MEET FANNY

Plate licker. Storyteller. Food Network Personality. Winner of Rachael Ray’s Great American Cookbook Competition.

Fanny Slater has food flowing through her genes. Her mom founded the nationally acclaimed bakery business Rachel’s Brownies in 1975. Three years later, Fanny’s parents decided to run the company together and created an enormously successful corporation that would live on for decades. Fanny grew up in Raleigh where, at age four, she began her home-taught kitchen apprenticeship when her dad pulled up a chair next to the stove and handed her a spatula. She worked in restaurants and prep kitchens to receive culinary exposure, but was equally drawn to performing arts. At twenty-five, Fanny moved to Hollywood, California to pursue acting and improv training with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. Several years later, she followed her stomach back to the east coast to open her own catering company. She moved to downtown Wilmington, North Carolina in 2012.

In 2014, she beat out nearly 1,000 other hopefuls from across the country who entered Rachael Ray’s Great American Cookbook Competition. After four rounds of competition on Rachael’s daytime television show, Fanny won the grand prize of a publishing contract under Rachael Ray Books, an Imprint of the Atria Publishing Group. Fanny’s first cookbook Orange, Lavender & Figs: Deliciously Different Recipes from a Passionate Eater is available online and anywhere books are sold. Fanny describes the book as Tina Fey meets Rachael Ray meets the girl next door who drinks craft beer and makes bacon jam just for fun. It’s filled with humorous childhood tales, presentation tips, and whimsical, contemporary comfort food recipes.

Fanny has appeared regularly on The Rachael Ray Show and has been featured several times in Every Day with Rachael Ray Magazine. She was a co-host on the 2017 Food Network series Kitchen Sink, has been featured on Food Network’s The Kitchen, and is a regular on Cooking Channel’s longtime popular series Best Thing I Ever Ate. In her riverfront town of Wilmington, North Carolina—she runs her company Fanfare and specializes in food writing, clever product-promoting videos for recipe development partners, public speaking, blogging, and sassy social media eats. Get your Fanny in the Kitchen by grabbing a fork and following along for the tasty ride.