SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR

With her cookbook, ‘Stirring Up Fun with Food’ (Hachette, $39.99), the mother of two, 40, has traded Buffy’s wooden stakes for wooden spoons, as she tells Isabella Biedenharn.

Where do you find inspiration for creative desserts? Are you always on Pinterest? I take it more from life. If you look at my cookbook, there’s a Star Wars chapter, there’s a Shark Week chapter ... I can’t believe you based a whole set of desserts around Shark Week. Someone on Amazon found my Shark Week chapter very offensive. It made me laugh. But that’s sort of where the inspiration comes from— things my kids [Charlotte, 7, and Rocky, 4, with husband Freddie Prinze Jr] are interested in. Your company, Foodstirs, sells baking mixes made of healthy and sustainable ingredients. What were some of your fears going into that? I’ve been in one career my entire life, and you worry: will people be interested? Will they take me seriously? That makes sense. And you want to show that you take it seriously, too. People are smarter now. I think audiences know if you’re just lending your name or if it’s something that you’re really involved in. How does seeing your product in a supermarket feel different from seeing your face on a magazine? There’s something really interesting about having a tangible product. I’ve created [art] my whole life, but it’s sort of intrinsically in the ether. Now my children have watched me come up with an idea and create something tangible and watched it get manufactured. That’s been a really special experience for us, which is very different than them understanding how a movie gets made, or a TV show. I think it’s a really good lesson for them.