82.Mastering Holiday Cookies: Tips from Hetal Vasaveda

Ever wondered how a background in biochemistry could revolutionize your baking game? Join me as I sit down with Hetal Vasaveda, the mind behind the Milk and Cardamom blog, who transformed her career from healthcare to baking stardom. With a scientific approach to recipe development, Hetal promises to enhance your holiday baking skills with precise measurement techniques and insights into the chemistry of baking ingredients like baking soda and baking powder. Say goodbye to flat cookies and hello to perfection with Hetal's expert advice.

Hetal opens up about her journey from being an organic chemist and healthcare consultant to becoming a celebrated food writer and cookbook author. Inspired by her experience on MasterChef, she embraced new culinary opportunities and turned her passion into a fulfilling career. Learn about the challenges and triumphs she faced while creating her cookbook, and how she artfully balances family life with her vibrant photography and food styling work. It's a story of transformation and success that can inspire anyone looking to pivot their career.

Explore the colorful world of DIY baking with influences from Indian arts and textiles, as Hetal shares her creative decorating techniques and family-favorite recipes. From lemon cardamom snickerdoodles to passion fruit shortbread cookies, discover the joy of baking with loved ones and the cherished traditions that accompany them.

Hetal shares also shares about her collaboration with Challenge Butter and Cookies 4 Kids, an organization raising money for pediatric cancer research.

Connect with Hetal:
Her Blog: https://milkandcardamom.com/
Her Books: Desi Bakes and Milk and Cardamom
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milkandcardamom/

📺 Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOpw5ui4uxJHx0tLFVtpnfSkpObfc4d-K

You can find Katie at:
website: burntpancakes.com
YouTube: @burnt.pancakes
Instagram: @burntpancakeswithkatie
Email: katie@burntpancakes.com

🚽 Did you know Katie is also a Certified Potty Trainer? 🚽

☎️ Schedule a 1:1 chat today: Schedule Here
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Transcript

00:09 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Hello, hello and welcome back to the Burned Pancakes podcast. I'm your host, Katie Fenske, reminding moms that everyone burns the first pancake. Now I have a very special treat for you today. That is right. We are heading into the holiday season, everyone's doing their holiday baking and I have on an expert. 

00:27
I have Hatal Vasaveda, and she is the author of two cookbooks and the creator of Milk and Cardamom blog, and she is an expert baker and is going to tell us all the tips and tricks about holiday baking. So I realize I'm making all the mistakes, but she is telling us the secrets behind getting those perfect cookies, having an amazing cookie swap, and also about an organization she's involved with called Cookies for Kids and Challenge Butter and all the amazing things they're doing this holiday. So get your spatulas ready, get your measuring cups ready, cause we're talking about holiday baking. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, I'm so glad, like I'm super excited about this one, cause it's the holidays, we're all baking. I'm gonna get some expert tips from you. So will you start by just introducing yourself how many kids do you have, because we're a mom podcast and then let me know how you got into baking. 

01:32 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
So I got one eight year old girl who's like eight, going on like 16. 

01:37 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I've got the 10 going on like 25 right now. 

01:40 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah yeah, I'm like what. And I got into baking because I had to. I was in school, I was studying biochemistry and my organic chemistry professor told me that if I could bake I would pass lab. So I started baking and then it turned into like a full hyper fixation and obsession and it has led to me being a cookbook author, recipe developer, food writer whoa, so this is not something like as a child you were like I'm gonna bake. 

02:12
This was uh no, like a major pivot. Yeah, no, baking is not a thing in Indian culture at all. Like we didn't have great grandmothers cookie recipes or anything like that, because most people didn't have ovens. Oh, like my mom didn't grow up with an oven in her house, they had a town baker that they would like go give ingredients to and then they would bake something. But yeah, baking is not a big thing. A part of at least the Gujarati Indian community. If you're a part of, like the Dutch Indian, anglo Indian or or Paris Indian, there's a little bit of baking, but not for me. 

