I’ve always returned to the kitchen.
Not because I was particularly disciplined or destined, but because it was the one place where things made sense. Where time slowed. Where my hands knew what to do even when the rest of me didn’t.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, chasing light through windows and hovering near the stove whenever I could. Baking was never about perfection or presentation—it was about offering. About showing up with something warm, something made. I idolized Julia Child in that way you idolize someone who gives you permission: to take up space, to try, to be a little messy and still confident.
Life, of course, wandered. I changed majors. I changed careers. I moved countries. I became an au pair at twenty and somehow never left France. Through all of it, the kitchen remained—sometimes loud and ambitious, sometimes quiet and necessary.
I trained as a pastry chef in France and earned my diploma in 2020. I’ve worked long days, run a café, baked through exhaustion, celebration, uncertainty, and joy. But this space—My Secret Confections—was never meant to be a portfolio.
It began as documentation and slowly became something else.
A place to write when words don’t fit anywhere else.
A place to bake when the world feels unsteady.
A place to notice the small rituals that hold a life together: morning light, proofing dough, half-finished rooms, children’s voices drifting through the house.
I live in the Loire Valley with my husband, our two children, and a life that is often fuller than it is orderly. There are seasons when I publish recipes, seasons when I don’t. Seasons of renovation dust, motherhood, doubt, ambition, and quiet resolve.
This blog isn’t here to teach you how to be better.
It’s here to sit with the in-between.
To write from the counter, not the pedestal.
To honor the fact that making—food, homes, words—can be both grounding and unfinished.
If you’re here, you’re welcome.
Pull up a chair. The oven’s on.
