My love for playing with cake and baking for others comes from my mom and how detailed she was at making mine and my sister’s birthday cake each year. I remember begging my mom for the new Hello Cupcake cookbooks as I thought making cupcakes look like literally anything was just the coolest thing ever. I found any excuse to bake, whether it was for my friends who were going to spend the night to making a solar system out of cake pops one year for my sixth grade science project. Being in the kitchen was my happy place, and still is.

It wasn't until the end of 2023 is when I found myself baking again, but this time with ingredients I've never played around with before. Ingredients like olive oil, figs, trying out Swiss meringue buttercream for the first time (which I cannot believe took me this long to realize SMBC is way superior than American buttercream) yuzu curd, my baking brain was amazed with what there is in the world that you can bake with! After learning about so many other pastry chefs and collecting an excessive amount of cookbooks, I took so much inspiration from Claire Ptak, Natasha Pickowitz and Lucie Franc de Ferriere.

I believe that making food for others creates a sense of community, something that I greatly cherish. I really just love making dessert for just pure fun and joy and it makes me extremely giddy when I get to play with cake. Gigi Bake Oven plays homage to my younger self and I can't believe I get to say that she's living the baking life she's always dreamed of.