A former Slashfoodie herself, Nicole is the extraordinary baker behind Baking Bites -- a recipe blog for anyone with flour on their sleeves and a taste for the divine. She stepped away from the kitchen (actually, the horse stable) to chat with us a bit about life since Slashfood, and why her brownies are fudgier than mine.

What have you been up to since leaving Slashfood?
I write Baking Bites now. That's pretty much what I've been doing food-wise since I left Slashfood. It's not a very exciting answer.

So are you dedicating more time Baking Bites now?
Well, before I wrote for Slashfood, I had a blog for a couple of years called Baking Sheet, which I updated a couple of times per week. I kept that going while writing for Slashfood, but after I left, I changed the name of the site and made it more formal. I dedicate more time to my personal blog now than I did while I was writing – and before I was writing – for Slashfood.

It's clear from reading about you that you love to cook everything, so why a site mainly baking?
Because I like baking. All cooking is great, but for me, baking is really interesting. I like the flavors and how everything comes together. I love the magic and the science of the oven. Cooking for me is ... I don't want to say it easier, because I don't find baking difficult, but it is just not just as interesting to me usually. You can go from grilling a chicken to grilling a steak, but baking a cake is a little more special.

Anything happening in the kitchen today?
Not at the moment. Last night I made a lemon cake and later I might make some flatbread. The flatbread isn't set in stone yet. I'll make a list of things that I want to make but it changes. I'll get a whim for something with mint or vanilla and I'll totally change my mind.Who do you bake for?
I bake for myself. I give food to other people, but I bake for myself. I wouldn't bake anything that I wouldn't want personally.

Do you invent your recipes? And where do you find inspiration for them?
I would say that I do come up with most of the recipes, but I definitely find inspiration in a lot of places – any food site, any food magazine, any regular magazine with a picture of food. If I see a recipe, I read the recipe and I try to take in the different mixing methods and ingredient combinations to see how they work, and then I combine them to get what I want. The basic methodology is going to be the same for a lot of things, and I feel like if I'm not looking at someone's recipe or if I'm changing things as I go, that's inventing it. Probably every conceivable variation of the basic chocolate chip cookie has been made, but if I don't use someone else's recipe, that is original to me. And I think everyone should take credit for food like that. If you can put together any dish from the top or your head or from memory, I think it's perfectly reasonable to claim that as your own original.

Any tips for people interested in making up recipes?
That's kind of a hard question –I would say no. Well you need to know the properties of the ingredients that you are working with. Just like you need to know how fast a chicken cooks, you need to know what baking soda reacts with. If you know that, and don't mind eating some bad results every once in a while, I think everyone can do it.

I always hear that precision is absolutely necessary when baking, is that true? Do you measure when you bake?
Oh yeah, I always measure. But perhaps with reference to the last question, the more you bake, the more you learn what you have measure and what you don't. So in a way, you need to be precise on certain things and flexible on others.

Is it ever okay to use butter or sugar substitutes?
I use shortening sometimes, especially with piecrusts. Sugar substitutes that are natural sweeteners – like agave or maple syrup – I use. I don't consider them to be sugar substitutes. Artificial substitutes I might play with once in a while if, for instance, I want to bake a cake for someone who is diabetic or has dietary restrictions. But if not, no, I'd rather use sugar and if I have to cut back on calories, cut something else out.

Where do you shop for supplies?
Anywhere and everywhere. The craft store, the restaurant supply store. I shop at Trader Joe's a lot, Whole Foods. I look for new stuff, and once in a while I will order something from a catalogue. If I see something that looks like I can use it in baking, I'll buy it.

What's your favorite ingredient to bake with?
Vanilla. Is that an ingredient? It's a flavoring. Flour would be my favorite ingredient since it goes into almost everything I make. But vanilla definitely.

Do you have a most-requested recipe?
People ask for almost everything, but I'd say there are two groups of requesters. Some are seasonal, so I'll get a ton of requests in a month for, for example, the cookies and cream peppermint brownies. I probably made ten batches of those in two weeks. Everyone wanted them. They were really, really popular, but now it is March and no one has asked for them in a while. Then I have other recipes that people like that they will ask for throughout the year. Coffee cakes, the strawberry jam coffee cake from a while ago was popular, cupcakes. Often, because I bake, a lot of stuff people can't recall, so they'll say, "Do you remember a couple months ago you baked this thing that had ginger, and I think it was a cake?" And it was some kind of cookie, so I'll have to guess a bit. I get a lot of requests for repeats, but people don't complain if I make something different.

Are fudgy brownies just undercooked, or is there a secret to them?
There is not a secret, but you definitely need a lot of sugar; I guess that could be a secret. A fudgy brownie is basically going to be a brownie that is like fudge candy, which is really moist and dense and sweet and the main ingredient is sugar. When the sugar caramelizes, it gives it that dense chewy consistency in the middle. If it has more flour, you are not going to get that consistency without undercooking. I've gotten comments on brownies recipes that say, "Oh this recipe is too sweet, I cut the sugar in half." But for a brownie, that's changing the chemistry and the consistency of what you will get. I say just cut the brownie in half and eat less.

The girl scout cookies you make looked incredible – especially the Samoas, which do you think turned out truest to form?
I would say the Do-Si-Dos and the Samoas. Samoas are my favorite. They both tasted really true to form. The peanut butter ones were slightly different to me, and I think it came from having a slightly different peanut butter. I thought they were better because they had a more buttery flavor that the girl scout cookies don't have. And they tasted a lot fresher too.

Are there any store-bought goodies that you love too much to reproduce?
No. I would try to reproduce anything.

What's the one piece of advice that all amateur bakers should remember when entering the kitchen?
It depends on how much of an amateur baker you are. If you are a total novice, my advice would be stick to the recipe and bake a lot until you become familiar with how baking works. A fairly common thing that really noobie bakers do is that they wont have the right ingredients and they will make a really random substitution that doesn't really work. They'll say, "It looks dry, so I'll just add another cup of milk." If you are more experienced, I would say don't be afraid to experiment a little bit. If there is a recipe that you like pretty well, but you think it will be better if you add a bit more cocoa, or add almond extract or more butter, I think you have enough familiarity with baking to customize your recipe and get it to be exactly how you want it to be.