All my loves of writing, design, art, creation, curation, providing – all brought together by one underlying common factor of food.

Communication, connection, creativity, a memory, a meditation, art, love – food as all of these things and more. It gives me a platform upon which I am able to express myself, provide myself with a balm, a methodical practise to ease the mind. I see food almost as an art form, another creative outlet. It allows me to write, to express myself and my thoughts, my feelings and ideas in words, and the words come with a waterfall. Food is a topic so fuelled with emotion, feeling, memory, love – intensity, and I can’t help but become entirely romantic about it all in the context of writing. It helps me to remember sweet moments that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to recall, lost in the ether of my mind. Taste and smell overwhelming my being and suddenly I’m 7 years old again, in the bakers with my dad; I’m sitting at our family dining room table on a Friday afternoon, biscuit crumbs littering the skirt of my school pinafore; it’s Christmas eve and I’m 5 years old, baking a treat to put by the fireplace before I go to sleep. Much if not all of what I make is inspired by memories – my own, and the ones that people share with me, creating dishes to hopefully share with them, to gain a better understanding of them, deepen the connection that we share, provide them with that moment when you take a bite and the world goes into radio silence while your mind transports you back to the times that inspired this very moment.

It lets me play; experimenting with flavours and textures. It lets me apply some of my other loves, design and art, when I put food to plate, and photograph that moment in time. It helps me to communicate how I feel when words evade me, or when they frighten me – I say it with food, with flavours, with textures: broodingly dark chocolate, bitter on the tongue, melted into a rich and luscious well, formed into silky ganache, so soft one can barely detect it as it caresses the tongue. Or the gentle warmth of cardamom and cinnamon, pears poached to a tender bite, baked into a sponge kissed with vanilla and freckled with ochre dashes of spice. Soon to be engulfed in a river of warm custard, or contrasted with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. Interpret the messages in each as you may. Food is subjective, after all.

Food is the thing that I naturally turn to when my mind feels busy, when things feel difficult, a little darker than I can manage. To busy the hands, can distract the mind, and sometimes those mere moments of quiet is all that one needs. But it is not just for me, but for you, too. For us. I bake to provide moments of sweetness, to provide solace, as a reminder that there will always be some good in this world. One does not need cake to survive, biscuits or pastries in order to exist, but life is more than just surviving and existing, and the simple act of allowing yourself a moment to slow down and eat a piece of cake – this is a gentle reminder that you crave more than merely existing.

And so let me help you to create those moments, to communicate your thoughts and feelings, through the ever powerful medium of food.

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Design and illustration work at floramanson.com