I'm a single 34-year old who works in Corporate Real Estate. My free-time consists of Church activities, Tuesday night trivia with friends, dinners with family, volunteering for the Opera, and, of course, cooking! I love baking, especially specialty cakes and cookies. Stews are another favorite of mine, and I'm just getting into the yeast breads. And I really enjoy making Christmas cookies. We've recently begun grilling pizza, and it's the new household favorite. My whole family cooks, and since we all love trying new recipes, it's hard to find a 'tradition' - the menu changes every year. One thing that persisits, though is my Christmas plum pudding. My grandmother gave me an antique pudding mold one year, and ever since, we've enjoyed a brandy-soaked, densely fruited, guiness-based plumb pudding with a home-made hard sauce after our presents on Christmas day. Wedding cakes! The engineering alone should be a college course. I especially love making hand-formed gum paste decorations for the cakes. I also just developed my first completely original cake recipe, which was a huge hit. I always cook from scratch, using fresh and often organic ingredients, and people are always surprised what a difference they taste. I hosted the dessert segment of a progessive dinner for the young adults at our church. I knew there were several well trained cooks in the midst, so I chose to impress with a Baked Alaska. Flourless brownie, 2 types of Ben & Jerrie's ice cream, and a merangue, which, when I torched, went sliding like a lava flow off the Alaska! Merangue and melted icecream were flying off my cake stand and onto my counters, while guests were trying to scoop up as much merangue as they could catch. I later learned you can freeze the merangue, which would have kept it on the cake...oh well! At least it was memorable!