The crackle of gravel as you walk up to open a door to pale beige walls and shining metallic tables, utensils, and ovens. The heat of baking washes over you as the smell of sweets fills your nose. Shelves shine with baking sheets, pans, and whisks. Walls plastered with chalkboards, class photos, and children's accomplishments. A tiny desk shorter than a toddler in front of a normal-sized teacher's desk. A true kitchen with homage to a classroom. 

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This is just one of the workplaces of Jennifer Osman. She is a teacher, the owner of a bakery called Schoolhouse Cheesecakes, and a community worker who puts countless hours into all of her passions.  

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Her first passion is her classroom full of kids. Jennifer Osman is a fifth-grade reading and language arts teacher at Anna Jr. High School in Anna Illinois. She has been teaching since 1998 and has no intention of quitting anytime soon. 

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“I've been at it for 23 years, and I still love my kids. I mean, I still love being there every day” Jennifer Osman said.

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However, her love for her kids extends beyond teaching them how to read. Jennifer Osman has planned numerous events to help engage the kids within the community. A few weeks ago she helped show the kids local businesses through the Kids Town Project. With her knowledge of owning Schoolhouse Cheesecakes, this project came very naturally to her. The city of Anna's chamber of commerce and herself sat down and made a list of 22 local businesses that the kids could visit. They wanted kids to meet mentors and learn about the pillars of their community that they could support. 

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“They met the owners of the businesses. They got to talk about how they ran their business, how their business was founded, and we did this as they learned about the city of Anna, who the founder was, when it was founded, and about his life” Jennifer Osman said.

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All of this was meant to help the kids learn about their community but it also helps kids who might go into the CEO program at the high school in Anna be more prepared for the course. 

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Jennifer Osman’s son, Bryce Osman, was a part of this CEO program in 2017, and for a project, he needed to start a business. This project became Schoolhouse Cheesecake, a local Cheesecake Bakery in Anna that took off. When Bryce Osman went to college he stopped working at the bakery but when Covid-19 broke out Jennifer Osman decided to partake in the project again with more success than she anticipated. 
 

“I was looking for something to be more socially involved in the community because we weren't at school. We started taking the slices to the farmers market on Tuesday morning, and we realized that every Tuesday we were selling out. And then what happened was we had people asking for more” Jennifer Osman said. 

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Later on, people would start asking for more special orders and they decided to form this project into an actual business. To make the business work while staying as a teacher meant many long days of work going forward. Jennifer Osman’s day consists of waking up at 5 a.m. to prep all the ingredients for her cheesecakes, delivering cheesecakes, going to work at school till 4 p.m., heading home just to have to spend hours baking cheesecakes, and finally getting a break. They supply slices of cheesecake to Farmstead Market, Kiki’s Coffee House, and Honey’s Quick Stop. On top of their regular orders, they do personal orders and cater events. She bakes cheesecake bites, full cheesecakes, and specialty cheesecakes. Some orders can be as large as 12 full-size cheesecakes. To juggle all of this, Jennifer Osman looks at Schoolhouse Cheesecakes as more of a hobby rather than a second job. She does get help from her husband, Shane Osman, who says his enjoyment of the business involves seeing his wife be very successful. 

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“The enjoyment, from my perspective, is just watching something that she was really good at. People complimented her for years and years and years and just seeing it flourish and seeing her being able to do something that makes her happy and then makes other people happy” Shane Osman said.

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The business is not a necessity for the Osmans. Since Jennifer Osman is still a school teacher, they do not rely on the bakery to support their family. This brings a sense of stress away from the business and allows it to be more of a pleasure for them. 

However, they still work diligently to supply whatever events they are asked to cater. They cater to a variety of events such as baby showers, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, and any get-together events. Long-time customer and friend Brad Palmer, says his experience with their cheesecakes has always been stellar.

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“One of the newer products, the Cheesecake Bites, that they sell, I brought to an office party here recently. And they've always been outstanding. They've always gotten a great reaction from other people as well. So I've never had any bad experiences with them” Brad Palmer said. 

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Some of these events and special orders also help them come up with new flavors. People will call them asking for special flavors and if they do not have them, they create them. For example, a teacher asked them for a Snickers cheesecake which they then had to come up with a recipe for. This doesn’t always work out though.

 

“Occasionally, though, there may be one that fails. You try a flavor, and if it doesn't have the right taste or doesn't have the right texture, if it's not correct, we're not going to sell it” Shane Osman said.

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The most unique cake they had to make was, surprisingly, a birthday cake. Essentially the customer wanted a traditional birthday cake but also have it be a cheesecake. So what the Osmans did was they made a funfetti cake but it's a cheesecake and on top of that they had a traditional layer of cake. They iced it with buttercream icing to make it look like a normal birthday cake. This is just one of the many challenges they have taken head-on with love and passion. 

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Jennifer Osman’s passion for making cheesecakes didn’t actually start with Schoolhouse Cheesecakes. She began baking cheesecakes with her mom. Her mom’s recipe, which she has slightly altered with her own ideas, is still the one she uses to this day. When she met her husband, he would ask for cheesecakes and she would make them for him. She decided to start taking them to other places and that's what sparked her love for making them. This love actually made her start her college career as a food and nutrition major rather than a teaching major. She would later decide it wasn’t for her but that passion for baking would never leave her. It would just lay dormant until it was ready to reveal itself once more in the form of Schoolhouse Cheesecakes.