02:48 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So you had to like learn everything as you went, like you had to teach yourself. Do you feel like having the background in? You said it was biochemistry. Did that help you like develop your recipes? And no, absolutely. 

03:05 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I meant like yes, 100%. See, this is like the Indian, like we say no and yes, you just don't know what's going on. Um, you inherit it. It's genetic, I'm pretty sure. But, um, no, biochemistry really helped me a lot, because the same way that I would run experiments in the lab is the same way. I'll write a recipe, so I'll come up with the idea of like what I want my end product to look like, taste like, and then what texture I want it. And then I work backwards into okay, now, what do I need to do? What ingredients do I need to make this happen? You would do the same thing in a chem lab. You're like this is what I want. What chemicals do I need to get it there? 

03:46 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Um, yeah, okay. So that brings me to one of my questions that I was going to have for you as a baker do you use exact measurements or do you just like I've, I'm an eyeballer and my husband's like, uh, I'm exact and I like dust the flower off and I get the perfect, and he's like you didn't even like you. Just I was like it's, it's close, right. 

04:08 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I'm even worse. I'm worse than that. I only bake with a scale. Um. 

04:14 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I weigh out my cookie dough yeah. 

04:16 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, like I weigh my cookie dough out, so each cookie dough is the same weight, so it's the same size. So I would drive you crazy. Yeah, because the thing is like if you have too much flour, your cookies might not flatten out and if you have too little excuse me, not enough flour, your cookies will turn into one giant pizookie like the like. There's a 20 to 30 percent difference when you use um like a cup measurement, because, like, the flour might be fluffy, so then you might get less flour. But if might be fluffy, so then you might get less flour. But if you pack the flour down, then you might get 30% more flour. 

04:48
And usually all the mistakes I ever see that people leave, like comments on blogs and recipes you know why didn't my cookie spread? Or you know my cookie spread too much. And I'm like if you used to scale your ratios of butter to flour would have been right and it would have been fine. But I would say 90% of mistakes that people make is because they're not weighing. Now, if you don't care, that's fine. 

05:13 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Right, then it doesn't matter Baking for other people, because that was another one of my questions. A lot of times when I make cookies like chocolate chip cookies, they're just like flat and like cakey. Cakey texture, but just like too much flour. Okay, I was always like cause. Then I thought it was like maybe I'm supposed to use baking powder versus baking soda. What's the difference between those? 

05:37 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
two, so baking soda. Both of them are leaveners, which means it provides like rise to a bake. But baking powder is activated twice once by an acid and then um second time by heat in the oven. Um, baking soda is only activated by an acid. So that's why, like you'll see recipes with like buttermilk or um, even cocoa powder is like acidic or sorry, that's too alkaline, so like sometimes you'll get flatter pieces. So then they'll ask you to add like a little bit of vinegar. So you don't really you can substitute one for the other, but not equal amounts. I want to say like a quarter teaspoon of baking powder to half a teaspoon of baking soda, like half the amount. Basically, get out your scale. 

06:30 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yes, okay, what about um butter salted versus unsalted, if you're doing like baking um cookies? 

06:40 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Okay. So every brand adds a different amount of salt to their butter, to their salted butter. Okay, so, like, one brand might add like two tablespoons, another brand might add like half a cup, and you don't know. So if you're making cookies and you use salted butter, unless the recipe specifies to use salted butter, you might end up with the more saltier cookie than you expected. Okay, um, so because every brand is different and you want your bakes to be consistent. That's why most recipes will say use unsalted butter and then add salt in. Okay, yeah. 

07:18 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Every brand is different. I am officially learning that I've made all the mistakes. 

07:24 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I did them too. I did all the mistakes too. Trust me. 

07:32 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So okay, back to you. Were in college and your professor said got to bake. So did you just go all into baking and like what was your journey? Like what, what did you start with first? 

