 2021, becoming the first in her Latino family to earn a college degree.

And she did it, per her goal, not only debt-free but with almost straight As and money in the bank.

She baked thousands of cheesecakes to help finance her tuition, fees, books and room and board at Berkeley, selling her devilishly delicious-looking cakes through an infectious social media presence with a happy 1950s vibe.

It was no easy feat. She was rejected twice by UC Berkeley, her dream school and the only school she applied to, before she was admitted as a transfer student from Santa Rosa Junior College. Denied entrance to the Haas Business School, she came at her business education another way: with a interdisciplinary studies major packed with classes in business and ChicanX Latinx studies.

The coronavirus pandemic sucked some of the joy out of her hard-won and long-held dream of a full campus experience. But she found a tribe to hunker down with, in a co-op of 50 students in an old Victorian house where she served as party planner.

When Morales walked across the stage to accept her degree, the seats were empty and there was no in-person delegation of proud family members to cheer her on. But the tenacity that brought her there also has pulled her back in Sonoma County, where she is working to take her confectionery business to the next level.

After selling directly to customers, now she’s looking for other markets — restaurants, caterers and venues with discriminating tastes for dessert — for her signature cheesecakes laded with fresh fruits, clouds of homemade whipped cream and drizzles of chocolate.

She has an idea of the perfect spot.

“My vision has always been to have a small, quirky shop where people can pick up in the front, and maybe a small table outside the shop,” she said. “And in the back there’s a kitchen and there’s ’50s music playing, and the building is painted hot pink or yellow. It’s happy and bright and ecstatic. ... It will be this happy hole-in-the-wall, buzzing place that puts out these delicious cheesecakes.”

Food Network appearance

A turn as a competitive baker on a new show “Bake It ’Til You Make It” may give her rising star a nudge.

Morales is one of seven bakers tapped for the show, which offers a window into the world of competitive baking, something she has no experience with. (The show originally aired on the Food Network right after Christmas but has moved to the Cooking Channel, airing at 7 p.m. Fridays.)

Many would consider that pretty darn good for a young woman less than two years out of college. Many new grads are still living at home and struggling to launch. Still, Morales has always set her goals high, and she’s a young woman in a hurry.

“It’s not even just cheesecakes or the show,” she said of her bubbling zeal for building her business and helping other young Latinas scale up their dreams by going to college, just like she did.

“I’m talking about the grand picture of my life. What do I want to make of it? Every day feels like there’s so much potential and opportunity and if I don’t do everything I can, I’m wasting it. Oh god. I feel I’m here and alive and what can I do now to live to the maximum. I don’t mean skydiving or doing crazy stuff like that. But being a fulfilled human being. Does everyone feel this way?”

Probably not. Certainly not with the intensity and focus of Morales, who has been an entrepreneur since she was a child.

In the second grade, she set up a lemonade stand at the annual Healdsburg parade and opened a bank account. At 8, she worked the crowd at concerts in the plaza offering manicures. She sold her handmade greeting cards door-to-door and peddled produce from her garden at the farmers market. In high school, she began buying and upcycling old furniture online.

And, determined to go to college without putting financial stress on her parents, she launched the College Confectionista with the slogan “Baking the way to college, one cheesecake at a time.”

She sold her sinful cakes with an eye-catching social media campaign, featuring her image with bright red lipstick and her curly hair pulled back in a bandana. She loves Elvis and the whole 1950s aesthetic, down to the black-and-white kitchen floors that seem to be present everywhere she lives, including in the Guerneville cottage she shares with a housemate.

She’s always gone all in, family members say.

“I knew she was going to be a little rocket, but I didn’t know she was going to fly this high. And I know she’s going to go higher,” said her grandmother, Susan West of Sebastopol.

“When she was just a little thing, she was imagining making the house into a salon and getting buckets of water to soak our feet and paint our toenails. And this was all for 50 cents. She was a like a little entrepreneur,” West remembered. “When I watched her as a child, she was tearing up the living room and turning it into a fort or a theater. We would watch a movie and we’d have to have a ticket and popcorn and candy, like you went to a real theater. She’s always been a lot of fun and gotten a lot of attention. It was easy to give it to her.”

Discovered on Facebook

Morales was recruited for “Bake It ’Til You Make It” by a man who reached out to her through Facebook. It felt dubious at first, she said, because he used his personal account to contact her, and she had no information about the show or what it was about.

But it all checked out, after an hour-long Zoom interview in the spring of 2020. She was invited to make a pilot video, which she did in her little kitchen in Berkeley with her Uncle Matthew Gravell, who has Down syndrome, behind the camera.

“He’s hilarious and the most lovable person I know, the perfect person to film me. We laughed the whole time,” Morales said.

She made sure to wear her signature bandana and lipstick. “And I just tried to be me and as quirky as possible,” she said.

“Definitely what I’ve realized throughout this entire process is the baker comes second to just being marketable.”

