Rising Star Artisan Liz Gutman of Liddabit Sweets - Biography

Liz Gutman’s story reads a lot like that of the creative type finding its place in the world, except this one has an arguably sweeter ending. Hailing from Costa Mesa, California, 17-year-old Gutman left her hometown for the slightly less temperate climes of New York City. Earning a fine arts degree in acting from New York University, Gutman discovered the life of a performer wasn’t the right fit. 

Unmoored in a big city with energy to burn, Gutman tried her hand at something more “official,” spending two years in the trenches of a media research company. But that, too, was ill-suited to Gutman. She left the job in 2007 and began working under renowned pastry chef Will Goldfarb.

It may be easy to find passion for pastry when Will Goldfarb is involved, but for Gutman, it was a mini-revelation, a lucrative outlet for her creativity. She enrolled in the International Culinary Center, where she met Jen King, her future partner in Liddabit Sweets, which debuted at Brooklyn Flea in 2009. The duo put out The Liddabit Sweets Candy Cookbook in 2012 (aided, no doubt, by Gutman’s two years writing for Serious Eats) and were co-honorees of International Culinary Centers’s first-ever “Outstanding Alumni Award for Entrepreneurship,” with Gutman earning a spot on Zagat’s “30 Under 30”—not to mention a place in the creative ranks of New York City.