a baby shower that was a cookie exchange<\/a>. Many of the city\u2019s foremost bakers \u2014 including Sherry Yard, Nancy Silverton, Sumi Chang \u2014 brought cookies to share. It was a sign of the affection Moore inspired among her colleagues.<\/p>\n ![\"FO.Shower.1.0418.BC.A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767950053_495_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
At the baby shower for Christine Moore held at Les Deux Caf\u00e9s in Hollywood on April 18, 1999, guest of honor Moore, left, feeds pastry chef Kim Sklar one of her own \u201cnun\u2019s breast\u201d cookies to her during the party.<\/p>\n
(Bob Carey \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
At home with her newborn, Moore grew restless and began making candy; specifically, sea-salt caramels like the ones she\u2019d loved in Paris, and vanilla marshmallows. She borrowed the kitchen of chef and radio host Evan Kleiman and worked there at night. She sold the candies, beautifully bagged, at farmers markets. <\/p>\n
\u201cI remember her hand-wrapping those damn caramels, with her baby crawling around on the floor,\u201d said Gelber.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first time we interviewed Christine on KCRW\u2019s \u2018Good Food,\u2019 her daughter Maddie was on her lap, teething on a spatula,\u201d said Jennifer Ferro, the president of KCRW. Moore and Ferro had babies a year apart and became parenting support partners.<\/p>\n
![\"035458.CA.0907.edible.3.LS.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767950053_246_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
In 2001, Christine Moore, left, and Jennifer Ferro were photographed with their children Kobe and Maddie as the kids sculpted balls of pizza dough that were then baked and presented at Evan Kleiman\u2019s former L.A. restaurant Angeli Caffe on Melrose.<\/p>\n
(Luis Sinco \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cChristine became my entrepreneurial whisperer,\u201d Ferro said. \u201cShe was such a risk-taker, constantly planning things, going for broke. I loved having her in my ear, pushing me along. She was such a relentless optimist about people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was getting married in Hawaii in 2007 and Christine, who had a baby and a new cafe, insisted on coming. And making the cake … She arrived with the frozen cake layers in her suitcase. Holding three-month-old Colin under one arm, she frosted and decorated the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Writer Victoria Patterson worked at Julienne in San Marino where Moore was a pastry chef before opening Little Flower. \u201cShe had a booming laugh,\u201d Patterson said. \u201cEverybody loved her. She had a grand, almost startling personality. Very rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe followed her heart,\u201d says Gelber. \u201cNothing scared her off.\u201d <\/p>\n
Indeed. In 2007, with three young children and a crumbling marriage, she opened her dream bakery\/cafe, Little Flower in Pasadena. <\/p>\n
\u201cA tiny caf\u00e9 on the edge of town, it\u2019s where we gather to prepare and eat fresh, delicious food, drink strong coffee,\u201d she wrote in her first cookbook, \u201cLittle Flower: Recipes from the Caf\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"PASADENA,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767950054_994_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
At her airy restaurant Lincoln in Pasadena, close to Altadena, Christine Moore, center, visits with customers Sarah Soifer, left, and Melissa Wu in March 2015. <\/p>\n
(Anne Cusack \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with Christine was one of the most intensely personal experiences I\u2019ve had as an editor,\u201d says Colleen Dunn Bates, who published the cookbook in 2012. \u201cShe had a very strong vision of how things should look. Yet she struggled with being a writer. She read her introduction to me just sobbing, convinced it was terrible. In fact, she was a great storyteller and a better writer than many cooks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bates and Moore remained close friends. \u201cShe was a very emotional person in many of the best ways. She told me she cried every day. She cared so much. Everybody was friends with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christine\u2019s second book, the stunning \u201cLittle Flower Baking\u201d (2016), had a bigger budget and a whole team, including her pastry chef Cecilia Leung and Valentine, who took the photographs. Ten years on, the book is still selling.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Christine opened her second cafe, Lincoln, near border of Altadena and Pasadena. In the large vaulting space of a former steel fabricator, she created an open kitchen, a large seating area and, outside, a patio.<\/p>\n
