Rose McAdoo is trained baker and culinary artist who makes “science desserts” — four tiered cakes or sparkling lollipops that she uses to explain complex environmental concepts. The best part, Rose creates these culinary masterpieces in the wild. She has whipped up desserts at the edges of glaciers, on volcanoes, and in caves and deserts. Each sweet is an educational work of art that tells a story and celebrates science and adventure.
Rose McAdoo is trained baker and culinary artist who makes “science desserts” — four tiered cakes or sparkling lollipops that she uses to explain complex environmental concepts. The best part, Rose creates these culinary masterpieces in the wild. She has whipped up desserts at the edges of glaciers, on volcanoes, and in caves and deserts. Each sweet is an educational work of art that tells a story and celebrates science and adventure.
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Rose McAdoo:
I remember this moment perfectly. I was standing in the cake shop I was working at, I was standing in Nine Cakes, and I was looking at these huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows we had overlooking the Statue Liberty. It was sunset. It was so beautiful at night. I was the only one in the cake shop working and I thought, man, I wish I could just take this cake on an adventure. I wish I could take this cake I'm working on, stick in my backpack, take it up a mountain. That would be super cool. And I remember thinking, that's ridiculous. Who's going to eat a cake on a mountain?
Shelby Stanger:
Baking is science and culinary artist Rose McAdoo takes that to the extreme. Rose makes what she calls science desserts: think four-tiered cakes or sparkling lollipops that she uses to explain complex environmental concepts. The most impressive part is that Rose creates these culinary masterpieces in the wild. She's whipped up desserts at the edges of glaciers, on volcanoes, and in caves, and deserts. Each sweet is an educational work of art that tells a story and celebrates science and adventure. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-Op Studios production brought to you by Capital One. Rose McAdoo isn't solely a baker, she's also a passionate outdoors woman. Rose works seasonally as an ice climbing and glacier guide in Alaska and manages a NASA research facility in Antarctica. Her adventurous lifestyle is full of science and sweets, but it took a while to bring these passions together. Rose McAdoo, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. Before we start, I got to tell you, Instagram sent me to you through the algorithm and I looked at your profile and I was like, wow, this girl literally has been doing wild ideas forever, and you even use the word wild ideas, which is so cool. Let's start with the outdoors. When did you fall in love with the outdoors and decide I'm going to do something with this?
Rose McAdoo:
It's a funny question. I grew up, I think like a lot of Americans, I grew up car camping with my family, maybe a two-hour day hike, but nothing dramatic or intense or extravagant. And it wasn't really until... Well, I was introduced to backpacking when I was 19, that was when I first came to Alaska. I had gone to college in Orlando, Florida hoping to become an event manager. And it was just obvious to me now, but not the right fit for me at the time. And so I took an opportunity to move to Alaska the week after I turned 19 and work on the train between Anchorage and Fairbanks. And that summer I ended up having my first backpacking trip. I wore a backpack that was way too big for me, it was like 70 liter backpack for an overnight trip, and I wore jeans and a cotton T-shirt.
Truly did not know anything about backpacking or being in these more harsh remote settings. And my first backpacking trip was in Denali National Park. No trail system, following a gravel bed out in grizzly country. And it just really, I don't know, it just set something on fire in me, but I didn't really get to continue exploring that too, too much until I headed down to Antarctica in 2018, and there was a long period of time in between that when I was living in Brooklyn and really pushing my pastry career. And now I feel really lucky that I've combined all of those things kind of under this one umbrella, but it did feel very juxtapositioned for many years in there.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. What I love about your story is the path towards your success was not a straight line. It sounds like it was a really cool trail. It winded around, went backwards and forwards. Okay, so you go to Alaska, you have this magical experience, and then somehow you become a pastry chef in Brooklyn.
Rose McAdoo:
Yes.
Shelby Stanger:
Walk me through how you got to this point.
