When I call myself an "expert" cook, I really mean an expert baker. My huband is the gourmet chef in the family, and I'm the one who whips together delicious desserts to fatten us all up. My baked goods are becoming legendary in my circle, and now I'm always the one they ask to bring the dessert for family functions and work events. I do attempt to do most of my baking when I know a lot of people will be around to eat it -- otherwise I'll eat the whole thing! Cake would be number one, followed by pies. I love to decorate cakes and experiment with frostings and fillings. I also love making meringues for cream pies, and pretty lattice crusts for fruit pies. I do bake lots of other things as well, such as cobblers, puddings, and bascially anything containing sugar! I'm not a big fan of baking cookies though -- they are delicious, but so tedious. I dream of having a double oven. Then I would bake cookies all the time! I'm a Southern girl, so no meal was complete without dessert growing up. Yes, that made me a chubby kid, but it also instilled my love for baking. My mother and grandmother had me at the stove from when I was very little, so I grew up comfortable with a mixer and a wooden spoon. I had never made a jelly roll cake, and I tried the Cannoli Cake Roll recipe from this site for my husband's birthday. It turned out absolutely perfect and my husband said it was one of the most delicious cake he'd ever eaten. I loved it too, and I don't even like pistachios in sweets (this cake had a lot of them). It was that point that made me realize I hadn't met a baked good I couldn't master. Now I'm just looking for more challenging recipes! When we first moved to our house, I couldn't get the hang of our new oven. I made quite a few dry cakes, hard cookies and overly-browned pie crusts before I finally figured out how to judge the heat on the darn thing! It basically cooks everything almost twice as fast as any receipe suggests, but now I have a feel for it and always get it right. I still make sure to test things often, just to be on the safe side!