I don’t come from a family of bakers. My love of baking arose from my love of cooking, a passion that germinated when I was still a young girl. Growing up in Manhattan, I spent my elementary school years shuttling between my mother’s small brownstone apartment on the Upper West Side and my father’s 6-story walk-up on 12th Street in the East Village, and each household came with its own set of culinary skills. Whereas my grandmother Ruth learned to make delicious traditional J