No yelling, no pressure: Sweet & Savory wants casual cooking, not MasterChef

All the ingredients that go into German Chocolate Brownies are measured out for each student before the class.

By Shawn Ryan October 12, 2016 7 min read

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Sweet & Savory

Heather Pennypacker demonstrates baking techniques to the students.

Heather Pennypacker, who has 18 years' experience as a pastry chef, teaches the

KitchenAid mixers line the tables at Sweet and Savory Classroom; each student has one.

Ria Lupdag of Dalton, Ga., checks out the recipe for German Chocolate Brownies.

Chocolate and butter are mixed together then melted in a double boiler.

In a few weeks, Kellie Johnson is bringing her husband back for a class on New Orleans cuisine.

Karen Baxter stirs the ingredients for a batch of German Chocolate Brownies.

Bailey Baxter celebrates her 14th birthday at Sweet and Savory Classroom.

Karen Baxter uses a spatula to spread her German Chocolate Brownie mix in an aluminum baking pan.

If you go

› What: Sweet and Savory Classroom› Where: 45 E. Main St.› Phone: 423-661-8750› Online: www.sweetandsavoryclassroom.com; for a class schedule, go to www.sweetandsavoryclassroom.com/category-s/114.htm

At her 14th birthday party, Bailey Baxter stands in front of a broad-shouldered mixer, plopping a gooey mixture of chocolate and butter into a stainless-steel bowl.

In the next few minutes, she’ll add coconut, cream cheese, flour and a host of other ingredients to the mix, her ultimate goal a fudgy pan of German chocolate brownies pulled hot out of the oven.

No pressure, Bailey says. She makes desserts all the time at her home in Jasper, Tenn. “I’m not intimidated,” she says.

“We bought her a mixer for her birthday. It was a KitchenAid, just like these, but it was aqua-blue,” says her mother, Karen, standing beside Bailey and patting her own husky mixer.