On a Saturday morning, you could find Matisse Arnone ‘23 packing up his orders before delivering them across Iowa City to his peers. His blog on instagram, @bakingwithmatisse, has been a project of his during quarantine. He went on to create a YouTube channel with the same name.

“I really enjoy it. And so even if I don’t have time to do it every single day, I’ll definitely be baking things after quarantine on the weekends and when I have more time just because it’s fun.” 

Arnone has invested time into baking and turned his hobby into a business. One of the people that has supported him is Alyssa Wasmund ‘22. She ordered some of his handheld apple pies, frosted sugar cookies, and peanut butter cookies.
“I think it’s really important to support anyone who’s creating things themselves,” Wasmund said. “I feel like I made a difference in their lives or helped them get through and do the things that they enjoy doing.”

To avoid burnout, Arnone tries to only make recipes he enjoys.

“A difficulty of the blog is to make it not feel like a chore. I’m going to do things I enjoy, to make it not tiresome,” Arnone said.

Running his blog and delivering food is not without its challenges. 

“Depending on where people live delivery wise, it could take 15 minutes to half an hour. So it’s difficult finding time especially when school has started.” 

Even though running the blog and delivering food is very time consuming, Arnone finds that baking is much more rewarding than other hobbies. 

When asked what he enjoyed most about baking, Arnone said  “You could spend hours playing video games or whatever, but it’s not as rewarding to me as being able to see the end result of a finished thing that you spent hours working on and now it looks beautiful and amazing.”

 Arnone recently participated in an event at a farm sanctuary outside of Iowa City. There were multiple vendors, selling anything from antiques to knit items. Arnone was selling his baked goods for a few hours, and said that there were at least 50 people while he was there socially distanced. 

Arnone has been taking safety precautions while delivering his confections and preparing food.

“The number one thing is washing hands a lot when you’re cooking,” Arnone said. 

Arnone also makes sure that deliveries are socially distanced, and both parties are wearing masks. 

In the future, Arnone is contemplating a career that uses both science and his culinary skills.

“Science is my favorite subject, so I would love to do something that combines the two things. But that’s definitely something that I can look into more,” Arnone said.

He has been working with Valerie Martin, who started Valerie’s French Cooking and sells baked goods at the farmer’s market. Arnone helps with packaging food, and works a few hours every week. He wants to continue working with her before starting his own booth at the market.