07:39 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
So I started with like box cake mixes and just like starting, I think, the way most people start baking. Um, and then I got curious and I would challenge myself to make harder and harder bakes and like more stuff from scratch. So, like I started with cheesecakes because I was in school in Philly and one of my jobs was decorating, so I started with cheesecakes initially and then I started like kind of doing other recipes, but it was always like something to either like stress relief or procrastinate. Procrastinate bake, as people say, or rage bake or you know all the emotional baking. It was really just a crutch for my emotions and a hyper fixation of my ADHD, which at the time was undiagnosed. Then I went into healthcare, worked as a organic chemist doing research in cancer drugs. I worked as a medical biller. I moved on and worked as a healthcare consultant fighting insurance companies on behalf of mamas whose bills insurance didn't want to pay. 

08:50
Oh my gosh, it was a soul sucking job. I was going to say that sounds so stressful. Of course yes. So I did a lot of baking and a lot of stress relieving in those times, especially rage baking. You know, when I'm like on the phone every day just like telling the insurance rep like no, this mom had like a tear that's insane, Like a third degree tear and blah, blah, blah, that happened and like she needed the additional medical help and like they're like no, oh my gosh. 

09:23
Yeah, exactly so. And it wasn't just like one or two cases I had, like I found like a $22 million case um of this one specific insurance company consistently denying moms, um medical like paying their bills, denying it for medical, lack of medical necessity. So it was just stressful. Um, um, my husband saw that I was extremely unhappy with my career, and not my career, but more so like the bureaucracy of it all, you know, um, because I definitely felt very good when I would get the insurance company to pay up. Yeah, like that was great and it was like enough to fuel me to continue arguing. But the bureaucracy of just being in the corporate world, the you know, oh, you know, like the bless your heart of it all, if you get what I mean, yeah, yeah, um, it just wasn't for me, like, if things weren't looking good. I was always very much like a realist and like things aren't good, what do we do? And instead they wanted me to be like everything's great, everything's fine, and you know, and I'm like, but it's not great. 

10:38 - Katie Fenske (Host)
It's probably draining on you Like that would take a toll. 

10:42 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, toxic positivity was like the vibe there. Um so, uh, he like pushed me to quit and it took a couple months of like convincing and I did and he was like, why don't you go into food? But I didn't have at the time, like if you didn't have a culinary degree, uh, you like it was even taboo to call yourself a chef, so like you weren't legit like yeah, I wasn't having credentials exactly. 

11:07
I was like, well, I don't, I didn't go to culinary school like I've worked in the back of a restaurant and sure like, but I wasn't like head chef or anything anywhere. Um, and then, oh, hold on your cookies are burning, Go go. Good, okay, good, the short red is out, perfect, perfect. 

11:29 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, I'm trying to remember where we were. Um, you had just quit your job. 

11:33 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yes, you quit my job. 

11:36 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, go. 

11:37 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I needed the confidence to like tell people to pay me to eat my food, which I didn't have. So my husband was like, well, why don't you go on MasterChef? Because it's all a bunch of other home chefs, right? So he's like you could see that then where you are in comparison to everyone else. And I was like all right, fine, and I tried out and I kept making it past each level and I'm like I don't know what's going on. Guys like like you, were shocking yourself because there were like people who, um, had been trying out for years in line with me and I'm like I, okay, okay, I don't know what's going on, but okay, and on the show I did really well you know I spoiler alert I made it to the top six, two episodes from the finale. It was so close. But when I came off, I started working as a recipe developer for, like you know, all those meal planning kits like they had just blown up at the time. 

12:44
Oh my friends and the plate joy. 

12:46 - Katie Fenske (Host)
That's so funny. I just had um factor. We get factored just delivered at my doorstep right now. Yeah. 

12:54 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
So I wrote recipes for them. I would, um, do food photography, food styling and prop styling for all these food startups in the Bay area. Um, and then eventually I was able to get a cookbook deal and that book ended up giving me a fairly decent platform and it just kind of snowballed into a full career, Um yeah, and loving it. 

13:25 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Are you loving like being? 

13:26 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I love it yeah. 

