Eli Mau made sure to save one of the breakfast muffins from the school cafeteria for his grandma on Thursday.
It is, after all, originally her recipe.
Mau, 21, is a student at Focus Beyond, a district transition program for St. Paul Public Schools students with disabilities ages 18 to 22. He works two days a week at the district’s Lighthouse Coffee cart in the lobby of the district’s central administration building.
An avid baker, Mau wanted to add a homemade item to the coffee cart’s menu this past winter. But because its employees aren’t permitted to sell home-baked goods to the public, Focus Beyond work coordinator Jenelle Kelly connected Mau with the district’s nutrition center manager, chef Bono Gbolo.
“I asked Chef if he would be open to meeting with Eli, kind of chef-to-chef, just to talk about what it’s like to be a chef, to give him some ideas and some, maybe some career advice,” Kelly said. “And Chef brought the dreams.”
Mau had considered blue velvet cake and other ideas, but Gbolo suggested Mau bring some recipes to share.
“Eli told Chef stories about the recipes and why they were meaningful for his family, and then together, they kind of narrowed down to this apple muffin,” Kelly said.
Decisions were in part based on staying in compliance with nutrition requirements – blue velvet cake wouldn’t work, for example, because it would require a blue dye. Eventually, the two decided on Grandma’s apple cake recipe, which would need to be converted into a muffin.
“Since we already had muffins in our system, it was easy for us to take that recipe, change the configurations and the dimensions that were needed to make it more palatable, and then also omit some ingredients too, so that we were in compliance,” Gbolo said.
The next step was inviting Mau to the district’s central kitchen for a taste test of existing products and two new versions of his grandma’s recipe.
Besides needing to meet nutritional requirements, the recipe was adjusted to make enough to feed the thousands of students served by SPPS. The district of more than 33,000 students serves food to about 21,000 daily, Gbolo said.
With a recipe selected, Mau then designed and drew the label for the muffin, which features his grandma mixing ingredients in a smiling pot. ChatGPT helped him pick a name for their creation, Golden Hug Muffin. On Thursday, his classmates tried the final product at Focus Beyond for the first time. It will be served districtwide starting in the fall.
“I was looking for the one that tasted most like this, and what my grandma would like too,” Mau said.
It’s Mau’s last year with Focus Beyond, so he won’t be with the district when the muffins are served next school year, but he still has other baking opportunities and encouragement in mind.
“People should try to make more recipes and just get your recipes out there and stuff,” Mau said.
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