I grew up in a large household, in a duplex where my parents, brother and I lived on the second floor unit. My three cousins and their mom and dad lived on the third floor. Until age 9, my grandma lived in the basement/ground level. We had 9-10 total people to share food with, so whenever I baked anything, whether it was cookies, brownies, or bread, there was always lots of people to share the food with and eat it. There was never a worry about “who is going to eat all this?” or “are we going to have too much sugar/fat?” because when you’ve got at least eight or nine people around, that food is most definitely getting eaten one way or another, and pretty darn quickly.

That all changed once I moved to New York and just had a roommate. We shared food only occasionally, but not always. It’s pretty hard to make food just for one person or meal. I still baked, but when I did, I’d usually share it with her and even my colleagues. The food had to go somewhere, and I would never want to waste the food. And even now with Chris, I can’t bake too much because we probably shouldn’t be eating that much sugar and butter, anyway. We’re also trying to limit Kaia’s refined sugar intake. So whenever I know I am hosting friends or relatives over, whether it’s just for one meal or for an extended duration of time, like with Chris’s parents staying with us on and off for about three weeks, I look at these as opportunities to make dessert: what kind of sweets can I make? What have I been dying to make for the last several months that I haven’t had an excuse to make?

So the short list for now looks like this:

Mango and coconut sago, maybe with coconut milk and juice agar agar jelly

Gulab jamun nut bread/cake

Brown butter chocolate chunk cookies (The Food Lab)

Lemon ricotta cake

Orange blossom almond cake

I was chatting with my friend about this, and she could completely relate. She lives alone, and she sees her brother a lot since he lives nearby. Once, she made cookies and he inhaled the entire batch in a single sitting. When she has friends or family over, it’s also her excuse to experiment with baking, especially since she’s more comfortable cooking and has shied away from baking. Yesterday for Easter brunch, she made egg yolkless tiramisu, which turned out really well, so this has given her more confidence to bake other things. It’s been fun to have a friend who is really into cooking and food and to have them around to share food fun stories (and the nightmares of the last several days) and know that they can empathize and understand your situation from experience.