Press

 A new "people’s choice" ceremony awards Orange County’s top chef-driven restaurants. Roughly 400 attend red-carpet event in Newport Beach.   By NANCY LUNA  Food reporter/Fast Food Maven blogger  THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER nluna@ocregister.com   The first Golden Foodie Awards ceremony was held Sunday evening – a red-carpet event honoring top culinary talents of Orange County. The event was created by the Orange County Restaurant Association as a way to celebrate the county's vibrant culinary scene. About 400 people attended the "people's choice" ceremony, held at the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel. Roughly 30 awards were handed out in various categories.   The top honor, the "Golden Chef" award, went to Yvon Goetz of The Winery Restaurant & Wine Bar in Tustin. The "Golden Pastry Chef" award went to Rachel Klemek of Blackmarket Bakery in Irvine.  In her acceptance speech, Klemek th ... Read More

Cruising on Redhill, we cross over the 405 and make a right on Main Street. Take a left at the first signal, a quick right, a left, another left and Blackmarket is ON the left. Look for the cool ride parked out front. Who needs a big sign with a car like that out front!? Nice.As I walk up to the front door of this industrial space (yes, I said industrial space) my eardrums are greeted by a gigantic object, landing gear down, wanting safe refuge on the ground. Earplugs please! We’re definitely in John Wayne’s backyard.An unassuming front door with a cake and crossed swords tell you which one to enter. Suite E. Walk in and everything hits you at once; a multicolored lobby filled with amazing treats, the smell of baked goods and flour, shiny metal utensils hangin’ all around. We are definitely in the right place.Morning, Rachel!   Read more:   http://chefsinsight.com/rachel-klemek/ ... Read More

 By Rayna Jensen   It takes quite the baker to fit a yeti, a farmer’s daughter and a shortbread all in the same oven.    But for pastry chef Rachel Klemek, it’s all in a day’s work. For the past seven years, Klemek’s aptly named Blackmarket Bakery, inconspicuously tucked away in an industrial park behind Irvine’s John Wayne Airport, has been cooking up treats that can’t be found anywhere else. The white chocolate chunk and shredded sweet coconut yeti—a slightly beastlier take on a classic dark chocolate drop cookie—or the spicy cayenne and corn nut farmer’s daughter are just two Blackmarket staples.  Just a bite is enough to show even the most astute pastry aficionado that Klemek does things a little bit differently.  She has plundered the tried-and-true basics of traditional baking, but each of the creations at Blackmarket carry Klemek’s unique flair. Baking just seems like it’s in her ... Read More

Chef Rachel Klemek of Irvine’s beloved Blackmarket Bakery has a delicious new slate of classes for spring. Orange Coast senior editor Anne Valdespino attended one on artisan bread, which included making everything pictured here—naan, sunflower seed whole-wheat rolls, king cake, fruit challah, cabernet-flour marble focaccia, ciabatta, and sourdough in baguette and boule shapes.   “I love Rachel’s classes because they’re very low-key,” Anne says. “She knows all the technicalities of everything she bakes, but doesn’t bog you down with too much science. She has a fun and funny presentation every time, and lets the students call the shots on which recipes they want to bake, and even lets us tweak them and work with special ingredients of our own choosing, so it’s very creative.” She also likes that students get to take their “work” home with them.   As a bread-making obsessive, I had to ask Klemek about he ... Read More

Rachel Klemek started a cake bakery in an industrial park just off the east end of the John Wayne runway, and it's quickly attained cult status. Besides the cakes, she makes her own flour with the leavings from Cabernet winemaking; while the pasta is good, the focaccia is second to none. Also try the marshmallows, the excellent brioches, the savory vegetable pockets (perfect for lunch at the office), and the Basque tart. 17941 Sky Park Cir., Irvine; 949-852-4609; blackmarketbakery.com. Read More

 This gingerbread AT-AT Walker is on display at Orange County's Discovery Science Museum. It's the creation of Black Market Bakery, and a fine addition to the AT-AT remixes we've featured over the years. Read More

With her eternally hip attitude, you believe Rachel Klemek, 42, of Blackmarket Bakery, when she says, "I'm wacky!"  But taste her Black Widow Tart filled with luxuriant chocolate ganache and caramel, and know whe's dead-serious about sweets.  Planning to open a bread shop, she walked into a classroom at Napa's Culinary Institute of America in 2001 and realized she was the second-oldest student.  "I knew I had to kick ass." She studied hard, baking like a whirlwind at school and caring for four children at home.  The following year she graduated first in her class - and a pastry diva was born.  ... Read More

 1. Blackmarket Bakery This rogue business-park bakery has only a small Jolly Roger-like sign to indicate its presence.  The payoff?  A pirates' stash of edible treasures.  Whimsical shortbread space aliens with otherworldly frosted eyes please kids such as Morgan, above, who holds one of the bakery's Blackstrap Betties, a molasses-based chew studded with dried apricots.  Mumbai Mambo Bars layered with coconut, curry spices, dried mango and passion fruit should please the most demanding foodies. Read More

 Our final recipe is a coconut curry bar cookie, a.k.a. Mumbai Mambo bars, from Rachel Klemek of Blackmarket Bakery. Yard actually gushed about a brownie that Klemek makes with wine "flour" (Cabernet grape skins leftover from crush that are dried and milled). Problem is, that flour is difficult to find (you can order it from the bakery), and we just couldn't bear to run a recipe with a special drive-by or mail-order required ingredient with the clock ticking on those remaining holiday baking hours. Klemek gave us the recipe for her coconut curry bars with chunks of fresh mango, which more than makes up for that wine flour. The full recap of our 2010 Twelve Days of Cookies recipes is also a page-turn away.   We saved Klemek's bars for last as they seem to epitomize 2010 rather sweetly (insert the word "year" for "cookie" and you'll see our point):   "This has been an on again/off again cookie for us," says Klemek. "Until we ... Read More

