Michael and Marsha along with their daughter Lindsey make up Cherryvale Farms, a new Soquel-based company that aims to create tasty, easy-to-use baking mixes. They’ve spent the past year tweaking recipes and working with a professional baker in the hopes of creating the perfect baked goods for their line of products, “Everything But The …” Countless apple streusel muffins and loaves of banana bread later, they’ve come up with the winning recipes and are now distributing their mixes to about 60 stores, including Aptos Natural Foods and Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco.

Michael believes that a family that cooks together stays together. “We’ve always been a cooking family,” said Michael, who worked in advertising for 30-plus years.

The “Everything But The …” line of mixes contain most of the ingredients needed to make the bread or muffins. All the cook will need are some basics, such as water, oil and the main feature, which is a fruit or vegetable, such as pumpkin puree for the pumpkin bread or zucchinis for the zucchini cornbread. By the time the oven is preheated, the mix is ready to go in, Marsha said

Michael said Lindsey, who has been their “motivator,” had a clear idea of the products she wanted to develop. “This idea of convenience was really important to her,” he said.

Marsha has spent many an hour in the kitchen perfecting the recipes. Cooking’s nothing new to the mosaic artist, who was recognized by Better Homes and Gardens for her Apricot Turkey recipe 20 years ago. She and her husband changed the way they looked at food after a trip to France back in 1999 after seeing the organic, whole foods-based diet the French embraced. She came home inspired to cook.

“Americans just eat too much junk food,” she said.

Products from Cherryvale Farms are mostly organic, and new mixes like carrot bran muffins and blueberry muffins are expected to be available come summer. Michael said that while the business is new, more and more orders keep coming in. For him, the reward comes from working with those he loves. “We’re really a baby; we’re just learning about everything,” he said. “It’s really fun to be in the food business and it’s really fun to do it as a family.”