13:28 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Okay, this is the book that's coming. It's coming out, right, it's not. It is out now. Okay, tell us a little bit about your book. Okay, first of all, I have seen I haven't like had a physical copy, but I've seen, like, how beautiful the colors and the photography. So what was it like making a cookbook? Okay, was, it. 

13:50 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
A huge process Like this one definitely was my first cookbook. I had three years to like put it together, so I knew what I wanted. This one I had about a year and I knew I wanted to focus on the decoration of these bakes. I wanted them to be inspired by like Indian arts and textiles and handicrafts that I grew up around and because it was like, very decoration heavy, I wanted to make sure that, like, the everyday person could do it. If I kept failing at it, I'm pretty sure, like a regular baker would probably also fail at it, didn't measure. 

14:33
So it was important for me to make sure that like I got all of that and I think it was like it was easier because I didn't have a little like. My daughter was like two years old when I wrote my first book Not even two yet, but yeah. So like I had, I had like videos of me and my like photo, because I photographed, wrote and recipe tested my whole book myself. Wow, both times Like I have videos of her, like I'm taking a photo of a sweet potato pie from my whole book myself. Um, both times like I have videos of her, like I'm taking a photo of a sweet potato pie from my first book and I turn around and homegirl has stuck all her fingers in the pie. Oh no, and like you, you you can't even be mad because you're like I mean, it looks good, I want to try it. 

15:27
Yeah, I'll just make another one. So this time I was trying to write the book and my daughter's eight, and I have also passed down my ADHD to her. Except she's diagnosed, or I was not, and I will get distracted because, you know, at eight they're just like insanely hungry all the time. 

15:49 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yeah, and talking and needing you and all of that. 

15:53 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, Um. Mommy, can I get a snack? Can I? Can I get another snack? I'm still hungry. Can you pour me a glass of milk? Mommy, can you cut my girl cheese and triangles? And in that I baked at least like two or three items where I forgot a major ingredient, like I baked a cake without sugar in it or I like made cookies without vanilla and like the baking powder in it or whatever, and I like. 

16:19
Looked at my husband, I'm like you need to take her away, you and you, you and Ilara need to go to your parents' house in Alabama for five weeks and leave me alone, get it done. And that's what I did, I like. In those five weeks I was able to, like, bake everything, photograph everything, all that, but I needed it, um, and it made it a lot easier. 

16:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Um, I, uh, yeah, not having children in the house, that definitely helps, definitely, um, okay, so, talking about holiday cookies, like for me it is a family tradition. Like my grandma made these cookies that I'm gonna make this week and bring to our family party, and it's like you know she's no longer around, but it's these cookies still remind us of her, like everyone's, like it's almost cookies. What are some of your favorite cookies or fan favorites that you make? 

17:10 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Okay, I have a lemon cardamom snickerdoodle that people really love. Um, they're eggless, which is great, Cause I allergies are pretty common. Um, and it's a nice like. It's a nice separate flavor from what you typically will get at a cookie swap or a holiday dessert table, because you're going to get caramels and brown butters and chocolates and peppermints and the lemon just kind of brightens up the table and the cardamom still gives you those cozy vibes. And then I also have a passion fruit shortbread cookie in my latest cookbook. That's pretty dang delicious as well. I just like bringing like fruity cookies because it just cuts. Because if you're like me and you're eating like one of every cookie that's on the table, it's nice to have like a little bit of like like. It just cuts the richness. 

18:07 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yes, yes. So then you can have another one after that, exactly yes, oh my gosh. Okay. So for um, amateur bakers like myself, what are some things we should always have on a hand, or like, what equipment makes baking easier? 

18:25 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
So I always have a good baking tray that um parchment paper or silicone mat to go with that. Um, the other thing is a hand mixer. You know, if you have a sand mixer, that's wonderful. If you don't have it, a hand mixer goes works just as well. Um, and if you're making, like if you're trying to make a lot of cookies, like if you have a really big family, a cookie press makes your life so much easier. You just make like one batter and then press. It'll make so many cookies. 

18:56
I don't even know what a cookie press is. What is a cookie? A cookie press? It looks like a giant tube and then you put like a little, almost like a you know like the pasta mold, but it's a cookie mold. 

