I cannot recommend enough learning how to bake something incredibly well and making it your signature. Bake it once, twice, seven times, learn it well, bring it for your friends, enemies, coworkers—you become a legend. I perfected baklava several years ago and almost every holiday there’s the inevitable request for me to bring some and everyone knows me as the baklava girl and it fills me with so much joy to participate in this exchange of sweets and compliments and I swear it enlivens my ego and awakens my heart and everyone wins and it’s divine