Desserts | The Dinner Special podcast

104: Jessie Oleson Moore: How Baking Led to a Healthier Relationship with Food

January 6, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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CakeSpy

Jessie is a writer, illustrator, baker, and founder of CakeSpy, which is a dessert detective agency dedicated to seeking sweetness in everyday life.

From write-ups on bakery visits and delicious recipes to art projects, Jessie encourages us to bake and live with sweet abandon. Jessie has authored two books, CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life and The Secret Lives of Baked Goods. She is also an eating disorder activist.

I am so happy to have Jessie Oleson Moore of CakeSpy joining me here today.

(*All photos below are Jessie’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I was working at a refrigerator magnet company and I was actually the art director. It was the refrigerator magnet division of a greeting card company, and I know it sounds silly, but I had reached a point where I was not going to have too much more advancement in my job, so, I was feeling a little bit antsy, and I had wanted to start my own company for a long time.

At the time, I was reading a book called, The Purple Cow by Seth Godin, which is a fantastic book, I highly recommend it, but it gave a lot of great suggestions for how to start a business. And ultimately one of the things that I took away from it was that to start a business, you’ve got to start out doing what you love. So I was like, “Okay. Well, what would my ideal business have?”

It came to me right away. I was like, “Well, it would have writing, illustrating, and baked goods.” All awesome things, but how do you start a business with that? So I was like, “Well, all right, maybe I’ll start a blog and I’ll figure out what I want to do with the business.” This is 2007 when I could probably count the food bloggers on one hand.

So I started a blog, and I did not in any way think that the blog would become my business, but it had this beautiful fusion that allowed me to start a business doing all of the things that I loved. So I feel really fortunate that I’ve been able to do that.

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

Actually your question couldn’t come at a better time. I was at the conference of the National Eating Disorder Association, which was in San Diego this year, and that was a wonderful opportunity. There were over 600 attendees, and it was just a coming together of people who have suffered from eating disorders, people who have family or friends who have suffered, and also researchers and clinicians.

I suffered from an eating disorder from the age of about 12 until, I would say that I really actively began to become recovered in my late 20s and early 30s. So I’m 34 now, so that’s fairly recent. I think that eating disorders are something that, for one thing, nobody asks to have an eating disorder. Nobody aspires to that. And they’re rather insidious things because they insert themselves in your life so gradually, at least in my case and many other cases that I know of, that before you know it, it’s become part of you. Or you think it’s part of you.

And for me, who knows really what got me there. I believe that for me, it was not one thing that made me have an eating disorder, but maybe a few things. I think that to begin, maybe I had an anxious nature and a nature of perfection. And when you have that and you reach your tender teenage years where your body is changing, all of a sudden it becomes really enticing that in this world that feels really out of control, that your food is something that you can control.

So what began as kind of an after-school special type of worrying about food and dieting, escalated quickly into bulimia. And then when I stopped exhibiting bulimic behavior, I thought I was better, but secretly, somehow without realizing it, I had really just become anorexic.

So I suffered from a lot of food-related issues. And I think that actually my food blog, as funny as it might sound, was part of the gateway to recovery for me. I think that food is something that people with eating disorders have a very complex relationship with. But at first when I began to bake, I think that that was… even though it was before I really, truly, hardcore went into recovery, I think that baking was the gateway that led me to recovery.

Because at first, I think that I would only take the teeny, tiniest taste of anything that I baked, but it’s like I started to get to know my enemy. And all of a sudden, when you start baking, it’s like, “Whoa, there actually isn’t evil and the devil lurking in this cupcake. It’s actually just butter and sugar and flour and very real things. It’s not going to ruin my life.” So I think that by beginning to bake, that it helped me to, at first, maybe fear food less, and then to begin to understand it, and ultimately to have a much healthier relationship with it.

On What She Would Say to Someone Suffering from an Eating Disorder:

Number one, you’re not alone. You’re less alone than you think. Number two, this is a problem. You might think, “Oh, but I’m not anorexic so it’s not an issue.” It is an issue. If it’s affecting your life, then it is an issue. And it’s not okay, and it’s important that you get help.