19:06
Okay, so you make like a simple butter, like a spritz cookie dough is what it's called, and you fill this canister with all your cookie dough and then there's a little lever and when you press the lever it pushes dough and extrudes it through the little die cut, so like maybe you have a Christmas tree shape or a snowman or whatever, and then you do it directly onto an ungreased pan and you just keep pressing. 

19:30 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh, my gosh and it moves super quick. I mean, I feel like my kids would love to do that too. Yeah, it's great. 

19:36 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Okay. 

19:37 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Is that what you use, cause you've sent me some cookies from challenge butter. Is that what is used for the glass ones? 

19:43 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
The no these are the their actual cookie shapes, so it's a sugar cookie dough, okay. 

19:48 - Katie Fenske (Host)
They were so cute, they didn't last. I wish I could show them. 

19:57 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I mean, you still have some. My kids ate them all. I've baked so many Um. So this is a sugar cookie dough that you cut out and then use a snowflake cookie cutter to cut out the center and then you bake them off and then, when they come out of the oven, you fill them with your um melted. It's like a sugar syrup basically and then ice it with roll icing and then add a couple of. 

20:20 - Katie Fenske (Host)
You can't see them, but I have a little sugar a little sparkling sugar on top they're so impressive looking I'm like these are too pretty. I shouldn't eat these. 

20:29 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
They're so they look super fancy but they're very easy to make because it is a very simple sugar cookie dough and the recipe is actually on the inside of challenge butter's holiday packaging. Um, on the inside is the recipe oh, brilliant, brilliant, yeah, so you can find it there and it's a stained glass, snow like cookie recipe and it's very, and you're using the unsalted challenge butter for that. 

20:55 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Yes, yes, yes, okay, tell me a little bit about if I'm throwing a cookie swap. What are some things like? What are pointers on how to organize that? How many cookies should people bring? 

21:10 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Stuff like that, okay. So what I like to do is my guest list is based on how much tabletop space I have to display the cookies to do is my guest list is based on how much tabletop space I have to display the cookies. So I will allot like one foot by one, maybe two feet, or one by one, if you want to keep it. If you want to like double stack and have one here and one here, okay. So if my table is nine feet, my islands are no 10 feet Okay, I can invite at least 19 people. Okay, um, maximum, and that's if you don't plan on having like appetizers or drinks anywhere on the tables. Um, so the worst is like when you invite a lot of people and then you fill the entire um table and people have to reach around each other and it's just the cookies. Yes, so I do it by how much table space do I have for people to display their cookies? And then how much table space of that do I want to use to put out drinks and appetizers and snacks etc. 

22:08
Um, I ask everyone to bring typically two dozen or enough for each person to have two cookies each. Okay, um, because people are going to want to try one, maybe while they're there, and then want to bring in their little cookie box, right, yeah, so two cookies each. And then another thing I do is I ask my guests if they have allergies. So first invite everyone and then have them tell you if they have any allergies, um, and then have them tell you if you, if they have any allergies, um. And then what you do as a hostess or host is you bake something that aligns with their dietary restrictions, just in case, okay, um, and then also have it noted and just say like, hey, if you can this is like if you can, you know, make a gluten-free cookie or egg-free cookie, please do. 

22:57
If you can't, it's fine, but you, as a hostess, will make sure that there's something for that person, separated, because I feel bad, you know when someone comes in here. 

23:11 - Katie Fenske (Host)
The net allergies the egg yeah. 

23:14 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, and especially nowadays, like there's so many kids that have these allergies, it just like I feel awful, um, when someone can't have, when they only have like one option Right, um, so have that and then have them send out like a spreadsheet saying like please state what you're going to bring so that no one's bringing the same thing. Recently, yeah, I recently, um, my daughter's PTA was doing cookies for the teachers. 16 people signed up and out of the 16, I think 13 of them were making some sort of chocolate chip cookie like a brown butter chocolate chip, or, you know, peanut butter chocolate chip, and I was like, oh my God, all right. 

