When Four Winds opened for the fall semester, a set of macarons caught the eyes of many students. These macarons were the brain-product of first-year Hannah Nations.

Currently there are two bakers at Four Winds, Nations and second-year Margaux Albiez. Albiez has worked at Four Winds since last February as a baker and barista. Both have years of baking experience.

“It’s basically up to us,” Nations said, when discussing how the staff determines what is baked each week. “We [Nations and Albiez] coordinate who is baking on what day, and we have one thing that is vegan and one thing that is gluten free.”

Nations explained that she and Albiez are willing to try new recipes they find online, but most of their recipes come from personal experience and are then adapted to be vegan or gluten free.

“I love the feeling of trying some new recipe and having it come out really good, especially since baking vegan and gluten free because things can go really wrong,” Albiez said. “Opening the oven and seeing that whatever I baked looks great and having people enjoy it is awesome! My favorite thing to bake is bread, but at Four Winds my favorite is banana muffins.”

Nations is currently working on making “Macaron Mondays” a regular occurrence at Four Winds, as she works Sunday nights to prepare for Monday’s business.

“I love knowing that people appreciate and enjoy what I make,” Nations said. “It makes me happy to make other people happy.”