New Pastry Venture Nears Its Smelltastic Kickstarter Goal

The rapidly expanding club of New Orleans bakeries may soon be getting yet another new member?husband and wife pastry duo Jeff and Lya Becnel are just about halfway to their $8,407 Kickstarter goal to raise the money they need to launch La Petite Sophie Patisserie. Named for their daughter Sophie, La Petite would start as an online platform that the Becnels would use to sell their accolade-garnering pastries before they eventually (fingers crossed) open their own a brick-and-mortar location in New Orleans.

From the Kickstarter page:

When we reach our goal of $8,407.00 we will open a website to have a platform to sell our pastries from. To do so we need equipment, & all of the supplies to do our first batch and ship them to you. The equipment includes an oven, proofing box, a work table, baking trays, & a cooling rack with wheels. The supplies include all of the raw ingredients to make the pastries, boxes for shipping, and the cost of sending them to you.

Our ultimate dream is to purchase the equipment to keep up with product demand, add more pastries to our product line, and open our own pastry shop in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Jeff Becnel is a chef and New Orleans native?according to an email Eater received earlier today, he has finally returned to the city after an eight-year Katrina displacement that found him wandering through Europe and America, settling for stints in France, England, and the considerably less continental Salt Lake City. Before his sojourn, he worked at places like Commander's and Stella.

He and Lya, a Euro-trained pastry chef, have pastry plans that include "Gelatos, Tiramisu, French pastries, & our own versions of Nola classics (King Cake, Shoe sole, modern interpretation of the beignet, the best pecan pie you have never had, etc...)." For a tantalizing preview of the Becnels' flaky creations, take a look at the video on their Kickstarter or Flickr pages, both of which really ought to be rendered in smell-o-vision.

· La Petite Sophie [Kickstarter]
· La Petite Sophie [Facebook]