Jamie Turner

I will never forget the first time my mother, Suzanne, walked in the door with a huge box, a surprise for me—my very own Easy Bake Oven. I had been dabbling in the kitchen for a short while with my sister, who was in the process of teaching me some of her super-secret sweet experiments such as punching holes in little slabs of biscuit dough and frying them into doughnuts, and whipping up her butter thumbprint cookies with grape jelly centers. Now that I had my Easy Bake and could create delectable confections with the heat of the inner light bulb, it was only a little while later that I had baked through all the little mixes that came in the box and began making mixes of my own with anything I could find in the house: instant oatmeal packages, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. You name it, I tried it.