With her Baked by Melissa cupcake shops dotting Manhattan and Long Island, Melissa Ben-Ishay has built a sweet empire selling brightly packaged, bite-sized confections in flavors such as triple chocolate fudge and chocolate chip pancake.
But the 40-year-old CEO and mother-of-two has also revealed herself to be a wizard with vegetables.
On social media, she’s become known for whipping up bright, boldly flavored chopped salads and veggie-packed soups in delightfully enthusiastic, off-the-cuff videos posted to Instagram and TikTok.
Her new cookbook “Come Hungry: Salads, Meals, and Sweets for People Who Live to Eat” (William Morrow Cookbooks), out now, is packed with wholesome recipes that make healthy eating exciting and appealing.
“The way I make salads and the way I make cupcakes supports my obsession with the perfect bite,” Ben-Ishay told The Post.
“And, my food philosophy is that if you get nourishment from mealtime, you can absolutely indulge in dessert.”
Her journey from cupcake CEO to #saladtok star began with cabbage. In 2021, she and husband Adi Ben-Ishay were going to a neighbor’s pizza party and offered to bring a salad. She chopped up what she had in the fridge — some green cabbage, cucumbers and scallions — and then made a dressing that riffed off a vegan pesto using garlic, lemon juice, spinach, basil, nutritional yeast, chives, olive oil, walnuts and raw cashews.
The resulting salad was shockingly good.
“It was refreshing and crunchy and creamy and bright,” Ben-Ishay told The Post. “I could not get over how delicious it was.”
She shared the recipe for the dish, known as the Green Goddess salad, on the @BakedByMelissa TikTok and Instagram accounts and it went viral. A “Today” show appearance followed, as did celebrities such as Cardi B and Lizzo creating their own versions.
“It was so cool and totally unexpected,” Ben-Ishay writes in the new book’s introduction.
On TikTok, the original Green Goddess post now has more than 25 million views. In the years since, Ben-Ishay has shared recipes for dozens of more salads and other vegggie-centric savory dishes.
As in the one that started it all, vegetables are typically finely chopped to ensure perfect bites and salad dressings are often puree- or dip-like and packed with vegetables themselves.
Lemon juice, garlic, fresh herbs and nutritional yeast are common ingredients. Tortilla chips are often used in place of a fork to scoop and eat the salad.
Ben-Ishay makes her cooking videos in the kitchen of the Hoboken apartment she shares with Adi and their two young daughters. She typically wears a tie-dye sweatshirt, little-to-no makeup and her hair is pulled back. A tall blue Stanley flask functions as a tripod to prop up her camera phone.
It’s often just her making a meal during her workday, overseeing Baked by Melissa, which has 14 retail outlets and roughly 250 employees. She gets up at 5 a.m. every morning to workout, skips breakfast and opts for a late morning lunch that she’s been imagining for hours.
“I love food. I think about it all the time,” she said. “I love to create.”
Ben-Ishay grew up in tight-knit a Jewish family in New Jersey, cooking alongside her parents and grandparents.
Her mom’s crunchy ramen slaw — a classic Americana salad made with crumbled-up instant noodles with the seasoning packet stirred into the dressing — is featured in the book.
But, she said it’s Adi and his folks who have really informed her approach to vegetables.
After they’d been dating about a year, they travelled to Israel to meet his family. The first night, his mother made a dinner that featured a simple salad of iceberg lettuce dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, white vinegar and garlic. It blew Ben-Ishay’s mind.
“[It] trully changed my life. I was like, ‘Everybody, stop what you’re doing. What did I just eat? I need to know every ingredient here.’” she said. “The really rocked my world and was the beginning of what you see in ‘Come Hungry.’”
Here, she shares a recipes from the new book.
Little Gem & Savory Granola Salad
Make the granola. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine 1 1/2 cups rolled oats, 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup sliced almonds, 1/2 cup puffed quinoa and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds in a large bowl.
In a small bowl, whisk together 2 egg whites, 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 tablespoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, 1 teaspoon dried oregano and 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. Pour the wet ingredients over the oats mixture and mix to thoroughly coat.
Spread the mixture on a large baking sheet, pressing down with a spatula to flatten. Bake for 30 minutes, stir and bake for an additional 15 minutes, until granola is toasted.
Let cool completely.
Make the salad. Whisk together 1 small, finally chopped shallot; 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard; 1/4 olive oil; the juice of 1 lemon; 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt; 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 1 tablespoon rice vinegar and 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast.
Toss the dressing with 2 small heads little gem lettuce, torn into small pieces; 2 thinly sliced Persian cucumbers; 3 thinly sliced radishes and 1 thinly sliced shallot.
Top with some of the savory granola and serve. Feeds 4 to 6. Leftover granola can be stored in an airtight container for about 3 weeks.
Reprinted from Come Hungry by arrangement with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2024, Melissa Ben-Ishay.
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