How star baker Christina Tosi turned childlike wonder into a cookie empire

By Sophie BearmanProduced by Tessa KramerEngineered by Michelle LanzPublished Nov. 25, 2025 • 5:38am

Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi didn’t set out to become a dessert icon. She just knew that if there was one thing she’d like to do every day for the rest of her life, it was baking cookies. That instinct led her from the world of New York City fine dining into the orbit of Momofuku founder David Chang. Her official title at Momofuku was “Et Cetera” – a catch-all for her role across the business’s operations – until Chang pushed Tosi to pursue her real passion.

“Eventually Dave was like, ‘You have to start making dessert,’” Tosi recalls. “‘Your role – your destiny – is not running operations. It’s clear that you want to go home and bake and this is what you should be doing.’”

Tosi followed his advice. Soon after, she opened the first Milk Bar – a hole-in-the-wall bakery in New York City’s East Village with a neon pink “Milk” sign outside.

“November 15th, 2008, I opened up the doors, and I remember going to work and being like, ‘Why are all these people waiting in line? These people don’t even know what they’re waiting in line for,’” Tosi remembers. “I didn’t have enough time to worry about, ‘Will they be into a deeply gooey and underbaked pie? Will they be into this cookie that has all these crazy sweet and salty things in it?”

Since then, Milk Bar has become synonymous with cereal milk ice cream, compost cookies, and a joyful, childlike approach to dessert. Tosi has earned two James Beard awards, written numerous cookbooks, and grown Milk Bar into a cultural phenomenon.

In this shortened episode of “Life in Seven Songs,” recorded live at the Charter Workplace Summit in New York City, Tosi shares the ingredients behind her success: a strong work ethic inherited from her parents, a sense of childlike wonder she refuses to outgrow, and a soundtrack – from Bob Marley to LCD Soundsystem – that reminds her to lose herself, find herself, and keep creating.

Here’s her playlist.