State College baker draws on Turkish background to serve up unique sweets

Izzy Aslan launched Pouf Patisserie in October 2024 and, over the last seven months, she’s watched the home-based bakery business surge in popularity as customers throughout Happy Valley discover her baked-to-order treats.

“People just really, really love the cookies,” she said. “I’ve had many comments saying, ‘I’m obsessed,’ ‘so good,’ ‘out of this world,’ ‘best I’ve had ever’ — comments like that. I’m surprised, because I’m not a very experienced baker. I just started small.”

Aslan’s background is in architecture and, before she and her husband moved to State College, she worked for Philadelphia’s KieranTimberlake. Then, she decided to start her own business. She originally dreamed of opening a café, but after encountering the various regulations required, she shifted focus and began researching the process for home kitchen licensing.

When considering what items she wanted to offer, Aslan looked to her and her husband’s Turkish backgrounds. While on vacation in his hometown of İzmir, Aslan discovered a popular pastry that she then adapted into her now popular chocolate hazelnut bomb cookie.

“It’s simple, delicious, so good,” she described. “It’s basically a thin pastry dough with Nutella inside, and it’s served warm. When you take a bite, it’s literally a chocolate explosion in your mouth. I was like, ‘Why is this not a thing in the U.S.?’”

From there, she expanded Pouf’s offerings further, adding on a pistachio bomb cookie, truffles and other decadent cookie varieties, like a matcha macadamia cookie and strawberry white chocolate cookie. The current crowd favorites, she noted, include the pistachio bomb cookie (also Aslan’s personal favorite) and a newer triple chocolate pistachio cookie, with additional seasonal cookie varieties added on a regular basis.

It’s not just the bakery’s unique options that make it stand out, though.

“What’s interesting about Pouf is that, usually, home bakeries pre-mix [items] and then you order ahead of time, a couple days or weeks ahead, but with Pouf, it works like a restaurant,” Aslan said. “[Customers] go in, place an order, I get the notification and I immediately start baking their order. Then, they get fresh, warm cookies delivered to them in about 45 minutes.”

Additionally, Aslan makes everything she uses from scratch, right down to the nut butters, and chooses only the highest-quality ingredients, such as unbleached flour and Belgian chocolate.

In the future, Aslan still thinks “eventually” she might open a café, but for now, she’s focusing on Pouf Patisserie’s continual growth and moving the business out of her home. Already, she’s brought on a team member to help with the baking. She also wants to expand the types of baked items and pastries she offers, adding yeasted items, like buns and brioche, to the current lineup of cookies and chocolates.

It’s not all the baking, though, that Aslan says is her favorite part of the business. Instead, “It’s interacting with customers,” she said, “delivering to them and getting feedback, them sharing us on social media. ... [We] have a lot of repeat customers. ... Just how happy it makes [them], I would say that’s my favorite part.”

Currently, Pouf Patisserie offers free delivery to addresses in State College, Boalsburg and Lemont, with a $10 delivery fee for addresses in Bellefonte. Customers can also pick up their orders from Aslan’s home, but keep in mind that, while the items are baked to order, they’ll want to wait to arrive until they receive a notification from Aslan that their order is ready for pick up. If customers do not want their orders baked right away, during the bakery’s opening hours, they can choose a later pick-up time when placing their orders on the Pouf Patisserie website, poufpatisserie.com.