Rose McAdoo:
So I was just working customer service in Denali National Park, and I had always wanted to be a pastry chef. I had been making really terrible cakes since seventh grade and really there was no question in my mind I wanted to do desserts and events, that was it. I knew it from the time I was 13. But yeah, Alaska really showed me the benefits of a seasonal career and how much you can push yourself in these short-term roles where you're opening a kitchen kind of from the ground up and then closing it and winterizing it every few months. You're starting with a brand new team, you're maybe developing a brand new menu. There was just so much change and flexibility and challenge that I really loved about seasonal work in food specifically. And so over a few years worked, like I said, worked in Denali, worked in Lake Powell at the resort there. I did some time in upstate New York in Ithaca. And just learned a lot from all of those roles and like I said, had really different teams. I had more responsibility than I think I should have been given at that time.
Shelby Stanger:
What year was this when you were 19?
Rose McAdoo:
2009.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay.
Rose McAdoo:
I'm 34 now.
Shelby Stanger:
Awesome. Okay. I was just trying to get an idea of when this was in the world. This is an economic downturn in 2009. Did you not go to college? Did you decide instead, I'm going to go do this thing?
Rose McAdoo:
I didn't decide anything, but the finances decided for me. So I went to that one year of college in Orlando and then had 15 or $20,000 of debt from one year of out-of-state school, realized that I was very naive and I was not going to be able to pay for that education myself. And so I needed to at least take some time away and try and pay off this loan and make more money. And then, g od, my career just spiraled out of control in this powerful, beautiful way, and I never finished school. And I love school. I would love to go back. I would love to get a degree. I love learning, which is why I feel so motivated to learn and educate through my work. But man, college in America is expensive. And you could argue I learned more on this path than I might've in a more traditional linear sense.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2015, Rose moved to Brooklyn to work at a high-end cake shop. There she learned how to make intricate desserts for weddings and events. These weren't just white cakes with pink flowers, they used bright colors and unique textures to create esoteric and whimsical pieces of art. It was at this cake shop that she realized that sugar and flower are mediums for visual storytelling. Around the 2016 election, Rose started to brainstorm a new way to express herself through dessert, she began making cakes about issues like climate change, gun violence, and immigration. She posted pictures online and her work attracted some attention. Tell me what a climate change cake looked like or a gun reform cake looked like.
Rose McAdoo:
Yeah. The first climate change cake I made was pretty basic. It was an iceberg poking out of the top of the cake, and then I had painted, so you could see the big much larger base underneath that just said, "Climate change is real". It was very kind of graphic poster style. So I'm really proud that I've pushed the climate work so much further than that. But I think the gun control cake was really my deepest push in in that first collection. I had a pistol shooting into one side of the cake, it was a fondant pistol that I had water colored. And then from the other side of the cake, using the same technique, I painted the state flowers from the five states that had incurred the most deaths from gun violence that year. And I just think the visual quality of that was really powerful. The deeper story of that, which is something I really push all of my work now to continue doing as well. But my favorite from that collection might've been I made a bust of the Statue of Liberty wearing a headscarf to really highlight the plight of immigration that was happening all over America, but especially in New York at the time.
Shelby Stanger:
How did these cakes taste? How were they received?
Rose McAdoo:
Yeah. That first collection was actually all dummy cakes, so all styrofoam, otherwise it would've fed 1500 people. And I had a big vision, and so I just made that first collection as display cakes essentially. Because I was curious it, first of all, it costs a lot of money to buy everything that you need for these huge cakes. And so A, it was a money saver when I was scraping by in Brooklyn. And B, I was curious if anyone would even be interested in cakes with a deeper meaning behind them. I wasn't sure that that concept would hold any weight. It felt really self-indulgent. It felt like a ridiculous medium.
And as I photographed those cakes and shared them, they gained traction and people were sharing them, people were engaging with them. Press reached out and helped share those pieces even further. And it really was so encouraging and gratifying to know that actually cake is this thing that can just grab an entire room full of people's intention in two seconds. No one is scared of cake. Everyone is excited about it. And it's a perfect medium to talk about more engaging topics. What actually makes cake such a great tool for connection and for storytelling is because it is fun and it is celebratory. And so it takes these conversations from something that people typically might want to disengage from or don't know how to access, and it just kind of lowers the bar.