And that leads into, get help. And what type of help you need, it will differ from person to person. I found that my best support was through an eating disorder support group, a physical, in-person group. I liked a group better than one-on-one therapy. I just felt like it had that aspect of connection, although I did have one-on-one therapy.

I was never hospitalized. Some people require that or benefit from that. But the NEDA.org website, National Eating Disorder Association, is fantastic. They have a lot of resources, and they also have a helpline that you can call and get resources.

On Learning How to Bake:

I grew up in a household that was reverent to sweets. Everyone in my family loved sweets. And my mom is, while she was never a professional baker, she was a stay-at-home mom, but to call her an amateur baker would really not quite do it justice. She could have been a baker easily, a professional one.

For instance, my birthday cakes every year, I did not ever, ever have a cake mix cake. I basically had a wedding cake. My birthday cake every year was a three-tier homemade vanilla cake with pink frosting, and roses all piped on. And my mom would make this for me because it was my birthday dream. So for me, sweets have always been something that have been present in my life and that I have loved and appreciated.

And more than even just the sweets, but the culture around them. I can’t remember what I wore or what we had for dinner on my birthday when I turned six, but I remember the cake, and that is a happy memory. So that has always been present in my life. And I was always like a sous chef to my mom while she was baking, very intently interested on getting to lick the beaters at first, but I got more and more curious about the process as I grew up.

And I think that for a long time I felt like, “Oh, well, my mom’s the baker. That’s not really for me.” But it was funny because when I first started baking in earnest, which really quite honestly was when I started the website, I realized that I already knew more than I realized, I think just from absorbing it from years of watching her. So I’ve always had an interest in sweets, but I’m largely self-taught.

On Her Art and Illustrations:

I’ve always been artistic. My mom actually, while she was a stay-at-home mom, as soon as my youngest sister went to school, she pursued her dream of being a children’s book illustrator. So my mom, she is kind of famous, Margie Moore. So my mom is artistic, my dad is a super talented water colorist and painter. And once again, the culture that I grew up in, I was always artistic.

And I went to art school. That is what my training is in, and I studied illustration. I’ve always drawn characters, too. Actually, I was going through some old papers awhile back, and I actually found this drawing I had done of a cupcake and a muffin and they both had smiling faces.

On Her Cookbooks:

The first book, the nutshell story about that is that when I started my website and I started to gain some web popularity… and very early on, I was like, “You know what? I should get a book deal.” So a literary agent had approached me and I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to get a book deal. I’m going to nail this.” So I put together a book proposal, and every single person I sent it to rejected it.

Every single person. I was crushed. And my reaction was, “Screw you, publishing industry. You don’t want me? I don’t want you.” I put that to bed, and if anyone asked, I was like, “No, I don’t want to write a book.”

But then about two years later, actually one of the publishing houses, Sasquatch Books in Seattle who had actually rejected the book previously came back to me. All of a sudden, I guess the timing was right. So they asked me to come in for a meeting. I did.

And I had walked to the meeting, because at the time I lived in Seattle and I was maybe 15 minutes away. By the time that I got home from my appointment with them, they had sent over a contract.

So it’s funny because while it happened very quickly, it also did not happen very quickly. That book was put together largely from the archives of popular recipes from my website. And I actually wrote that book in about three weeks.

At that time, I had about four years’ worth of recipes. So while it was a tremendous amount of work to write headnotes that were cohesive and to format the recipes, I did have quite a bit of the work already done. And then I believe I had a leisurely five weeks to do all of the illustrations.

The second book, throughout writing on my website, I had become interested with baked goods with interesting backstories. My saying is that, “It tastes better with a backstory.” Even the most humble food can become far more interesting and rich when it has a great story behind it. So that book, I think, was born out of that love.

