Failure was not an option.

“My husband quit his job three weeks after the bakery opened,” she explained of Carlos’ decision join the company as CFO, “because we recognized that you put everything into Nadia Cakes to make sure that it’s successful, or we’re going to lose everything.”

It was a risk that paid off, with Nadia Cakes subsequently expanding beyond its original location in southern California to two bakeries in Minnesota, where the Jimenez family now calls home.

“I definitely didn’t embark on this journey to be an award-winning baker or a Food Network champion,” she stressed. “I was just doing what I had to do to pay my bills and take care of my family, like that’s all I was doing.”

It also burnt Abby out. Exhausted, she stepped back to focus on another passion: Writing.

“When it came down to the books, that was probably the least amount of risk that I’d ever had to take on,” Abby explained to E!, “because I didn’t need the books to accomplish any goal that I had set out for myself.”