I am a 17 year old who loves to cook. I guess I'm not a 'normal' teen as I would much rather stay home all day on a saturday to make my parents dinner than to go out to a party with friends. Since I was like 8 I have been really into food--and baking, and watching the food network religiously. Since I started depriving myself of sweets this year, I started craving them that much more and found this site to start making them 'for other people' and I was forced to have a taste and eat the batter!!! Who knows where my love of food will take me.... DESSERTS. Basically anything with sugar, or chocolate is my favourite. I love making things such as basic cookies, but I also love things that will take me hours to prepare, and give me something to be truly proud of. Our one family tradition is to have "More Cake" on birthdays and get togethers---with my 15 some odd cousins. More cake is a spice cake with penuche icing, and we put money that is wrapped in foil or waxed paper into the dough and bake the money into it. When we all get a piece we fight because someone got a loney which others only got a dime!! My major triumph was tiramisu. I made it for my parents and they still to this day rave about it. I have not made it since, as I want to save it for a special occasion. I have some major tragedies. First, when I was about 12 or 13 I tried to make my first souffle, and just like they do on TV shows with cakes, I took the filled ramikens and wacked them on the counter a couple times to 'get out the air bubbles'. Boy was I sorry when they fell like crazy. I now know that wacking it on the counter is for dense cakes, and souffles cannot be banged or wacked, dropped or exposed to noise like that!! lol. There has been others, just nothing as stupid as that!