Me and my culinary stuff

Coffee and walnut cake is one of the stables in our house.

Gotta love some brownies....

When it comes to me and my food stuff, it really has been such a huge journey.

My main influences have been of course my parents. My dad bringing the Italian side of just amazing food and drink and my mom bring the most delicious baking from the Finnish side.

From a very young age I have been around cultures that both revolve around food. For me food time is family time as we always made sure we sat around the table at least once a week with the wider family and several times in the week with immediate family.

I was fascinated with all things that happen in the kitchen and I was baking and cooking from a very young age. Think I must have been around eight the first time I baked a cake literally all on my own.

Fast forward a few years, I did a lot of cooking in our house too and helped my dad out in the Italian restaurant he worked at at the time too.

In Finland, it is very customary to have something freshly baked when you have visitors around and we used to have a lot in our house!

Absolutely loved hosting and this is one my favourite things to this day.

My only A* was in home economics at school as this is what I loved!

When it came time for us to move over to England, I was 17 at the time and a year later, I moved out and my love of cooking carried on with me.

Jump a few years ahead and our children joined our family. I always remembered having a home baked birthday cake so this has been a really important memory that I want my children to also have.

I always baked and cooked but after having our second son, I suffered from severe post natal depression and this cause me to withdraw and just eat really to the point where gastric surgery became my only option.

More of this journey in a future blog.

After I had my surgery though, my relationship with food was turned upside down. I could not handle the food I had in the past or even look at food as before. I had to relearn how to eat and with this, my passion for cooking reignited.

I spent long nights studying foods, cooking techniques, cuisines and different ways of baking and how to switch things healthier.

I absolutely loved this and kept it for home only at that time.

Fast forward a few years again and our little princess joined the tribe and we decided as a family that I would stop working and be a stay at home mum.

This for me meant home cooked meals from scratch most of the nights.

After a year or so I started to feel like I wanted to contribute to the household financially too and decided to step out and start selling my baking via Annly.

This has just been going for a few months but already I have had sales and orders that are just overwhelming to be honest but in a good way.

I try to personalise things and this means that I am studying baking techniques and my amazing collection of cook and baking books (thanks to hubby!) and loving experimenting and sharing some joy through the sweet goodies.

I hope and pray that one day this will actually be paying bills as I would be so grateful for being able to support our family by doing what I love and adore.

One day I’m sure.