Pastry Chef Paola Velez Says “Put It in the Freezer!”

Talk to me about your love for the corner bodega. 

I love how much community there is inside of a bodega. They’re the unspoken third space that makes New York beautiful. You can have a lawyer, a doctor, a stay-at-home mom, and a pre-teen at the bodega at the same time, with the manager—the bodega cat—who are all converging on this one singular point. As a kid I understood that the world was bigger than my circle of friends, influence, and family because I was interacting with so many people just going to grab a sandwich at the bodega.

What was your sandwich order?

It was so simple. It was toasted Muenster on a roll. It was also, like, a dollar. The motivation was that I didn’t want a better sandwich; I wanted more candy. 

What were some of your favorite candies? 

Lemonheads or the sour candies, like sour straws or Extreme Warheads. It informed how I interact with citric acid. I have a big love of citric acid; I use it multiple times in the book [like in The Lemon Cookies, Torta de Limón, and Passion Fruit Half-Moon Cookies]. 

Did you always have a sweet tooth?

Only for sour candy. I don’t eat many sweets now, which is funny because I’m a pastry chef. But I ended up going into pastry full-time because my now-husband wanted to go on dates, and I was always working nights as a line cook. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I really like this guy. What can I do to go out with him?’ and it was going into pastry, basically. We just celebrated ten years of marriage, so thank you to pastry!

Can you tell us about some of the places you worked, the formative experiences, and impactful people you worked with?

I trained with Jacques Torres for two years. In the meantime, I did stages throughout the city that helped expand my repertoire. I learned vegan baking with Erin McKenna [founder of BabyCakes NYC] and staged at Ovenly and Oceana. With Jacques, I was able to meet Jacques Pépin, Daniel Boulud—he has a French posse. It came full circle when they all saw me win the James Beard Award. When I moved to D.C., I worked at MilkBar when Christina Tosi opened her flagship. That’s how I connected with chef Tosi, and why she wrote my foreword.  

How did it feel to win a James Beard Award for your cookbook, Bodega Bakes?

I didn’t know what to think! My award [Emerging Voice], you get told you won a month before. When the Foundation told me I won a James Beard Award—I talk a lot in the book and in real life—I was speechless. That wasn’t in my deck of cards. I went through the full range of emotions. 

Who are some of your cookbook author mentors or cooking heroes you admire or look up to?

I love Cheryl Day [the James Beard Award–nominated author of Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking]. During the pandemic she took me in under her wing and watched over me—and still does. Jacques Torres, too. During my book tour he invited me to his house to help me promote the book and champion the Jacques Pépin Foundation. So, Jacques Pépin, Jacques Torres, Cheryl Day, Christina Tosi—they’ve all been huge advocates for me. It’s been a blessing to have that many people in your corner. 

We love that you have a whole chapter in Bodega Bakes devoted to frozen treats called “Ponlo en el Freezer!” Why was it important for you to include this chapter? 

In the Dominican Republic, we are not a big sweets society. But what we really like is ice cream and popsicles and frozen treats. I threw some in there, like the frozen soufflé, that are different, but everything else is pretty traditional. We love this company called Helados Bon which means “ice cream good.”

Is there one recipe in this chapter that you’re especially proud of developing, or one that was challenging to get right? 

The trick was figuring out how to teach people how to make these ice creams without an ice cream maker. Because I’m trying to talk to people who live in the Bronx who might not have disposable income to buy an ice cream maker, or they’re used to making ice cream with their KitchenAid bowl. The popsicles [Washington Heights Icicle Pops and Two-Ingredient Creamy Ice Pops] are my favorite, the shaved ice is also fun, but then there’s Helado de Batata which is a sweet potato ice cream that’s from the Dominican Republic. I’m very proud of it.    

Can you tell us a little bit about Frio Frio and Syrups as a refreshing sweet treat? Do you have any specific memories associated with those?

I love shaved ice so much that I was once invited to cook at the Oscars Gold Party in 2020 and that’s what I made. Questlove was behind me deejaying, and I’m just like, churning shaved ice all night. That was a very fun experience.

What kind of syrups did you bring to that event?

Elderflower, sea buckthorn, and mint–lemon; just kind of simple, because most people weren’t there to eat. 

Can you describe the texture and how it’s different or similar to Hawaiian shave ice? 

It’s a little less feathery. At the restaurant we use a Japanese shaved ice machine, and I compress it a little bit to achieve that freshly scraped texture. It’s a little different than a typical frio frio because we’re not hand shaving it. There’s this metal apparatus you use to scrape the surface of the ice block that the frio frio man has. In the book, I teach people how to do it in their blender, and that texture is coarser. I want people to have the opportunity to consume it before it melts on them; for the syrups to have something to hold on to. But it is still very fluffy. 

Another recipe we’d love to know more about is Morir Soñando Sherbet. Can you tell us more about its namesake drink? 

The phrase itself [morir soñando] means to die dreaming, because it’s so good that you were asleep and then you died dreaming. It’s like an orange creamsicle drink that’s very popular in the Dominican Republic. We add Dominican vanilla, some people add coconut, we do a little squirt of lime or lemon juice—so it’s very bright. And then some people even put fresh passionfruit. People have it at lunchtime mostly. It is very refreshing and light despite being an evaporated milk– and condensed milk–based drink. I was like, ‘Oh, this would be a perfect sherbet!’ and that is how I came up with this no-churn type of sherbet-inspired ice cream.    

The Hibiscus-Pineapple Sorbet is another one that is simple but looks like it has a lot of flavor pay-off.

It’s one of those things where you think about it as a drink [hibiscus-pineapple tea], and you, like me, will turn it into a frozen treat. It's really fun because you’re using a lot of the naturally occurring pectin in the pineapple to give you that smoothness, similar to Dole Whip. My friend Tavel Bristol-Joseph—who’s a nominee for the Restaurant and Chef Awards this year —he, during my book tour, welcomed me into Pullman Market and he had this in the shop. He was like, ‘This is so good; the flavor balance!’ And I was like, ‘It's so simple, but it rocks!’ It really is this good, easy intro to making frozen treats in your home.

On Instagram and YouTube you have a series called Steal This Recipe with Paola Velez. Can you tell me about the impetus for starting it?

I was a little bit sad at how much I couldn’t include in the cookbook, explanation-wise. There's a lot that goes into creating a book and how much ten extra pages cost. I was working with my co-author to see if I had any other ideas for a second book. We came up with this catchphrase because I wanted people to be encouraged to steal my recipes. I want you to make it your own, I want you to learn the technique and the inspiration behind it. I’m hoping that the next generation of pastry chefs will stumble upon this, and they’ll be encouraged to try doing funky stuff with their palates and their recipes. I can help somebody that lives in the Bronx with my cookbook in hand, and my Substack, and YouTube. They can go to culinary school for free. I think that’s beautiful.

For more of 2025 James Beard Award winner® Paola Velez’s recipes and baking insights, pick up a copy of Bodega Bakes, follow her on Instagram and check out Steal this Recipe on YouTube and Substack.