I first tasted Margaret’s baking a few years ago, when she and her business partner, JoAnn McDowell, made all sorts of cakes, tortes and cookies for Catalyst in downtown Missoula and for the espresso bar just off the lobby in the Florence Hotel. I’d often come in with a friend for a pick-me-up in the late afternoon, and what really impressed me were the extraordinary textures and flavors of her cakes - and the fact that if a pastry or cookie or other dessert looked good, it always delivered on flavor.
A baker of this talent is rare anywhere, and Margaret’s career didn’t just happen. She has worked diligently at it over most of her life. Cooking is probably in her genes. Her Danish grandfather cooked at a ranch in Fort Benton in the early 1900s and passed on his love of food and cooking to Margaret’s mother.
Margaret hails from Radford, Va., in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley. She developed a passion for working from her dad, a country doctor, and cooking from her mom, a nurse. When Margaret was in grade school her mom retired, allowing her more time in the kitchen, and Margaret was often there to learn and lend a hand.
“I was about 8 years old when I tried baking for the first time,” Margaret says. “Mom was right there guiding me every step of the way through the chocolate chip cookie recipe. She gave me the confidence to know that someday I’d be able to do this on my own.”
But it would be many years before baking as a career took form. College came first, and Margaret chose to attend Salem College, an all-girls school in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“I always was interested in art, and they had an excellent art program, so I decided to major in art history,” Margaret explained. “I think it was the art and its beauty that seeped into my psyche and got me started making wedding cakes many years later.”
On a summer trip to explore Montana, as her grandfather had done decades earlier, Margaret met and fell in love with Bob Madsen, a woodworker. They married the following year, right after Margaret’s graduation, and settled in Evaro. Margaret helped out in Bob’s Missoula store, the Prickly Pear Gallery. The marriage ended after seven years, and Margaret worked at various jobs while raising her 2-year-old daughter and deciding what she should do for the rest of her life.
Because she always loved to cook and to bake, she considered a career in the culinary arts and enrolled in the Vo-Tech culinary program.
“I’m almost a vegetarian,” Margaret says, “so to avoid handling meat, I decided on becoming a pastry chef.”
Frank Sonnenberg and Ross Lodahl both taught baking at the school, and Margaret felt that with the proper training she’d be able to earn a decent living for herself and her daughter.
During her tenure at the Vo-Tech, Margaret became an accredited pastry chef through the American Culinary Federation. Soon after graduation in 1991, she married Mike Barton, who worked for Montana Congressman Pat Williams in Washington, D.C. The couple were apart for most of a year, and Margaret threw herself into her first professional job, baking at Freddy’s Feed and Read.
“I worked from 3 a.m. until about
11 a.m., and I baked all the morning pastries and the desserts for the day,” she said, shaking her head in wonder at the schedule. “I also baked my first wedding cakes then, which set the foundation for what I’d be doing over the coming years.”
After working at Freddy’s for seven years, “a job I absolutely loved,” Margaret says, she shifted over to work at Bernice’s Bakery. “I was there for just two years, but Esther Chessin (Bernice’s owner at the time) really let me expand my repertoire. I baked all the desserts and wedding cakes.”
The opportunity to open her own establishment came in 2000, when Margaret and JoAnn McDowell became business partners. This delicious and financially successful partnership ended after five years, when JoAnn retired to Great Falls.
Wondering what to do next, Margaret took the next eight months off. And then, in 2006, Pearl Cash hired her in the job that she holds today. When I ask Margaret what it is about baking that she finds so appealing, she looks up at me and says with great enthusiasm, “It’s creative, comforting, fulfilling, and feeds my soul.” Words to live by.
If I’d known you were coming ...
Margaret Ambrose-Barton has baked more than 1,000 wedding cakes, and offers a wide and beautiful selection to choose from. She will also make personally designed wedding and specialty cakes for any occasion given proper advance notice. Contact her at Pearl Cafe and Bakery, 541-0231, Tuesday through Saturday. Swedish Princess Cake, Tiramisu Torte and The Ultimate Chocolate Cake are just a few of her offerings.Greg Patent is a food writer and columnist for the Missoulian and Missoula.com magazine. He also co-hosts a weekly show about food with Jon Jackson on KUFM Sundays at 11:10 a.m. His new cookbook, “A Baker’s Odyssey,” has been nominated for a 2008 James Beard Award. Visit Greg’s Web site at www.gregpatent.com. You can write him at chefguymt@gregpatent.com.
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