Little Flower Cafe founder, candymaker

When Christine Moore followed her Yalie boyfriend to California, she walked off the plane, felt the sunshine, so unlike the dreary East Coast weather she left behind, and decided never to go back.

- MICHELLE HUNEVEN

A BIG WELCOME Owner Christine Moore, center, visits with customers Sarah Soifer, left, and Melissa Wu in 2015 at her Lincoln restaurant in Pasadena, which jump-started the renewal of a block at the city's border with Altadena.

ANNE CUSACK Los Angeles Times

She spent the rest of her life in Southern California, ending up in Altadena, where she lived, and Pasadena, where her popular cafe and bakery, Little Flower, serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week. She would also write cookbooks, make iconic caramels and marshmallows, and, with her now-closed restaurant Lincoln, jump-start the renewal of a block at the border of Pasadena and Altadena that today boasts a lively food scene.

Moore died at the age of 62 on Jan. 4 after suffering a heart attack. She is survived by her three children, Maddie, 26, Avery, 24, and Colin, 18.

Born on Nov. 6, 1963, she grew up in Maplewood, N.J. She began her working life as a waitress, then a restaurant manager and a caterer until, to fulfill a childhood dream, she took a few extension classes in baking. A tragedy in her late 20s sparked her ambition: After her best friend died in a car crash, she realized how tenuous life was, and with scant savings, she flew to Paris. Living on bread, butter and fruit, she became a stagier or unpaid apprentice at the bakery of Gerard Mulot, a master pâtissier, boulanger and chocolatier.

Returning to California, Moore soon found her way into the pastry kitchen at Campanile, the L.A. restaurant opened in 1989 by the chefs Nancy Silverton and the late Mark Peel. While there, she joined a women's dinner club that read cookbooks and made the recipes.

Several of those women became lifelong friends, including the chef and photographer Staci Valentine, and Campanile's then-shop manager, food writer Teri Gelber.