I'm a very simple person, and I'm married with three young children who I've been privileged to stay at home with. I love to cook and try new recipes or tweak tried recipes. I enjoy sharing my baked goods with family, friends and my husband's coworkers. I also enjoy providing a meal for friends who are having a hard time or have had a baby. My husband and I enjoy having friends over and serving them dinner and then playing games after. We are a very casual family, and there is nothing formal when we have company. I absolutely love making desserts, the ones that many others are scared to try like biscotti, cheesecake, semifreddo, and warm lemon sponge cake with fresh lemon curd. When my husband and I were first married I was only 20, and I wanted to try making bread. He thought I was crazy, but I tried it and it was delicious! Because of that I have made bread many times (without a bread machine!), sticky buns, and pizza dough. The first several years of marriage I never deviated from a recipe especially when making soups. However, I rarely use a recipe now and 99% of the time it tastes great and is a keeper recipe. I tend to doubt myself though and look to the cookbooks to double check what seasonings and spices to use. That will be the next thing to overcome! I was making cupcakes and 10:30 in the evening to take to a church potluck the next day, and we had to leave at 8:30 in the morning. I had used this recipe one other time and didn't have a problem. However, this time the cupcakes were overflowing and creating a huge mess and filling my kitchen with smoke. At 10:45pm I was cleaning my oven the best I could with it being hot, and I tried using the rest of the batter in a round cake pan figuring I could take a small cake instead of cupcakes. That didn't happen because that overflowed in the oven too. To this day I have no idea what was going on. Needless to say we stopped at the grocery store and bought a package of fresh baked cookies.