Jennah Robinson is obsessed with baking.

She spends long hours making pastry at Mario Batali’s New York restaurant Babbo.

In her spare time she does pretty much the same thing.

“I love to bake when I’m off,” said the 32-year-old. “That’s how I know I’m in the right field.”

She wasn’t always so happy.

Fresh out of university, she worked for Facebook changing user passwords.

“I was so bored,” she said. “I spent half the day watching YouTube videos and the other half doing my job.”

After three years, she quit and went on a trip to Paris with her sister Kalilah.

While there, she took classes at a culinary school.

“As a little kid I loved baking, but got away from it with school and everything,” she said. “The first day we made macaroons I was sold. I wanted to know how to do this and everything else there was to it.”

She returned to Bermuda and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in New York in March 2011.

“My mom, JoCarol Robinson, was ecstatic,” Ms Robinson said. “She is not a professional chef, but she loves to cook. I find it very inspiring that she never says a recipe is too difficult to try.

“It was great that I had someone to discuss the finer details of cooking with.”

She graduated in December 2011 and worked at several restaurants for free. The practice is called “staging” and gives new chefs a chance to try out different kitchen environments.

“You spend a day doing whatever tasks they put you to do,” she said. “Based on that they decide if they want to take you on.”

She staged in a couple of restaurants in Manhattan before landing the job at Babbo four years ago.

“I was very lucky because it was my first job out of culinary school,” she said. “They were looking for a pastry cook on their line.

“Their pastry chef, Gina DePalma, was an amazing woman and award-winning chef. She was such an inspiration as a female pastry chef making it in the industry. Sadly, she died in January.”

The culinary industry is definitely male-dominated, she said. Pastry is a little less so.

“There is this expectation that women will go into pastry any time a female cook comes in. There is this whole machismo in the kitchen.

“I don’t mind it that much. I know that the skill and difficulty in pastry is very high; it doesn’t lessen anyone by being in that field.”

The science behind it drew her in.

“I studied science when I was in college and it has always been a big part of the way I see the world.

“I like that there is a structure to baking. You have to measure things out precisely.”

She likes the family atmosphere at Babbo. The kitchen is small with only seven people working the line.

Mr Batali often pops into the kitchen to say hello, and eats in the restaurant frequently.

“He has lots of other restaurants now, but this was his first,” said Ms Robinson. “It’s his baby.”

Babbo is known for its desserts. Ms Robinson’s favourite is a pistachio chocolate semifreddo.

“It is actually what sold me on Babbo when I was staging,” she said. “One was sent out and came back and the sous chef let me have it.

“I bit into it and it was delicious. It is this creamy pistachio flavour topped with chocolate and has chocolate underneath and has chocolate sauce. It is difficult to make.”

Many new chefs prefer to spend a year at a restaurant and move on, but she has stayed put.

She’d like to be a head chef some day and maybe have her own restaurant, but for now she’s content to soak up all she can.

“Some people come out of culinary school thinking they know everything,” she said. “I don’t think that way. There is so much more to learn.”