 A punk when she attended University High School here, Rachel Klemek has always been allured by the subversive. Growing up in the South, and later in Irvine, she remembers not understanding the concept of cooking or enjoying food. Her childhood memories are of sitting in front of the television with saltines or relishing a Styrofoam cup of Top Ramen. "I didn't even know what butter was," Klemek said. However, to Klemek, countering her family's own culture — which never revered food — for a life of decorating cakes and perfecting hand-made marshmallows couldn't be more punk rock. Her business, Blackmarket Bakery, is situated in a non-descript industrial complex by John Wayne Airport. The shop is dedicated to serving what chain markets don't. The Culinary Institute of America graduate bakes an array of goods that you won't ever find in your grocery store, from apricot ginger scones and artichoke, garlic and asiago croissants, to meringue pumpkin tarts. It ... Read More

She ditched Derrida for dough - pastry dough, that is.   But first, Rachel Klemek '91, owner of Blackmarket Bakery and Marché Noir Foods, tried a more traditional route. After graduating magna cum laude from UC Irvine with a bachelor's in anthropology, she married her high-school sweetheart, David — also an alum, at UCI's University Club. Then she headed to graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It was very heavy theory - Jacques Derrida and critical theory. I didn't fit in. I'm more of a practical, hands-on kind of person. Cause and effect - if I do this and do that, stir this together, I'll get this."With only one semester behind her, she figured out she'd taken the wrong path. It would take her a while to find the right recipe. She had never aspired to enter the food world, even though her 94-year-old grandmother is "a really good baker" of Southern staples. Her palate was piqued when she met David at University ... Read More

Rachel Klemek's outstanding bakery is not a place anyone is going to accidentally happen upon. Situated in an anonymous corporate park just off the eastern end of John Wayne Airport's entry, the bakery is tucked far enough back that patrons have learned to look for the delivery van parked nearer the street. Once found, though, the harder part is leaving. Klemek is famous for her Cabernet wine flour, which, when turned into brownies, imparts a very faint, appealing wine taste to the rich, dark chocolate. Blackmarket's brioche cinnamon rolls with vanilla- and lemon-scented cream-cheese frosting are so unbelievably rich they ought to be eaten under a napkin, like ortolans' less-endangered cousins. Focaccia pockets—all vegetarian, stuffed with eggplant and feta, or roasted red bell pepper, or mushrooms—should be standard issue for picnic baskets and lunch boxes. The bakery turns out occasion cakes that hit the sweet spot of being both beautifully decorated and delicious. That K ... Read More

 Number 16: Pastry Class The night we attended, students drove through blinding rain to arrive on time because pastry chef Rachel Klemek of Blackmarket Bakery has a following.  Her free-and-easy style is the draw - you get turned loose in her bakery like kids in Grandma's kitchen during the holidays.  And you get to take home the treats. $68  Read More

 13. Maghreb tart at Blackmarket Bakery, $4.50: Built as it was from a farmers market operation, Blackmarket Bakery is well-practiced in diminutive desserts. Melt-away cookies, little loaves of cinnamon-currant brioche and flourless macaroons all tempt at the bakery's business park headquarters, but its tarts are some of the more cost-effective treats. Order the not-too-sweet Maghreb tart, a rich, buttery crust loaded with dates, toasted pistachios and almonds all set in a rosewater caramel -- it's like a North African pecan pie.17941 Sky Park Circle, Suite E, Irvine, (949) 852-4609,www.blackmarketbakery.com. ... Read More

Rachel Klemek starts this particular Thursday a half-hour late, at 6 a.m., knuckle-deep in milk, yeast, flour, sugar, salt and soft butter. Minutes later, Klemek, owner of Blackmarket Bakery in Irvine, switches her attention from croissant dough to one of the biggest challenges of her 60-hour workweek — a birthday cake that looks like a Chinese mahjong game. The mother of four sweats every detail. On this cake, details include frosting that resembles no fewer than 16 Chinese mahjong tiles and side frosting that looks like a wooden fence. Another detail is the phrase "Happy Birthday," written in neat and, she hopes, correctly spelled Chinese. "I think it would be better if we got someone who knows Chinese to write the characters," Klemek, 39, tells her secretary. • Klemek considers herself a baker, first. But artist — or, at least, artistically inclined, iconoclastic baker — comes a close second. In the five years since she started Black ... Read More

 By DOUG IRVING / The Orange County Register SANTA ANA - It took eight pounds of dough and 20 hours of hard work, but when she was finished, Rachel Marie Klemek had created one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks marvels. A gingerbread Zamboni with ice blades made from sour sticks, propane tanks made of Necco wafers and even a tiny driver's handle made from a sliver of black licorice. A gingerbread Zamboni so true to life that even the general manager of Zamboni Merchandising Co. Inc., Paula Coony, described it as an "amazing job." The gingerbread Zamboni is on display at the Discovery Science Center through the end of the year. It's one of the centerpieces in a holiday-themed exhibit on gingerbread that explores the science of taste, smell and even architecture. The Zamboni company, maker of the ice-sweeping machines that bear its name, commissioned the gingerbread replica for $375. It hired Klemek, an Irvine-based cake maker whose Blackmarket Bakery specializ ... Read More