My first memories of baking are of making chocolate chip cookies with my mama. Although she was a wonderful cook and baker, the best recipe she had was the one on the bag of chocolate chips. Even using that back-of-the-bag recipe, I learned to make tweaks. I almost always doubled the vanilla, and I regularly threw in way more chocolate chips. And I definitely didn’t wait for the cookies to cool completely before eating them. My initial cookie experiments taught me so much about how ingredients and mixing methods work and how a few slight changes can alter a recipe so much—often for the better.