It was with the same publisher. And it was an idea that I had and they let me run with it. So the two books that I’ve written visually both in terms of recipes are quite different but I think that when you see them side-by-side that you see the common thread of the way that I write and my sense of humor.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I am embarrassed to tell you that I do not watch any food shows. The one that I used to watch though when I was in high school, which is not on anymore but I loved it, was the Sara Moulton show. It was so informative. I just loved listening to her voice. So I’ll say that in the 1990s I was all about Sara Moulton.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, if you’ve never seen my friend Peabody’s website, it is called, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, and this is like my sister from another mister. If there’s a delicious, indulgent dessert it is probably on this website. Even indulgent desserts that you’ve probably never even thought of, they’re on this website. So I really, really highly suggest that one.

I also think there’s a lot of great foodie stuff on Craftsy.com, which is actually a website that I write for. That was how I first was exposed to them. But they have a lot of great food content on there so I’m often checking them out.

And I also love Serious Eats which is another website I previously contributed to but that’s not why I suggest it. I just think that they always do a really great job. So I love reading what they have to say.

Oh, and another one that I always get a lot of great information from is the King Arthur Flour Blog. They always have great information that gets into the nitty-gritty of the process of baking. So I always really enjoy it if there’s a recipe that is on their blog, I really feel like I get a full story from their site.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow this one called The Purple Pug that posts pug pictures and also party ideas. The party ideas are wonderful and inspiring but the pugs are my main draw. If you put a pug in a costume – I am on it. I love my friend The Domestic Rebel, Hayley. She posts a lot of really delicious photos. So she’s always inspiring me. And, oh my goodness, I love following Big Gay Ice Cream.

They’re an ice cream company but they post ice cream and unicorns and funny pop culture. So basically they’ve won my heart.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Even though it’s maybe about six feet away from my kitchen, I think that my unicorn collection really sets my baking area apart from others.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I would say tomatoes. When I was little, I had a real problem with as I called it, “tomato thingies.” If I got a slice of pizza and it was the kind of sauce that wasn’t totally pureed, if it had maybe little bits of tomato skin in it, I could not abide by it. I just could not do it. I would not eat it. But now I’m like, “Oh my God, tomato everything.” So I’ve had a real turn around with that one.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook on earth, aside from my own, is the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. And this is the early 1960s edition where cookie is spelled C-O-O-K-Y. And this book you can easily find it on Amazon. They’ve reissued it. But it’s wire bound and I just love this book.

It’s got all sorts of cookies but it’s got these adorable headnotes like, “Mrs. Martin Flowers of Omaha likes to make these cookies when she’s not attending to her hat collection,” and things like that. So it’s very amusing, very telling of a different era. And it’s got those weird Technicolor photos. So I love that book.

I also love any King Arthur Flour book. I always love their books. I love all of the cookbooks by the proprietors of Baked, the Brooklyn bakery. And I also have a deep love of any self-published church cookbooks, the type of things that ladies auxiliary committees will do. Those cookbooks are my favorite. I love those.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

In art school I felt like anything Velvet Underground made me want to create art. But I feel like for me, it’s got to be good oldies to make me want to cook. So that could be Bob Dylan, like, Blood on the Tracks or Tangled Up in Blue.

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

Definitely on social media, I’ve been getting more into Instagram. I post lots of unicorns, pugs, illustrations, and baked goods, nothing not to love. So that’s a good way and via Facebook is a good way to keep apprised of what’s going on and of course the blog.

036: Stephanie Shih: Learning to Cook with Tea

May 8, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Desserts for Breakfast

Stephanie started her blog in 2009, and Desserts for Breakfast has been a finalist in the Saveur Food Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts blog twice in 2011 and 2013. She is a food and travel photographer, a dessert designer, and she’s also on the tenured track towards professorhood.

I am so delighted to have Stephanie Shih of Desserts for Breakfast here on the show today.

On Her Blog:

It started shortly after my first year of graduate school when I was looking for a new hobby to do outside of studies, and got really into catering for some reason and did a couple of weddings.

Clients really wanted to see photos of what I had done and understand what was being offered. And so the easiest way to set that up was a blog. I just logged onto Blogger and put up a website, and then people started to ask for recipes, and so I started to post recipes. And all of a sudden, I was doing this thing called food blogging.