Shelby Stanger:
Making cakes about political issues was just the first step in Rose's journey. As her work started garnering press, she saw that she could use dessert as a tool to go deeper. Cake is fun and celebratory, and it can be a great conversation starter to approach fraught topics. When we come back, we'll hear how Rose started making science desserts in the wildest corners of the earth, and her current work in Antarctica. She also explains how she made a cake on a glacier in Denali. Rose McAdoo makes culinary art pieces with a message. Her work started with a more political bent, but now she mostly makes desserts to show appreciation for climate scientists and to spread awareness about environmental issues. After an extensive career as a high-end pastry chef in New York, Rose decided to take her professional life in a different direction. She applied to be a sous-chef at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. McMurdo Station is a huge research base that houses and feeds about 1,000 people. There Rose was surrounded by incredible scientists at the top of their game, and their work inspired her next round of desserts.
Rose McAdoo:
I made friends with teams of scientists. I learned what was going on down there, and I just sketched cake ideas. I went to every science lecture that I could, I learned as much as possible. My closest group of friends was a team of paleontologists looking for fossils that would unite fish and amphibians on the timetables. And so I made a cake about that paleontology dig that was happening in the deserted dry valleys of Antarctica. I made a cake about my friend Dr. Sean Devlin, who is diving under the frozen sea ice to collect these little tiny microscopic samples to understand what life is like in frozen environments. I made a cake about sea ice break and the logistics of getting three years of materials to an Antarctic research base via ship.
That whole collection of cakes is just really exciting. And it was the first time I had made science communication cakes. And I sent out a bunch of press releases, and the only people that got back to me was the team at NPR. And that changed the entire course of my career. They were my last Hail Mary laughing to myself drinking wine as I'm sending out press releases, like, "Huh, I'll send one to NPR, you know, won't hear anything back, but good for me for trying". And they picked it up and they featured these Antarctic communication cakes on the NPR platform. And it was just wildly exciting to see this weird idea that I had had not that long ago in New York to be really validated on a huge platform that I really admire and respect. And I feel like that's really when the table started turning for the future of my creative work.
It didn't necessarily get me any paid jobs or anything like that, but it really showed me that this concept held weight and it excited me. It made me want to continue making cakes that told a larger story. Especially about science, that felt really important. I feel like scientists are people that globally we rely on so much to tell us what's happening on our planet, but they're these hidden away people that no one really knows. How many climate scientists does the average American know? Probably zero, maybe one. Scientists are so behind the scenes, they're in a lab or an office, but they're teaching us so much. Every article we read is based on the research that they're doing. Every documentary that we watch, everything that we learn about our planet is coming from these people who just don't get the credit they deserve and who often don't have the time to communicate the work that they're putting their entire lives into executing.
And so I just, man Antarctica has inspired me in this way that makes me want to push these incredible genius perspectives and incredibly hard work and a lot of field-based work. That entire story, it just feels so full circle to me and it's really something that I want to help get out there. And really celebrate the people that help us understand our planet.
Shelby Stanger:
For a long time, Rose had been thinking about how to make her desserts out in the wild. She wanted to produce them on expeditions and share them with a scientist whose work was so inspiring to her. After her first season in Antarctica, Rose returned to Alaska. She made cakes decorated with Arctic sea spiders made of candy, painted thermal maps, and carved into the shape of deep-sea data collection tools. During this time, she was also working as an outdoor guide and getting wilderness certifications. These skills came in handy when she finally began making her science desserts on remote excursions. Rose has made pastries on the summit of a volcano, in the plains of Africa, underground in the Australian outback, and on snowfields and glaciers. What does it take to bake a cake outdoors on like a glacier? Maybe give me an example of a cake that you made.
