09/27/2026
Part of this page, is showing you the heart being the art. I feel that I should preface with an apology for being long winded here…but it’s just who I am…
When I was younger, I dreamed of being a chef.
Not just someone who cooked, but someone who created. I wanted food to be something more than what was on the plate. I wanted to make things people remembered.
Life, however, had other plans. That dream got tucked away somewhere between growing up, responsibilities, work, family, survival, and all the unexpected turns a life can take. For a long time, becoming a chef simply became one of those things I once dreamed about.
But apparently, dreams can be very patient. Because creativity eventually found me again. First, it came through acrylic paint. I painted for years and discovered how much I loved taking something that existed only in my imagination and giving it color and shape.
Then came polymer clay. Spritelings. Snails. Dragons. Strange little creatures with stories and personalities that somehow seemed to introduce themselves while I was making them.
And then, almost by accident, I started baking. While in medical leave, I binge watched baking shows. The exotic, unknown to me flavors—ignited a renewed passion for baking, that had long lain dormant and forgotten.
That being said, I couldn’t just bake a regular cake. I am EXTRA.
Suddenly I was experimenting with pandan and sakura, ube and jasmine, lavender, calamansi, basil, black cocoa, cardamom and flavors I had once barely known existed. I started learning what flavors liked each other, what made a cake moist, what made people stop after the first bite and say, “What IS that?” And then consume my cakes with pleasure! Always trying my flavor combos—we’ve only been disappointed once—bacon jam is not our pastry friend!!
Somewhere along the way, though, I realized something. I was creating food again. All these years later, I was beginning to fulfill a piece of that old dream.
And that door has been thrown wide open!
For a long time, I concentrated on what was inside the cake. The decorating part belonged to somebody else. Until I decided it didn’t. So I picked up the piping bags and started playing.
First came that wild lime-green-and-purple birthday cake, bright and joyful and absolutely impossible to ignore. And now I’ve gone even farther down the rabbit hole with my Dr. Seussical cartoon cake.
And I LOVE IT.
Maybe I didn’t become the chef I imagined when I was young. Maybe I became something I couldn’t have imagined yet.
An acrylic painter.
A sculptor.
A storyteller.
A baker of strange and wonderful flavors.
And now, apparently, a cake decorator too.
It makes me smile to think that perhaps none of those roads were detours after all. Painting taught me color. Sculpting taught me dimension, texture and character. Storytelling taught me that something handmade can have a personality. And now all of it is finding its way onto cake.
So here I am, all these years later, standing in a kitchen with frosting on my hands, ridiculous colors on the counter, another idea forming in my head, and part of an old dream quietly coming true.
Not exactly the way I planned it.
Better, perhaps.
Because this version has all of me in it.
And away I go.
