Cooking is my passion. I love to try new things and experiment with flavor combinations. My favorite things to make are usually desserts. The richer the better. When I was a little girl, my mother used to make a gingerbread lady that was as large as the 15 inch baking sheet she baked it on. As soon as it was in the oven, my brother and I would begin negotiating who got which body parts. To this day the smell of baking gingerbread still brings bake warm memmories. I would have to say my greatest triumph was a brightly decorated layer cake I made for my niece's birthday. It was a carousel with chocolate ponies suspended on candy posts and a wafer cookie roof that was covered in jelly tots in rainbow rows. It was 3 layers and looked so pretty when it was done, I didn't want to cut it. (But after one taste I was really glad that I had.) Not too long ago I was making peanut butter cookies and in my haste to get them in the oven I forgot to add the salt and soda to the flour mixture. They were the hardest cookies I have ever had the misfortune of baking. (They smelled good though.)