Rose McAdoo:
Absolutely. So to make science communication pieces outdoors, I need to be able to physically make them outdoors. I can never carry a huge oven into the back country and 12 cake pans of various sizes. And so I've had to figure out how to set all these rules into place. What are my parameters for making a piece, and then how do I do that in a remote setting? And so my rules are that my desserts have to tell a story, preferably about science or the people behind that science. The piece has to be made outside in that environment. So limited tools, has to fit in a backpack. I have to be able to carry it. It has to be ultra light. The piece has to incorporate ingredients and color palette of that place. It has to be something that tastes good. I'm not just going to make something that looks nice on Instagram.
These are edible pieces that need to have thoughtful flavor profiles, local flavor profiles, unique flavor profiles. It has to taste good. And then I really want these desserts to be unique and interesting. And so these rules that are really fundamental to my practice help me kind of rein it in, and they provide constraints that allow me to work productively. That being said, there are zero constants in a remote environment. There is no kitchen, there's no backup plan, there's no run to the store and grab something else if something didn't work. And logistically it is really challenging. I think a lot of people see what I do on social media and they think, "Oh, she made a baked Alaska at Denali base camp. Cool". But what they didn't see is the year and a half of planning that went into that, the $12,000 of gear, ingredients, tickets for flights, all of the hundred hours of planning that went into designing the recipes, the weeks with little to no sleep while I'm trying to make all this stuff happen and work full time on top of it, the logistics of packing for a dessert expedition.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2023, Rose went on an expedition to Denali Base Camp. For a year before the trip she carefully planned out recipes, research and prepared ingredients, and gathered equipment. She was on the mountain for two weeks and made seven different desserts that she shared with other guides and climbers who were there. Each confection had multiple elements involved. The cake itself, frosting, ganaches, hard candy decorations, and more. One of her favorites was the bedrock erosion cake. Her goal with this cake was to depict what happens to the landscape as glaciers melt.
Rose McAdoo:
A glacier has a lot of rocks embedded at the base of the ice, and as it bulldozes its way through this beautiful glacier valley, the rock embedded in the bottom of the glacier scrapes and erodes on the bedrock on the ground below. And then as our glaciers are receding, we're seeing more and more of that new landscape exposed.
Shelby Stanger:
To visually demonstrate this craggy landscape, Rose found silicone molds that had these jagged imprints inside. With those molds, she created a black cake as dark as the rocky terrain that reveals itself as these glaciers recede. Because she wasn't planning on bringing a portable oven, she pre-baked a black sesame charcoal mochi cake. In addition to carrying the frozen cake in her pack, Rose also brought all the other elements she would need to finish the dessert. She made what she calls back country baking kits, resealable bags with all of her ingredients pre-weighed so that all she has to do on the mountain is add snowmelt.
Rose McAdoo:
And so I had this really beautiful, chewy, crunchy black sesame mochi cake. And then in my jet boil, I heated powdered heavy cream with snowmelt. I whipped that with powdered egg whites that I also reconstituted with snowmelt from the Kahiltna Glacier. I whipped that up with a big whisk that I had attached to my climbing harness and made a charcoal blackened cardamom cream cheese mousse.
Shelby Stanger:
Once she'd spread the mousse between the cake layers, she prepared the next element of the cake. Remember, Rose wanted this dessert to look and taste good, but she also wanted it to be reminiscent of bedrock erosion.
Rose McAdoo:
I also made a blackest black deep, deep, deep chocolate ganache with additional sesame seeds and a little bit of citric acid to really bring out the minerality of rocks. What does a rock taste like, right? I've never eaten a rock, but I would imagine it's sour. It's very mineral heavy, obviously. It's kind of grainy and has a lot of sediment. And a really textured mouth feel, which is why I incorporated the seeds. And it's fun to kind of think of what would this landscape taste like, if I physically grabbed a piece of this mountain and ate it, what would I have going on in my mouth? And then trying to replicate that on site.
Shelby Stanger:
After the cake was complete, Rose wrapped it up and buried it in a snow cave overnight to solidify. The next day, she was able to share it with a Denali base camp manager and some of the national park rangers who were on site doing rescue work. And that wasn't the only dessert these adventurers were lucky enough to get a taste of. On this expedition, Rose made a total of seven desserts, including crevasse candy bars, ice core lollipops, tootsie roll knots, and even a climate change baked Alaska. Like any baker, sharing her treats with others is one of Rose's favorite parts of her process.