The first year of grad school is always an adjustment. So it was really nice to have that balance outside of school. I definitely stopped the whole catering thing very quickly after my first year.

On How Blogging Has Changed Since She Started:

Blogging has gotten really intense since I started. There’s just so many amazing blogs out there now, and new ones coming up every single day. And the level that everyone is starting at is just so much higher than before. I feel like when I started, it was just this casual thing. There were a couple of really big blogs like Pioneer Woman and you could just do whatever you wanted, but now it’s such a business, such an actual intense thing that you could do. So that’s been a really interesting shift, I think, in the blogosphere.

Where is my blog going to go? I’m kind of a perfectionist, so every post takes so much time from recipe development to actually making the recipe, to actually photographing it and styling it, and then all the posts, and writing the posts. And so it’s become a big question about, “Okay, well, should the blog continue to be this really good professional thing that’s out there, or just a journal of my life?” and I haven’t decided yet where it’s going go.

On Photographing Steeped: Recipes Infused With Tea:

I like to think of it as exercising the same creative muscle that I hope to bring to research. You’re all one person, so everything we do informs every other part of yourself. So, yes, in a way, it’s a nice escape from thinking about math equations all day, but on the other hand, it’s really great to try to think of how it makes me a better researcher and teacher.

Annelies is kind of amazing. She’s this writer/marketer/recipe developer, and I’ve known her for a couple years now through the SF area food scene, and all of a sudden one day she was like, “Steph, I wrote a book, and I have a publisher, and I’m going to publish this book. Will you shoot it?” And I was like, “Yes! Of course! That would be amazing!” So that was a really awesome opportunity that she definitely put my way, and I’m very grateful to her for that.

The book is excellent. It is a bunch of recipes that are amazing. All about cooking with tea.

Instead of just drinking tea or having tea as a supplement to your meal, you’re really bringing out the flavors and understanding how to use it in these highly creative ways, as a rub, or as a sauce, or infused and steeped. I learned a lot from just watching Annelies use tea in so many different ways I never even thought of.

From a dessert baker’s point of view, the most we ever use is maybe steeping milk with some Earl Grey, or using matcha in cakes. But this book goes way beyond that. One of my favorite recipes is furikake popcorn. Have you ever had furikake popcorn?

It’s this seaweed sesame blend with spices, it’s kind of salty and sweet, and you put it on popcorn. But Annelies does this amazing thing where she does it with tea instead of seaweed, and it’s so addictive and so good. I would have never thought to use roasted tea that way.

On Food Photography vs Experimenting in the Kitchen:

That’s such a hard question. It depends on what day you ask me.

I have to say if I had to just choose one to do for the rest of my life, it would probably be the photography aspect, ’cause you can take that wherever you go. But I wouldn’t want to choose.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen but Turning Out Better:

A new experience has been cooking really fast dinners for myself, and I’ve actually gotten really creative with kale and eggs.

There are a lot of things you can apparently do with baked kale and eggs and just different spices. That’s been amazing. So if you get tired of sumac in your eggs, you can just put cinnamon and nutmeg, and it’s like this whole different thing.

Worcestershire sauce is this new thing to me, which is delicious on everything, so that’s definitely been how I’ve been exercising my creativity in the kitchen lately.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef, I’m a religious watcher of Top Chef.

What are some food blogs or websites we have to know about?

I have to confess that I’ve been a little bit out of the blogosphere lately just because I haven’t had time to follow-up.

There’s this woman who does these most beautiful photos. Her food site is called Suvi sur le vif, and she just does photos. She doesn’t post recipes or anything, but they’re just like the most gorgeous dark and contrasty photos, or bright and contrasty photos that you’ve ever seen.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Instagram, there’s this furniture designer out of L.A. that I’ve been following lately.

I think his name is Etrine. He makes really cool, very hipster stools that are highly geometric and I’ve been really enjoying his feed. He does a lot of photos with cactuses recently.

