Meet Karine, Kristine and Rose Jingozian of Farine in San Fernando Valley

In June 2016, Karine and Rose Jingozian began baking custom cupcakes and desserts. The following year, Kristine joined the team with the hopes of expanding their line of offerings. With the added help, Farine embarked on a wondrous new journey into the world of cake decorating. Their cakes are known throughout the San Fernando Valley for their meticulous attention to detail and fantastic flavor!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are always challenges when starting a business (and from scratch at that). It’s kind of a mad dash to make top-notch product, brand yourself, and create a niche for your product in the market. You put a lot of effort into starting a company that you ultimately don’t know the future of. So you have to constantly be aware of how your product and customer service is received. The first year was literally just about learning what our customers expected from us and using that feedback to set our own standards accordingly. It’s a learning process. In truth, every single day, every single week, we face challenges that force us to grow better and stronger. Truthfully, we never expected to grow so quickly so figuring out the logistics of a custom dessert shop was a bit tough at first. We’ve learned to always keep adjusting and tweaking to make the experience for us and our customers that much smoother.

Please tell us about Farine.
We are a custom cake and dessert shop specializing in fresh and sugar-floral decorations. We are family-owned and operated. The idea to open Farine started with Karine, our matriarch and resident sugar-flower wizard, has always been crafty and very good with her hands. Coming from a loud, food-loving Armenian family it’s really no surprise we have an affinity for making good food and feeding people. However it wasn’t until after Karine attended culinary school that the spark to maybe someday own a bakery or restaurant was born. Both Karine and Kristine worked as savory professionally for several years before pursuing a life in pastry. Then one day in June of 2016, the spark was lit and Farine was born.

Though we have come a long way since opening, our adherence to strict quality and customer service standards have remained. We provide each and every one of our clients a custom tailored experience based on their needs, which is tremendously rewarding. We have been very fortunate in that our community has welcomed and embraced our aesthetic and our dream with open arms! We hope to continue making people happy with our cakes and pastries.

Our menu boasts several classic French pastries such as: macarons, cream puffs, eclairs, mini tarts, and cakes. All of our pastries are available with and without decorations. We also offer certain vegan and gluten-free options.

While we are aware that desserts aren’t always the healthiest option, we do try to source the best ingredients for our pastries. Cooking and baking are simple input-output. If you start with killer ingredients—you get killer pastries! We source heritage grain from a local farmer, Tehachapi Grain Project, who grow grain with the earth and nutritional value in mind! We mill flour freshly each week for our cakes and pastries. It’s always nice to know we can impart some nutrition into our baked goods. But more importantly, the flavor that freshly milled whole grain provides is unparalleled by anything. We also use as many organic ingredients as we can, from our all-purpose flour to our brown sugar. We take a lot of pride in serving cakes and desserts that not only look beautiful but taste amazing as well.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Every new adventure is bound to be full of mistakes and lessons-learned. Most of all if there were anything to change it would be not to be afraid of the unknown. When you’re dedicated to your vision and you have a strong work ethic, there’s no need to be afraid. Just jump in and do it!