August 2026 | Vol. 20 Iss. 8
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Draper baker blends Greek tradition with Southern sweetness
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By Peri Kinder | peri.k@thecityjournals.com Rita Magalde’s Sheer Ambrosia bakery is built on family memories and connection.
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Rita Magalde’s baklava at Sheer Ambrosia is a “love letter” to her family and community. The baklava was recently named Salt Lake City’s Best Dessert by Best of Salt Lake. (Tom Haraldsen/City Journals)
n Greek mythology, ambrosia is the food of the gods. For Rita Magalde, owner of Sheer Ambrosia bakery, the name was the perfect choice for her Greek-inspired baklava. While the pastry traces its roots to the Mediterranean, her recipes are infused with the flavors of her Southern upbringing, blending tradition with memories of her mother’s blackberry pie and peach cobbler. “Baklava is an amazingly elaborate dessert,” Magalde said. “Mine is Greek and Southern-inspired, but it is a world dessert. It is not just Greek; it is Eastern European, it is Middle Eastern, it is Northern African. There’s baklava in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Morocco, in Bosnia, in Armenia, in Turkey, in Iraq and Iran; in all of those countries.” Born in New York City, but raised in a small town in North Carolina, Magalde attended Appalachian State University near the Blue Ridge Mountains, studying history and Spanish. She moved to Spain to immerse
herself in the language and culture and married a man from Santander, a city on the country’s northern coast. They moved to Utah for the skiing. Following a divorce, Magalde wanted to offer the world something no one else could. She thought back to her first job in North Carolina, where she did babysitting for a Greek family who owned a seafood restaurant. “I was in their house a lot and I learned how to make lots of Greek foods. Baklava was just one of them, but it was the one that really stood out to me because, for me, baklava is art,” she said. “It was really beautiful, and so over the years I just played around with recipes.” The Draper resident has refined her process, creating 15 varieties of baklava, from traditional honey walnut to more exotic flavors like pistachio orange cardamom, butterscotch rum walnut and caramel cashew crunch. With 45 layers of phyllo dough in every batch, Magalde’s baklava is a rich, dense, luxurious dessert that customers order from around the world. It was recently named Salt
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Lake City’s Best Dessert by Best of Salt Lake. Magalde has built a strong following over the years. Following the George Floyd riots in 2020, she learned Sheer Ambrosia had been added to a list of Black-owned businesses that people could support. Orders started rolling in from all over the Salt Lake Valley. She began filling orders but didn’t want to ship them, feeling it was too impersonal. She wanted to see the people who supported her and tell them thank you. “I just couldn’t believe that all of those people wanted to support me in Utah,” she said. “So after I made all those orders, I hand-delivered every single one of them. I drove up and down the Wasatch Front and Continued on page 10
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