Baking

One of Things You Should Know About Me: I Also Bake

I love baking. When I was a kid, my mom and grandma would together and bake apple pies with fruit from the orchard, or they’d got strawberry picking and then make sheet cakes with strawberry jam topping. And I’d sit and watch them working and everything was always tasty and well-presented, but I kept thinking, “couldn’t these look cooler?” (Kids are such critics, right?) I quickly got interested in trying to make cakes with fancy decorations, but that quickly went nowhere.

Around the same time, we also got a bread machine. And then I spent a summer obsessively making cinnamon rolls, using the machine to prepare the dough, and rolling it out and crafting it into a pan full of delicious, sweet, sugary treats. All summer long. I couldn’t be stopped.

But, summer in middle school is very different from the rest of your life, which got in the way of continuing to bake regularly for a while. (One of my favorite, low-effort “bakes” during high school and college was peanut butter Rice Krispie treats, which tells just how little effort actually went into baking then.)

Much, much later, I grew up, finished grad school, and found a partner - who doesn’t even like eating cake or bread - and started baking again (mostly because a roommate had gotten me hooked on cable-based cooking shows that reignited my interested in baking). I focused on the decorations (of course), which started rough (not pictured here), but I’ve been working on my technique and craft around baking and decorating since 2016, and even applied to be on The Great American Baking Show in 2020 (the production of that season did not happen due to COVID lockdowns) and most recently in 2025.

I love both the actual baking part of baking as well as the decorating, so even though I have a huge focus on novelty cakes, I’m also doing things that are more visually simple, like cinnamon rolls again. And, because I’m a photographer, I have to make sure to stage beautiful photos of my baking creations.

All baking photographs and food styling by Eric Roman Beining

Cocktails

You Should Probably Also Know: I Love Movies (and Themed Cocktails)

Whenever my partner and I go to a convention (for Star Wars, Star Trek, or a “general” comic book one) or a Disney park, we always gotta scope out the themed cocktails (when they’re poorly themed, it’s disappointing). We bring that love of “theme-ing” home with us, and we’ll do what we call Screening & Sipping, where we watch a movie and make a themed cocktail to go with it. (One time, we tried making the Hot Cheetos martini from One of Them Days, after we saw the movie in the theater - we literally stopped to get Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on the way home - it was terrible, and we do not recommend that one.)

For themed cocktails at home, I love when there’s good color in the drink, condensation never hurt anybody, beautiful glassware (which can be simple or very fancy), and great lighting.

We definitely try to stick to ingredients we have on hand, but sometimes that means cheating and preparing fancy ice cubes (or spheres) ahead of time, such as with the “Arendelle Thaw” drink we made while watching Disney’s Frozen, which included a butterfly pea flower tea-based large piece of ice (it’s the blue ball you see the top of in the photo for that drink).

Above photographs styled and shot by Eric Roman Beining