Owner Ignacia Hernandez pauses baking to take a phone order. Each day, she stocks the display case at Sweet Life Pastry with a fresh batch of conchas, traditional Mexican sweat bread. Photo: Sanaz Rizlenjani.

Ignacia Hernandez exudes the scent of warm sugar and vanilla. Petite and strong, Hernandez effortlessly navigates the open kitchen of Sweet Life Pastry, in Washington Heights, with gentle control.

Growing up in the southern Mexican city of Puebla, Hernandez never imagined she would one day be a baker. It was not until she found herself in the United States, learning to bake pastries and cakes from scratch at a downtown Manhattan restaurant, that she began to envision herself in this business.

That was not the original plan.

“I came to help my mother,” who remained behind in Puebla, she explains.

At the age of 15, Hernandez immigrated to the U.S., alone, looking for work in clothing factories. She settled in uptown Manhattan, where one of her cousins lived at the time. Hoping to earn enough to support her mother, Hernandez was quick to learn ways to make herself a useful employee. She held several factory and cleaning service jobs before she found a mentor willing to teach her at Michelle’s Bakery in New Jersey, where Hernandez trained to make wedding cakes.

Eight years and many cakes later, Hernandez considered starting her own private baking business as a side job. Specializing in birthdays and weddings, Hernandez developed a reputation and close relationships with her customers, and managed it all from her home. On the busiest weekends, she produced around a dozen cakes.

 A special request for a chocolate flan cake became an inspiration. When a friend of hers asked for the dessert, Hernandez remembers instinctively thinking that she could not pull it off. “I had never done that before,” she recalls. But her friend insisted that she try.

“She told me, ‘I know you can figure it out,’” says Hernandez, “And I did.’”

The result was two rich layers of custard and cake, to which she has since added a coat of red velvet cake, perfecting what she calls the choco-flan, one of her best-selling desserts. After four years, Hernandez traded her home kitchen for Sweet Life Pastry, a 10-seat family café sandwiched between a pharmacy and a beauty salon in Washington Heights. She says that her original mentor from Michelle’s Bakery helped her first find the place.

Ignacia Hernandez waits at the register for afternoon guests to arrive at Sweet Life Pastry, in Washington Heights. All sweets on the menu are made from scratch by Hernandez. Photo: Sanaz Rizlenjani.

Hernandez, now 44, has lived in New York longer than she did in her birth country, but she and her husband, Eloy Perez, from Tlaxcala, offer a piece of their Mexican heritage through their menu. In addition to Ignacia’s sweets, including tres leches cake – a rich, spongy cake soaked in three different kinds of milk – and Mexican sweet bread, the café offers lunch and dinner dishes based on Eloy’s family recipes. She handles the sweets, while he prepares all the savory menu items, the most popular of which include huevos rancheros and enchiladas. Still, choco-flan is one of the favorites, along with Ignacia’s famous 4 Flavor Cake, 2 layers of chocolate and vanilla cake topped with flan and fruit.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Mexican immigrants in NYC doubled from 2000 to 2011. Between these years, Mexico jumped in rank from number five to number three in a listing of the total number of the city’s foreign-born population, behind the Dominican Republic and China.

In 2011, Washington Heights had the largest concentration of immigrants in New York City, with just below half of its total population born outside of the U.S.

Though three years have passed since the business first opened its doors in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood, the bakery retains the homemade charm of Hernandez’s early days taking cake orders from her kitchen at home. Seashell-shaped sweet buns, or Mexican conchas, and Peruvian-style alfajores cookies, powdered with sugar and filled with dulce de leche, line the bakery display case alongside other traditional desserts, a combination of family recipes and Hernandez’s own creative touch. The only bakery items she does not produce from scratch are the croissants and bagels.

From the kitchen to the register and telephone – Hernandez’s eyes are everywhere. On most days, a team member will take orders at the register and prepare beverages. If not, Hernandez will either see to it herself or ask her oldest daughter, Lizett Perez, 16, to help out.

Business has not always been this good. Perez admits that her mother faced a difficult first year, with high rent and opening expenses.

“She used to come home and cry a lot,” reflects Perez, who is the 11^th grade image of Hernandez. “I used to pretend I wouldn’t see, but I knew.”

Ignacia Hernandez and her oldest daughter, Lizett Perez, discuss bakery to-do items. Perez, 16, helps her mother manage the register after school for a few days each week. Photo: Sanaz Rizlenjani.

Hernandez, who had no prior business experience, acknowledges that she made many mistakes in the beginning. In fact, at the start, when she was spending more than she was making, she had resigned herself to closing. If it weren’t for her daughter, she says, she would have.

Perez urged her mother to continue pushing through the tough financial times, and cautioned her about the example she would be setting by giving up. Hernandez recalls her daughter’s words of warning: “‘My mom stopped, maybe I can do the same.’”

“She gave me more power,” Hernandez smiles, “I started to get more strong.”

Sanaz Rizlenjani

Sanaz is in our class.