23:58
So I made my passion fruit shortbreads instead. 

24:00 - Katie Fenske (Host)
So I'm sure they were like very excited to invite you to that. They're like let's make sure that mom can do it. 

24:09 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
It's always fun. I always try to make something fun and interesting every year, and then I would so have everyone write what they're going to make and then ask them to email you the recipes of whatever cookies they're making and then have your cookie exchange. Have some boxes paper boxes that you can buy off Amazon, or you could literally go to your grocery store and ask them if you can buy cake boxes from them. If you're like short on time I've done that many times where I'm like can I just buy the cake box? 

24:43 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I don't need the cake. 

24:44 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I just need the box, just the box, thank you. So you can go to your local grocery store and ask them for, like an eight inch square cake box, um, and then have, uh, everyone can then make their boxes of cookies, um. And then the end, when you send everyone a thank you for coming, you could send them a compiled PDF of all the recipes. 

25:09 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Oh fun, I want to throw one now. I mean we're running out of time this Christmas, but that would be so fun. Okay, you are partnering with Challenge Butter and Cookies for Kids. Tell us about this initiative. 

25:22 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
Yeah, so Challenge Butter is partnering with Cookies for Kids this holiday season for an initiative called a Challenge for a Cure. 

25:29
So what that is is that they're hoping people hold bake sales or make donations to Cookies for Kids to help raise funds for pediatric cancer research. And the way they're hoping people do that is using this Challenge for a Cure initiative, where they want people to take pictures of their bakes, whether it's these stained snowflake cookies or your auntie's snickerdoodles. Take a picture, post it on Instagram, post it on social media and tag Challenge Butter Cookies for Kids Cancer and use hashtag Challenge Free Cure. And for every post, challenge Butter is donating up to a certain amount and it will hopefully inspire your friends and families to donate or do bake sales or even post themselves on social media. You know it's the season of giving. This is a really easy way to give and it is a initiative that's super close to my heart. I worked in cancer research and I've had family members who've had pediatric cancer, so this is just a really great way to just do something good this season. 

26:35 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I love that, and who wouldn't want to post their cookies and and share all that? It's awesome. 

26:41 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I mean, you're already going to be posting it. You might as well add the hashtags. 

26:45 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I mean mine aren't going to be as pretty as yours. I was looking at your blog the milk and card I'm like, oh, her blog is so pretty it's so pretty Did you, did, you did you, um, when did you start that your your blog? Oh my gosh. 

26:59 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I started blogging with a tumblr in like 2006. Wow, and before that I had a zanga. I am like an og millennial internet person. 

27:11 - Katie Fenske (Host)
That's like some people are like. What's the? 

27:13 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
blog. Yeah, I was like do y'all remember zanga no no one. 

27:17 - Katie Fenske (Host)
I was on it. It's so pretty. I it was like this looks so good the colors you use everything. 

27:22 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
I love it all, love it all. 

27:23 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Thank you. Okay, if people want to find you, where can we find you and get your book? 

27:28 - Hetal Vasavada (Guest)
You can find me on Instagram at milk and cardamom, or my blog at milk and cardamomcom, and you can find my book Milk and Cardamom, which is my first book, or Desi Bakes, my second book, at Amazon, target, barnes and Nobles, or check out your local bookstore Awesome. 

27:42 - Katie Fenske (Host)
Well, thank you so much. I'm going to let you get back to your baking, because I know you have a lot of cookies to bake today, but thank you so much for hopping on and chatting with me. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you for everyone for tuning in today. This was such a fun conversation. I loved hearing her story of how she got to this point in her baking career. I thought that was so fun, and now I need to go buy a scale because clearly I have been messing up these cookies for a while. Anyways, this is going to be the last episode for 2024. I am taking the next week off, um, to be with my family over the holidays, but I will be back in January, uh, for those Friday conversations. So don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, um, so get ready to enjoy the holidays with your family and I'll see you in 2025. And don't forget, everyone burns their first pancake, so just keep flipping.