An account of Michelle’s cooking and baking attempts…

Recipes that have been tested and optimized by a former scientist, who is fascinated by how tiny tweaks can create very different results.

About Me

I started baking with my grandfather (papa), who had experience as a baker at Entenmann’s. My earliest memories of baking are of me standing on one of my grandparents’ brown wicker kitchen chairs, so that I could see above the countertop. He and I would make vanilla or citrus cupcakes, sometimes with guava in the middle. I found baking (and sharing baked goods) to be fun, relaxing, delicious, and filled with love…and I still do. I baked cookies for friends’ birthdays in high school, cakes for friends’ birthdays in grad school, and have branched out beyond cookies and cakes over the past ~5 years.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, when flour was scarce, the only flour I could find was sold in a 50 pound bag. This purchase, in a world where everything was shut down and social activities were limited to the virtual world, was the gateway to a new level of home baking. These adventures in recipe vetting and optimizing are the ones I aim to share over time on this site.

Disclaimer: Just like recipes, this website is a work in progress. I promised myself I’d “write a cookbook” as my 2024 new year’s resolution….that has now been adjusted to “establish a cooking/baking website by the end of 2024…” and somehow it’s now mid-December, so here we go!