Olivia Hartmann
Culinary Math Educator & Former Pastry Chef
I spent eight years scaling wedding cakes at 2 a.m., went back to school for a math degree while working nights, and now teach culinary math at a community college in Charleston, South Carolina.
My Flour-Dusted Journey
I was a pastry chef at a Charleston hotel for eight years, scaling wedding cakes from 12 to 200 servings at 2 a.m. I went back to school for a math degree while working nights, then left the kitchen to teach culinary math at a community college. I realized home cooks were terrified of scaling. I built my first calculator to help my students, and it spread to home baker forums.
I live in a restored Victorian with a too-small kitchen, my husband, three kids, and a constant flour dusting on the counters. My 9-year-old can scale pancake recipes. My 6-year-old puts the cat in the mixing bowl. It's chaos. I love it.
Credentials & Education
Education
BS Mathematics, College of Charleston
Associate Degree Culinary Arts, Culinary Institute of Charleston
Experience
8 Years Professional Pastry Chef
5 Years Culinary Math Instruction
Certifications
Food Safety Management Certified
Recipe Developer for 3 Local Cookbooks
Scaling Log
400+ Event Desserts Scaled
Maintains 150+ Ingredient Density Database
Why I Built This Site
Every semester, students walk into my classroom convinced they "can't do math." By week ten, they're scaling soufflés for 50 people and explaining baker's percentage to their friends. The math was never the barrier. The barrier was fear.
RecipePortions.com exists to remove that fear. Every tool, every article, every calculator exists because someone asked me a question that shouldn't require a math degree to answer.