What is the most unusual or treasured item you have in your kitchen?

My grandmother’s rolling pin.

It’s super tiny and I wouldn’t use it for anything ’cause it’s so small, but I really love having it.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike, but now you love.

I recently became convinced of roasted asparagus.

I just wouldn’t touch asparagus. But then someone cooked it to a crisp for me in the oven, and it’s so good.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I have to say Steeped, first of all, ’cause I have to push Annelies’ awesome book. But in addition to that, any of the David Lebovitz books I turn to any time I need a solid, good dessert recipe.

What song or album just makes you wanna cook?

Lately I’ve been listening to Brandi Carlile’s latest, the one that just came out. Anything I happen to be into at that point is good to listen to in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted on Stephanie:

Yeah, I’ve been on Instagram a lot lately since I’ve moved to a new place. It’s been really fun to post new pictures of the seasons here that I’ve never experience before and things like that. So my Instagram is @shihbakes, same thing as my Twitter, so I’m on there a lot too. And I apologize, the blog hasn’t been updating as much as it should be, but every now and then I’ll stop in and say hello.

008: Megan Voigt: What She Learned In Pastry School Besides Pastries

March 4, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Hint of Vanilla

Megan is a pastry chef, and on Hint of Vanilla, she shares her kitchen experiments, trials and tribulations, and it’s also where she unwinds and relaxes after a long week.

I am so psyched to have Megan Voigt from Hint of Vanilla on the show today.

On Why She Started Her Blog:

It’s a bit of an odd story.

I was in university because I didn’t really know what else to do. That was just kind of what I expected. I thought I would find what I wanted to do while I was in university, but it never really ended up happening.

I was actually doing classical archeology, so that was very different from what I ended up doing now.

On one of my summers, I decided to go to South Africa to volunteer on a wildlife preserve for two months, and that was amazing, and I loved it. It was just a fun thing.

One night, one of the staff members was just kind of talking about what they would do if they could do anything in the world, and money was no object, and they’re asking us.

It came to me, and I said, “Well, you know, I like baking, so I’d probably just take some classes, maybe get a bit more into it,” because, at that point, I was just doing cookies or scones, nothing really fancy at all. She said, “Well, why don’t you do that now? You can still do that. You can do that!” I was like, “No, no way.”

That wasn’t even on my radar. It wasn’t even a possibility at the time, but after that, that kind of planted the seed for me, and then I started to think more about it. I did one more semester at university, and during that semester, all I could think about was pastry school and going to pastry school.

The problem was my parents were not very convinced because it was pretty sudden. They thought, “Mm, we don’t really want to just put you into a very expensive pastry school that might just be a phase.” So I decided to start a blog because I wasn’t living with my parents at the time. I had moved out. So if they could see that I was baking all the time, they could see the things that I was making, then they would kind of get behind my decision to go to pastry school.

That’s kind of how the blog started. It was just, “I want to show my parents what I’m making, and, you know, I might as well start a blog while I’m at it, I guess.”

They were like, “Do you even bake?” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I do sometimes.” But I didn’t really do it that often, and to be honest, I wasn’t 100% sure that I wanted to go to pastry school. It just was a kind of gut feeling.

But I started my blog in September of 2012, right at the beginning of that last semester of school, and the more I went with my blog, the more I convinced myself that this is what I wanted to do. I became so sure like, “Yeah, this is exactly what I want to do.” I love it, I love it.

It’s all I could think about was what am I going to make on the weekend for my blog, new ideas, getting books and everything. That January I enrolled in pastry school to start in July, and I stopped going to university, which my parents were not super happy about, but they kind of understood.

On Choosing Pastry School Over Culinary School:

I do like cooking at home, and I do like the fact that nothing’s measured, and it’s just all taste as you go. That’s really cool, but I would never want to do it as a career.

I’m not as passionate about it, and there is more of a demand for line cooks rather than pastry cooks because most places, restaurants or hotels, they’ll have a large savory team, but they might only have one or two people for pastry, or they might just buy in all the desserts.