Morales was one of three bakers to be filmed for the show’s pilot episode. Instead of working out of a studio in Georgia as originally planned, a film crew came to California and captured her baking and telling her story, at her suggestion, in her grandmother’s Sebastopol kitchen.

“I thought, ‘I want my family and my grandma and my uncle and my mom to be involved in my story.’ It was so special because of the way I grew up. Learning to bake and cook was through my mom and my grandma. I just have precious memories of us all dancing and listening to Sam Cook in the kitchen and licking the beaters.”

Morales chose to make a layered red velvet cheesecake for the pilot.

“It was going to be this over-the-top, decadent slice I was going to present. It turned out so bad,” she said, laughing. “I mean, it was delicious. But it looked like the COVID ball.”

That didn’t sink the show. Months later, while sitting on the roof of her co-op in Berkeley, she got a call informing her the show was a go.

Out of her element

“Bake It ’Til You Make It” isn’t your typical food wars-type of show. Instead, it follows seven bakers as they compete against other bakers, not necessarily each other, in competitions around the country.

The first episode follows several as they vie for an award with elaborately constructed cakes at the National Capital Area Cake Show in Virginia. Morales can be seen only fleetingly in the first couple episodes, but she was expected to be featured more prominently last Friday.

Contestants can’t share any spoilers. But she said she and one other baker, a former football player and cupcake maker from Delaware, are the only two with no experience in competitive baking and the only two who make a living baking.

The other cast members make intricately constructed theme cakes that are more like works of art where food just happens to be the medium, something that’s become an online obsession of one-upmanship.

“The thing is, does that even taste good when it’s made out of PVC pipe, modeling chocolate and Rice Krispie treats?” she said. “That’s not what I want to spend my time on. I want to eat what I bake.”

Because there were no local competitions, producers had to create a competition for her at the Marin Farmers’ Market. She did compete at one big show: the Ultimate Sugar Show in Georgia, but she discovered competitive cake baking is not her thing.

What’s next?

Morales, whose story of tenacity gained national attention when she was invited to appear on “Good Morning America” in 2019 and was presented with a $10,000 check to help with college, has an exuberant personality made for TV. She also was considered for (but didn’t get) a spot on Peacock’s “Baking It,” with Maya Rudoph and Amy Poehler.

What she really wants to do is build a good business. An arrangement with the nonprofit Sonoma Family Meal to use their new kitchen in Petaluma will give her some stability and bring her a step closer to her own place. Moving from kitchen to kitchen like a professional nomad has not been a recipe for success. Her professional Hobart mixer takes three people to move.

She has a new website, collegeconfectionista.com, where she takes online orders for full-size and little cakes. She uses local and seasonal ingredients. This month, she’s making her Lemon Love cake with homemade lemon curd; her Russian River Red cake with raspberry jam and piles of strawberries, raspberries and sugarcoated cranberries; and her traditional SoCo Style cheesecake of cream cheese over graham cracker crust, no adornment needed.

First in family

Anamaria’s parents, Laura and Tomas Morales, were only 18 when she was born, and it was frequently a struggle, financially and emotionally, to raise a child.

“We didn’t have a table. We had a TV set I won at grad night, and we had a couch and one movie we watched over and over,” said Laura, 43, of her early married years.

Anamaria’s Mexican-born grandmother worked in the fields. The family faced financial stress, and the idea of going to college was a long shot.

But with persistence, hard work and focus — Anamaria listens to inspirational talks while baking and has positive affirmations plastered over the back of her Prius — the young entrepreneur pulled it off without owing a penny at a time of skyrocketing college costs that leave many young people mired in student loan debt.

Part of Morales’ mission as she approaches her 25th birthday next month is to help other young Latinas get a higher education. She recently joined the board of Latino Unidos del Condado de Sonoma, the oldest Latino-support organization in Sonoma County, founded in 1966. The group gives out up to $90,000 in scholarships every year to low-income Latinos, many the children of farm workers.

Morales, who is a recipient of Latino Unidos scholarships, came with a burst of youthful energy, ideas and passion to an organization where many members are senior citizens. One of the youngest members they’ve had, she’s being groomed to eventually oversee the scholarship program, said President Zeke Guzman.

“We’re very fortunate to have her. She’s trying to get her cheesecake business going, and she wants to give 5 to 10% of her proceeds to the scholarship fund. She’s a kind person and cares about her community,” Guzman said.

Morales doesn’t know if her TV turn was a one-off or if there may be more opportunities in the future. She’s reaching out to as many food entrepreneurs in the county as possible for guidance on how to get more of her cheesecakes out in the world. But she knows, ultimately, it’s on her.

“If you deeply want something, no one is going to hold your hand through the whole process,” she said. “There’s a lot of work and grit required, but you’ve got to go and figure it out yourself.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. OnTwitter @megmcconahey.