Yes & No.
Growing up, my mom was a baker. She baked for everyone’s events and made all of our wedding cakes and I she looked so stressed and busy and were weekends were so jam packed (with work) so I never wanted to be a baker LOL.

So we never really “baked with mom” at home because that was her business and it was busy… and we really just had no interest.

However, I did love the process. I loved watching her bake, I loved the idea of putting different pieces together and creating something unique.

I do! I love cooking…now. There was a time where I hated cooking because I wasn’t good at it. Baking came more easily to me because I am a NERD and the science of baking and the precision and all that was very exciting to me.
They say there are two types of people, people who bake and people who cook. That’s a lie that I feel for! I believe there’s four types of people – people who bake, people who cook, people who do both and people who don’t lol.

After the pandemic, I felt like eating out and takeout was just not good and I was tired of eating my bland home cooked meals. So I started teaching myself how to cook too.

Turns out if you follow a recipe (AND DON’T CHANGE IT) it generally works lol. Now my favorite thing is hosting themed dinner parties and using friends and family as my guinea pigs!

I am a self taught baker. I grew up my mom being a home-baker and I learned some things from her but most of what I’ve learned is through my good friends google and trial and error.

You’ll see a combination of European and American style desserts on Baran Bakery. My mom is Romanian Hungarian and I’ve shared some of her recipes on here and in my cookbook, Frosted.

I ventured out a little taught myself a little bit of everything and I love getting into the nitty gritty science of baking *nerd alert* but I’ll spare you on that lol.

I worked part-time on the blog for a couple years while I was still a nurse at The University of Michigan.

I had my son just before the pandemic and then I transitioned to staying home with him full-time and working on the blog full-time.

My son was easy going and a great sleeper and it’s easy to work around one kid’s schedule. After having two kids things got a little tougher.

I worked at night and on weekends until my daughter was about 8 months. Then I got a babysitter twice a week and still worked at night, during nap times and some weekends.

When the first two started school I thought I’d have waaayyy too much free time *sarcasm* so I had another kid lol. Now I just work around her schedule but at this point you just do what you can and figure it out from there. The blog is a pretty passive income source so I’m able to take time off when I need it and go hard when I can.

It’s not easy but it’s worth it.