So, if I had gotten a culinary degree as well as a pastry, I feel like people would have offered me culinary jobs, and then I would have kind of taken them hoping to get into pastry, but I never really would have.

I wanted to put all my effort into pastry and really just focus on that.

On What She Learned in Pastry School Besides Pastries:

Working as a team was a big thing because obviously university it’s like everyone’s trying to get ahead. Everyone’s trying to beat the next person, and I’m a very independent person. I used to not like working as a team, but now I have no choice, and that was a big thing.

Even if you don’t necessarily get along with the people you work with, you have to work as a team, no matter what. You’ve got to leave all that drama at the door, and you’ve just got to work together really well. So that’s a good life skill for me as well.

On Her Love of Food:

Growing up, my parents, they weren’t like super, super foodies. My parents got divorced when I was quite young, but they stayed friends. My dad all of a sudden had to cook for himself. We pretty much ate cereal for a lot of dinners, and we were fine with that, but then he’s like, “All right, I’ve really got to learn how to cook for my kids.” It went from him literally not even being able to make pizza . . . I remember he made this salty, salty pizza, one that was inedible, and now he’s an incredible, incredible cook.

Obviously, he’s still got his day job. He’s not a chef, but seeing him learn and teach himself how to cook and really, really loving it and seeing him in the kitchen all the time making these meals and not having prepackaged stuff, all of it was from scratch.

And that was just normal for me growing up. “Oh, yeah, I’ll make this from scratch or make that or fresh vegetables.” We had a garden as well, which has been a huge thing for me. I wish I had a backyard for a garden.

Just being exposed to that was a really big thing. I hadn’t really realized it until the past year or two that it really had a big impact on me, having that presence of home-cooked food and really taking the time and the effort to prepare a meal rather than getting takeout.

I bake for him all the time. He lives very close to me, so I go over for dinners all the time, and he’ll cook, and I’ll bring dessert, or I’ll bring bread, and he absolutely loves my bread. He just goes nuts, and my stepmom, she got into bread as well, so I’ve been kind of teaching her a little bit. It’s awesome.

It’s funny because my brother actually brews his own beer, and so he brings the beer, I bring the bread, Dad brings the food, and there we go! It works out great.

We’ve joked about opening a restaurant so many times, but I don’t know if it’ll ever happen.

Tips For Making Bread For the First Time:

First of all, you don’t need a bread maker. Your bread maker is your hands.

When you just get the right kind of bread, it’s so easy. You do it once, and you’re like, “Oh, my God! Why has it taken me this long to make bread this good by myself?”

I was also a little bit intimidated about yeast and stuff, because it’s not like, “Oh, wait thirty minutes and it’s ready to go.” You kind of have to feel it and look at it and see, and if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it can definitely be intimidating. But if you mess up, it’s just some flour and some water. It’s not like you’re wasting a lot of money on that, and the results are really amazing.

For me, it’s just find a good recipe, preferably one of those no-knead recipes like I’ve got on my blog. Almost all the breads on my blog are a long fermentation and very little work, just a lot of time.

Those are great breads to really start off with because they’re very forgiving. If you let it proof a little bit too less or too much, it’s all right, it still produces a pretty good bread. Once you make it for the first time, and you taste the bread, it’s an addiction. You can’t go back.

Once you know the basics of it, you can just kind of really do whatever you want. A lot of the recipes that I have on my blog… I have a few basic ones, and then I just added stuff to it, like, “Yeah, I’m going to put some olives in this one, sure, or I’m going to put this into it!” As long as you’re not adding too much moisture or too much inclusions.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef is my favorite. Chopped can be good and bad.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

I follow so many. Food52 is great because they feature blogs from all over, and so it’s a great way to really get introduced to a lot of different kinds of blogs.

One of my favorite blogs is My Name is Yeh.

Although, she just got married, so I don’t know if the blog is going to be the same anymore. Her photography is really great. I really enjoy her photography, and the things she makes, it’s very fun. It’s very kind of just messing around and fun flavors and just fun things.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

Oh, my gosh. Well, once again, I follow a lot of bloggers on Pinterest and on Instagram.