Although popular \u2014 often with long lines out the door \u2014 Lincoln, like so many other restaurants, did not survive the pandemic. But it did set off the cluster of lively food spots there today, including Ferrazzani\u2019s Pasta & Market and branches of Kismet Rotisserie, Stumptown Coffee and Home State, which occupies the space that was once Lincoln.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen things didn\u2019t work out, Christine held her head high and moved on,\u201d says Valentine. \u201cShe was always planning her next adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChristine was constantly learning and expanding and trying things,\u201d added Valentine. \u201cShe inspired everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore was all about community. She held book launches for novelists and cookbook writers \u2014 and once offered to do so for this writer.<\/p>\n
![\"LOS](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767950054_393_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
In September 2015, at the L.A. Times event \u201cThe Taste,\u201d held at Paramount Pictures Studios, Christine Moore, second from right, participated in a panel called \u201cThings in a Bowl,\u201d moderated by The Times\u2019 late restaurant critic Jonathan Gold, with, from left, chefs Alvin Cailan and Minh Phan.<\/p>\n
(Lawrence K. Ho \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was close to a lot of little girls in our neighborhood,\u201d Avery said. \u201cThey called her their Fairy Godmother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she took note of all the kids around who were going off to college,\u201d said Maddie. \u201cAnd she sent them Little Flower care packages \u2014 a T-shirt, a backpack, cookies, caramels, marshmallows. She knew what it was like to be alone for the first time, so they\u2019d get this beautiful box from their Fairy Godmother.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year ago, when the fires struck Altadena, Moore and her son, Colin, slipped past police lines to return to their home with garden hoses. They fought off flames and embers to save it and several other structures. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very traumatic,\u201d said Colin. \u201cA front-row seat to all the horror. It took a toll on Mom\u2019s mental health. She struggled.\u201d<\/p>\n
The house survived, but Moore had not yet moved back home.<\/p>\n
As a businesswoman, a single mother and a highly sensitive human, Moore made it through life thanks to a surfeit of loving kindness.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom was a very public-facing person,\u201d said Avery, \u201cbut we got to see her behind closed doors: the tender, loving, generous, sparkling lady she always was and will always be.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew her as our Mom, our best friend, our haven, our person,\u201d Maddie said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing raised by a single parent, it could go either way,\u201d added Avery. \u201cBut she really doubled down, she never looked back, she sent us to amazing schools and never complained. Not an easy road, but she just did it, did it with such ease and grace and so fiercely loved us. She was the giving tree, is the giving tree. She instilled that in every person she met.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two nights after Moore died, her good friends and children sat around the table and talked. They said their mom and friend was the person you always called, who gave the best advice, who you wanted in you corner \u2014 and she always was in your corner. Every person there said that Christine was their best friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe just had this spark every time she walked into the room,\u201d said Colin.<\/p>\n
And her hugs were famous. \u201cShe gives you a hug and in short order,\u201d Bates said, \u201cyou are talking on a really deep topic.\u201d<\/p>\n
On hearing that line, Moore\u2019s daughter Avery laughed and said, \u201cShe was so not surface level: no small talk, it was always straight to the meat!<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom was so unapologetically herself,\u201d Avery continued. \u201cNo matter the situation, she trusted her guts and her instincts \u2026 I feel like being raised by a force of nature will be the greatest gift of our life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Christine Moore followed her Yalie boyfriend to California, she walked off the plane, felt the sunshine, so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5759,65539,38593,63846,65538,65541,65540,35511,48,52,51,65537,47,50,49,65542,11468,33528,1977,4610,72],"class_list":["post-126424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-altadena","tag-avery","tag-baby-shower","tag-christine-moore","tag-colin","tag-cookbook","tag-emotional-person","tag-good-friend","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-little-flower-cafe","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-maddie","tag-mom","tag-moore","tag-pasadena","tag-thing","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}