I'm a food lover. I love to cook it, love to smell it, love to eat it, love to photograph it, love to look at it... I just LOVE food! Got questions? Ask away... send me an email at Nikkikatz@gmail.com Baking is my number one hobby. I LOVE to bake pretty much anything, although I have been focused more on health oriented baking lately. I have recently discovered that I am allergic to yeast, have a low tolerance for milk, and have IBS, so you can imagine what kinds of food I am limited to. It doesn't stop me from cooking and baking for everyone else though! My family has been making this "secret" recipe for ages. No one seems to know where it came from, and it has not been seen anywhere else (in any restaurant, in any cookbook, on any TV show...). It has officially been designated our "Katz Family Secret Recipe" and will probably be passed down from generation to generation (don't ask me what it is, I've been sworn to secrecy ;) ). Fruit tarts have always scared me to death... they look so hard and complicated... and how do they all look so unbelievably perfect? Well, I took on my fear for New Years 2007, and boy was it a triumph. Not only did it look absolutely perfect, but according to all those who ate it, it tasted perfect too. Needless to say, the tart didn't make it past New Years. It's funny, my biggest cooking tragedy actually has to do with my cook's profile picture! I was at my brother's house baking the pie in the picture, with apples we had picked ourselves a few weeks earlier. The pie was looking beautiful and I was a second away from popping it into the oven. As a last minute idea, my brother's girlfriend suggested sprinkling cinnamon over the top. I thought it was a great idea, so I grabbed the cinnamon and started sprinkling away. All of the sudden I heard someone say STOP! I had been sprinkling chili powder all over the caramel! =-O With a bit of determination we were able to pluck away enough of the chili powder so it couldn't be tasted, and sprinkled cinnamon over the salvaged pie. The end result was absolute perfection!