Recipe for success: Start early

Some careers start early. Take that of Duluth cookbook author Beatrice Ojakangas.

"Her love for the kitchen began when she was a child growing up on a farm in northern Minnesota," wrote Minneapolis Star staff writer Bob Schranck in the Feb. 8, 1978, issue of Taste. "It was nourished by a Finnish mother who told her she could do anything she wanted to do in the kitchen, as long as she 'cleaned it up.'"

It was the first of seven profiles of Ojakangas (pronounced o-jah-KAN-gus) published in Taste over the past 40 years. Back in 1978, Ojakangas -- who answers to the nickname "Peaches" -- already boasted an impressive career:

• Author of three cookbooks.

• Contest winner (a second-grand prize in the 1957 Pillsbury Bake-Off -- find the recipe at www.startribune.com/tabletalk.

• Teacher of American cooking to Finnish women ("I did a lot of apple pie and hamburger," she said. "And popcorn went over really big.")

• Writer for Sunset magazine.

• Home economist for Chun King foods (where she developed the company's best-selling Pizza Rolls).

• Host of a television show.

• Restaurant owner (Somebody's House in Duluth).

Turns out she was just getting going. During the intervening three decades, this culinary dynamo has published 24 other cookbooks (for a total of 27) that cover a dizzying array of topics.

Her latest, "Petite Sweets: Bite-Size Desserts to Satisfy Every Sweet Tooth" (Sellers Publishing, $18.95), hit bookstores four months ago. Since 1999, the University of Minnesota Press has reprinted nine of her titles, including her 1988 masterpiece, "The Great Scandinavian Baking Book," which was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2005.

"When I was growing up on the farm, I didn't know how many good things we had," Ojakangas told Taste in 1978. "Fresh vegetables and meat and eggs. All the best ingredients to work with. And as the oldest of 10 children, I could do as much as I wanted in the kitchen -- as long as I cleaned up afterward."

RICK NELSON