A lot of people picked up baking as a hobby during the pandemic, but Actor Lisa Graye took it one step further. In March, she had just booked a show at Off-Broadway’s Theatre Row called “Romeo & Bernadette” and was about to receive her coveted Equity Card.

“I found out about booking that show on a Monday and that Thursday was when the show closed and the world shut down. It was definitely challenging, but I think after three months of grieving that loss, it was either I pivot or I stay sad and I chose to pivot,” said Graye.

So she cooked up the idea of Little Graye Bakery. For just $30 you can have a dozen different delectable delights, baked right out of Graye’s Hamilton Heights Apartment Kitchen. 

The New Jersey-native and Syracuse Alum combined her love for baking with social justice, selecting a different non-profit each month to donate 10% of her sales to.

“I kind of realized that I wanted to do something bigger than what I was doing already and I was baking so I figured if I sold a few items I could donate it to organizations that were raising money for anti-racism and practices in that world.” Graye said.

To help make ends meet, Graye has also been supplementing her income by creating educational cooking videos for kids via the app Bansho.

“I’ve got the set up from the acting days. So it was easy to just transfer this from self-tapes to baking videos. The hope and the dream is that once theater is back in action the bakery will kind of be the sustainability when I’m not working in theater. So I can kind of have it as a parallel career and do both and work and bake for people and maybe make the opening night cake of the next show I’m in,” concluded Graye.

Until theater is back, Graye will continue bringing joy to people in other ways: delivering cookies, and change.