One Year Down…It’s My Blogiversary!

One year ago today I made my first DoughMessTic post. It was for Cream Cheese Brownies. The pictures suck…in fact, all of my early pictures sucked. One even has a box of baby wipes holding up a Lemon Meringue Pie. That I took at night. So sad.

But I have come a long way since then, thanks to other inspirational food bloggers.

I have made friends with lots of you, thanks to Tuesdays With Dorie and The Daring Bakers – and now Twitter. (I barely remember life before Twitter.)

I also started up a couple of groups of my own – My Kitchen My World…which is still going strong even though I turned it over to lovely Lauren, who took it and ran with it. Along with a few Blogging Buddies we started another group – You Want Pies With That? – to make an unusually themed pie once a month and share our story.

I inadvertently started up the huge-mungus group Operation Baking GALS when my cousin in Iraq needed a few homemade treats. Now there are over 3000 members and the group is going full speed. We have had telelvision spots, radio interviews, Blog reviews, newspaper articles – even a recent blurb on the Gourmet Magazine website. So now, thanks to that (and to so many wonderful bakers) thousands of troops are getting homemade goodies once a month to remind them of home and what they are over there fighting for. I had to finally ask for moderation help, and Lyndsay, the saint, stepped in and is taking care of the site. She has done some wonderful things with it, too – even has merchandise available for purchase. If you have any time at all and a will to bake, please check out the site – it’s for such a great cause.

I just wanted to thank everyone who keeps coming by my site, especially those of you who leave comments. It makes the day so much better when I have a little note from one of you. It’s that encouragement that has taken me from a crappy post about brownies to creating my own cheesecake, among other things.

Here are a few of the things I have done in the past year that still amaze me:

I entered the Pillsbury Bake-Off

I submitted a recipe to the Ultimate Food Network Challenge

I completed TWO NaBLoPoMos – TWO.

I made danish from scratch. Often.

I created a couple of cheesecake recipes.

I baked for a Cafe and got paid.

I cater now…really. I have 2 wedding coming up soon.

I make my own pasta.

I make my own bread.

I made my own cheese today!!

I won a Pie Contest at The Kitchn!

I made Macarons.

I tried rhubarb and loved it.

I make dinner almost every day.

I have taught my son a few things.

I wrote and illustrated a couple of children’s books.

Companies approach me to do reviews. (that’s still baffles me.)

I have friends all across the country now. Come see me. We’ll bake.

Thanks again everyone, it’s been fun!