There’s this one blogger I follow on Instagram. I don’t like dogs very much. I’m very much a cat person, but her name’s Adrianna, and her blog is called A Cozy Kitchen. She has photos of her little corgi, and sometimes she’ll have photos of a nicely styled shoot with food, but then her dog is actually eating something in the corner, and it’s adorable, and it kinda makes me want a dog.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

A scale, a digital scale is 100% what you have to have.

I know it seems like “Ew, only professionals use scales or measurements like that,” but really, cups and things like that are just not cutting it anymore. It’s never going to be consistent. It’s never precise. You know, if you fill it a little bit more than a cup, you’re like, “Eh, whatever, it’ll be fine.”

For some recipes, yeah, it’s okay, but for some it’s not.

But with grams it’s so easy. You’re just like, “Okay, 76 grams.” It’s a number.

If you want to half a recipe, or if you want to double a recipe, it’s just simple. I was always really terrible with fractions at school. So grams for me are just 100% the way to go and a kitchen scale.

I recommend every person who’s into baking… scale! Get a scale!

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Vanilla beans. Absolutely vanilla beans or, I mean, vanilla paste.

It’s very similar, but to me, I love vanilla, I mean, my blog is called Hint of Vanilla.

I think real vanilla beans and real vanilla paste is just such an incredible ingredient. The smell and the taste, it’s so amazing! It’s so fragrant, so flavorful, and it’s such a classic flavor combination of… well, vanilla can go with anything.

I think vanilla extract is nice but the vanilla beans are really, really where you should be investing your money.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller. I have used so many recipes in that cookbook. It’s unbelievable.

I love the detail he puts into all the recipes and all the kind of reasoning behind it. It’s not just do this and do that and do this. It’s do this because, blah, blah, blah, and do that because, and so that gives a lot of knowledge as well as, “Oh, yeah, you’re learning the recipe,” but you’re learning the ins and outs of it as well as you’re doing it.

And Elements of Desserts by Frances J. Migoya is a really cool one. I’ve used less recipes just because there’s hundreds of them in there, and a lot of them can be difficult or they require really specialized ingredients or specialized tools, which obviously I don’t have.

I really love just getting inspiration from those books. I go look through it, and I’ll get ideas, and like, “Oh, I love those flavor combinations” or “I love that idea for that cake or something.” I really get a lot of inspiration just by looking through the pages.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

That’s a tough one because I normally just put my phone on shuffle.

Coldplay’s one of my favorite bands. A lot of their stuff is pretty slow, but Viva la Vida and Mylo Xyloto, those are two albums that kind of are more upbeat.

Especially Mylo Xyloto, there are some songs in there that are really kinda dance-y songs. That’s probably one of my go-to ones is Mylo Xyloto by Coldplay.

Keep Posted on Megan:

I’ve got a Facebook page for my blog. It’s under the same name, A Hint of Vanilla. I also have an Instagram account, which is under my name, MeganLeeVoigt.

You could also follow me on bloglovin’, which is a great website for keeping up with all the blogs that you follow in one place, and you can actually find all of those social media websites on my blog. I’ve got a link to them, and, yeah, you can stay posted on all the wonderful things that I make.

On Starting Her Blog:

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

On What She Would Say to Someone Suffering from an Eating Disorder:

On Learning How to Bake:

On Her Art and Illustrations:

On Her Cookbooks:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

On Her Blog:

On How Blogging Has Changed Since She Started:

On Photographing Steeped: Recipes Infused With Tea:

On Food Photography vs Experimenting in the Kitchen:

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen but Turning Out Better:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Stephanie:

On Why She Started Her Blog:

On Choosing Pastry School Over Culinary School:

On What She Learned in Pastry School Besides Pastries:

On Her Love of Food:

Tips For Making Bread For the First Time:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Megan:

Have Megan's Special Bread Recipe Sent To You Now: