When Brittany Zaninovich (07) learned that she was going to be on bedrest for four months during her first pregnancy, she was faced with several difficult problems to solve at once.
“I had to put my whole business on hold very quickly,” said Zaninovich, who had recently graduated from the San Diego Culinary Institute and started Taste and Sea Cakery, a private pastry company. “I was sitting on the couch and I was feeling such a sense of discouragement.
“I was asking God, saying ‘I don’t understand what’s going on. I feel like I’m called to bake.’ In that moment, I felt God stirring my heart, saying, ‘I’ve called you to be creative, and baking is just one aspect of that creative expression. I’m going to open a new avenue for you.’”
Zaninovich and her husband spent time praying over what that new avenue would look like, when the idea came: writing a children’s book.
“As soon as I was thinking of a children’s book, the idea to include animals also occurred to me,” Zaninovich said. “I think animals are playful and fun and kids can relate to them so well. I knew my audience was going to be younger, elementary school-aged kids so I thought [animals] would be really unique and inspiring.”
As she was planning out the rest of her outline for the book, Zaninovich decided to draw on her experience in the culinary pastry world as well.
“I started by writing my thoughts down and thinking through the characters and storyline ideas, and I thought maybe these characters will bake, and maybe they are also going to teach each other about God,” Zaninovich said. “I hadn’t seen anything like that really done before.”
Zaninovich spent the rest of her time on bedrest, with pen and paper in hand, finishing her outline. When she was done she converted the story to her laptop and began to think through the illustrations.
“I started by writing my thoughts down and thinking through the characters and storyline ideas, and I thought maybe these characters will bake, and maybe they are also going to teach each other about God.”
Zaninovich made the decision to self-illustrate her budding children’s book which she titled, Baking with Bailey: A Sprinkle-Doodle Surprise.
“I had started illustrating some of the characters while I was on bedrest,” Zaninovich said. “And I realized it was going to be difficult to find someone who could finish illustrating them in the style I wanted. And then I realized I also wanted to finish them myself.
“There was something about the sense of accomplishment that came from being able to write and illustrate the whole text myself that was important to me.”
And while the initial ideation and outlining came fairly quickly for Zaninovich, illustrating everything and putting the final product together took much longer.
“I hadn’t drawn sketches like that since high school,” Zaninovich said. “And when I was drawing back then, I never had to do the kind of characters that I’m doing now. With these you have to replicate things over and over and get them right from different angles and facial expressions. It was getting pretty challenging.”
Around the same time, she was coming off of bedrest and getting back to her work as a pastry chef while raising her first child.
“The chaos of life kind of interrupted things at that point,” Zaninovich said. But she continued to work on the project taking on smaller catering orders to help her balance the workload.
Finally, in late October 2025 she was ready to go live with her final product. With her background in theater and communication, Zaninovich felt comfortable with her strategy on promoting the book. And while she wanted the book to reach a wide readership, her main focus was to bring families together.
“From the moment I started writing my heart was to inspire kids to be creative and bring God into the things they’re doing,” Zaninovich said. “My desire is to be able to inspire the younger generation.”
Zaninovich was very intentional with how she shared the book’s launch. She started by posting on social media to her immediate community and allowed news of it to trickle out from there.
“When I was writing the book I was always ok with it only ever being for me,” Zaninovich said.
Since going live on Amazon, Zaninovich has also started writing a sequel. Now a mother of three, she’s making plans on how to continue balancing writing, parenting, and her pastry business.
“I’m focused on doing everything with excellence rather than achieving perfection. At the end of the day, if what I’m able to do is wonderful and the client is blessed, even if it doesn’t look 100% the way I wanted it to, I can’t beat myself up about it.”
“I’m focused on doing everything with excellence rather than achieving perfection,” Zaninovich said. “At the end of the day, if what I’m able to do is wonderful and the client is blessed, even if it doesn’t look 100% the way I wanted it to, I can’t beat myself up about it.”
Flexing her creative muscles, whether it’s through baking or writing, will always be a constant in Zaninovich’s life. And she credits her experience at PLNU with bolstering her confidence in all of her current roles.
“One of the things I loved about having a creative degree was the level of confidence it gave me to perform and to step into a character,” Zaninovich said. “It helped me dive deeper into character history and motivations and to tell the stories of those specific characters better.”
In her next book, which she can’t disclose details on yet, Zaninovich will share a very special family recipe that she hopes will continue to inspire children and their families to bake together and build meaningful conversations around faith.
“I think there’s something to be said for simplifying things,” Zaninovich said. “It doesn’t have to be extravagant. Kids don’t need things to be big, they usually just want to be with us and spend that quality time together. I hope the book offers an opportunity for families to find those simple moments.”
