FOOD + DRINK
ASTORIA BLOGGER
COOKS UP A FOLLOWING
BY DANIELLE BRODY
Family — and SEO skills — are the secret ingredients
to the success of Angelina Papanikolaou, whose nearly
two-year-old food blog, Baked Ambrosia, garners
about 60,000 visitors a month.
Astoria resident Papanikolaou says she grew
up around food, learning to cook by watching
her Greek and Cypriot family members.
“My family was literally always in the kitchen,”
Papanikolaou said. “My family revolves
around food.”
The ingredients used in her family’s Greek
cooking, such as olive oil, lemon and oregano,
and potent spices used in Cypriot dishes —
think cumin, cilantro and coriander — appear
in Papanikolaou’s recipes on her blog.
The name, “Baked Ambrosia,” is a nod to
Papanikolaou’s Greek heritage and her training
as a baker. “Ambrosia” means food of the
gods in Greek. Her tagline is “healthy recipes,
nostalgic comfort food, and decadent desserts,”
and Papanikolaou posts recipes inspired
by her heritage.
Readers will find instructions, for example,
for making Lebanese mahalepi (milk pudding)
with orange blossom syrup and figs; kolokotes
(Cypriot pumpkin pies); and traditional
hummus five ways. Other recipes are driven
by health trends, such as vegan s’mores, chia
pudding parfait, fall harvest tabouli power
bowls and tropical steel-cut oats with date
“caramel” sauce.
This modest baker and home cook made
her foray into the blogging sphere by learning
how to code her WordPress site, use SEO, put
ads on her website and use Photoshop and
Lightroom — all of which she learned by watching
videos on YouTube and reading eBooks
by other bloggers. She also taught herself to
photograph her creations, setting up a makeshift
studio with a lighting kit, various lenses
and staging accessories.
Papanikolaou attended Midwest Culinary
Institute in Cincinnati and studied nutrition at
Miami University in Ohio. She is now pursuing
her master’s degree in nutrition at Hunter College.
On a Saturday afternoon, I came to her
apartment, where she chatted with me while
calmly placing the finishing touches on a colorfully
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garnished bowl of chili, a perfect-looking
paleo pumpkin pie and a tray of mouthwatering
chocolate chip cookies, half with a sea
salt topping. I was her willing taste-tester; her
usual guinea pigs are her sister, who is also her
roommate, and her boyfriend.
While Papanikolaou has built her brand online,
her cooking method is a little more lowtech:
she develops her recipes in a simple,
food-stained notebook filled with pages of
ingredients and measurements. As she cooks,
she’ll edit the recipe on paper.
Recipes come from foods she grew up
with, trends and seasonal or holiday themes,
such as her adorable Halloween Rice Krispies
treats. She finds that paleo, vegan and glutenfree
posts garner the most interest. Her posts
about healthy, gluten-free seed and nut bread,
for example, is neck and neck for most popular
blog post with her paleo and gluten-free
vegan blackberry oat crumb bars, according
to Google Analytics.
A baker at heart, she believes in having an
indulgent dessert every so often. The pumpkin
pie she made for us had no sugar but was
instead made with coconut oil, maple syrup,
dates, pumpkin and a pecan crust.
Papanikolaou also looks to magazines, other
food bloggers and Instagram for inspiration.