Gemma Stafford grew up cooking and baking as a respite from Ireland’s cold winters, but at the tender age of six, an 80’s movie starring Diane Keaton planted the seed of moving to America. After training in cookery (that’s the Irish way to say that she attended culinary school), Gemma revisited her American dream and found a job working in a Lake Tahoe casino kitchen. A year later, she was a pastry chef in a Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant and today, her Bigger Bolder Baking community has a worldwide audience of self-proclaimed Bold Bakers. Gemma’s mug cake recipes requiring only a microwave have garnered tens of millions of views and her new cookbook aims to make baking accessible to everyone, regardless of kitchen gadget ownership. Join me for a lively chat with Gemma and find out why she thinks writing a cookbook is like giving birth to a baby and what happens to all her dessert leftovers.