I started painting as a teenager, and what began as a private interest turned into professional work. Art taught me to notice detail and balance long before I applied any of it to food.
Baking ran alongside it the whole time. I was fascinated by pastry, and whenever I came across something I couldn't identify, I went looking for how it was made. I would read about it, watch it done, then try it in my own kitchen.
Moving to the United States made that curiosity personal. I missed the Persian sweets I grew up with, the particular flavors and textures and everything attached to them. They were hard to find here, and the ones I did find rarely tasted the way I remembered.
So I started making them myself.
The first attempts came from YouTube tutorials. I made the same recipes over and over, adjusting ingredients and proportions and method, sometimes a dozen times before the result matched what I was reaching for.
Somewhere in there I fell for European pastry too. I like that European desserts aim for balance rather than sweetness, and that so much of the craft lives in technique and presentation. There is more overlap with Persian pastry than people expect, and I have been folding what I learn from one into the other ever since.
I have also studied with Iranian pastry instructors I admire, which sharpened my technique and deepened what I understand about the traditional recipes.
I am still learning. New methods, new flavor combinations, better versions of things I thought I had finished. A beautiful dessert was never the whole goal. I wanted one that tastes like the dessert you remember.
Baking is where my two loves meet: the art I trained in, and the food I grew up eating. That is what Maison de Maryam is.