Rose McAdoo:
Whatever I made, I was able to just bring down to this amazing group of people that were spending weeks and weeks and weeks in this really harsh environment. Denali was the first backpacking trip I ever went on in 2009, and it really felt full circle to be flying into base camp and spending two weeks in a tent, making desserts for a community of climbers and outdoors people, and then being able to share those stories online with a much larger audience.
Shelby Stanger:
Rose's baking has gained major traction. In addition to NPR, she's been written up in Forbes, Savoir, and New York Magazine. Her writing has been published in Trails Magazine, Edible Alaska, and American Polar Society. Even so adventure baking doesn't really pay the bills, at least not yet. Right now, baking desserts to communicate science in harsh climates is your hobby or is it your full-time?
Rose McAdoo:
Yeah. No, it is my hobby. Which is insane. It's the thing I think about 90 hours a week, but it's just my very part-time side hobby.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. So what do you do for work?
Rose McAdoo:
I just started a new job, it's an expansion of my previous last few years of work. In 2019, I started as the sous-chef for a NASA research camp in Antarctica, nine miles away from McMurdo Station. I think I was just really engaged with what was happening. I also have this outdoor career that a lot of kitchen people don't necessarily have down there. Not to put everyone in a box, but I think my outdoor skills set me apart is the point I'm trying to make. So the manager of the camp asked me to be her assistant manager running full facility operations and launch opportunities, et cetera. So I've been assistant managing that camp now for two years, and I just stepped into a new role as the facility manager. So I have very, again full circle, started in the kitchen and I'm now running a NASA research camp in Antarctica, and it is just unbelievable.
Life is wild, and it has just been so cool to, I don't know, watch... You know when a trail seems really hard on your way up, and then you get to the top and you have your snacks and then you're coming down and you're like, "Oh, okay, actually it wasn't that bad". You see how many switchbacks there are. You're like, "Okay, it actually made it a little easier". I feel like that is also true of any creative career or career in general. It is just struggle bus and you work so hard to make things happen, and then you get to look back even immediately after and you're like, oh, I see how this complete series of switchbacks actually was feeding me all of these experiences that are incredibly relevant. My experience in managing teams of people in kitchens, and running events, and cooking for science has actually made me a much better facility manager.
But my outdoor background has taught me a lot about cold management, and I'm able to be a better safety team member for my crew. And looking back, it's a wild experience. And so now I am full-time with the US Antarctic program, I'm working remotely from Alaska, and then I will continue going down to Antarctica for five months a year to do the on-site management. And then helping two to four science teams launch huge scientific balloons with 8,000 pounds of research attached to the bottom of them. We launch them up into the stratosphere where they float for anywhere from one day, which is worst case scenario, to two months, best case scenario. And they float up in the stratosphere at 130 to 160,000 feet, we fly in airplanes at 30,000 feet for a little perspective, so they're way up there at the edge of space. And they're often photographing or taking measurements of atmospheric conditions in our galaxy and other galaxies as well to learn about star formation and planetary systems. Very, very large scale esoteric science, and that is something I need to dig into visually. I haven't made much about space science, so that's one of my goals for this coming year. But yeah, that job is now allowing me the financial freedom to be able to spend a bit more time on my work, which I'm really excited about.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that Rose is an adventure baker, who also works for NASA. She's been able to pursue two wildly different passions, and I'd say she's done it in a pretty singular way. I wish I could meet Rose one day on a mountain somewhere and enjoy a slice of cake with her in person. But for now, pictures will have to do. If you want to see some of Rose's desserts, including the ones she's made on Denali, head to her Instagram @rosemcadoo. That's R-O-S-E-M-C-A-D-O-O. Rose is also coming out with a film about her culinary expedition to Alaska called Creative Approach. You can watch the trailer for that one on her Instagram as well. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger. Produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola, and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.