Welcome to Kitchen Heals Soul, a baking website based in Montreal, Quebec. This is a place to explore all things baking.
I hope that by browsing through this site, you will also learn a bit more about the techniques, the whys, and the hows. I showcase ingredients and their effects on recipes, and I even reveal my recipe failures because the mistakes often teach us a lesson.
About Janice
I am a baking-obsessed recipe developer with a PhD in Chemistry from McGill University and I live in Montreal, Quebec. A couple of years after I completed my PhD, I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa to follow my heart and to learn to be a better baker. Some call it inspiring, others call it crazy.
I learned food styling and how to photograph food at workshops with Aran Goyoaga and Helene Dujardin (Tartelette, author of Plate to Pixel, a book I highly recommend if you want to learn the basics of food photography).
I love experimenting in the kitchen, but always with a goal or a lesson in mind. I love to find concrete examples to illustrate a baking lesson, like the effect of cooking temperature on a batch of marmalade or what too much baking soda will actually do to a cake. I am clearly very much a scientist at heart. On this website, I want to share great recipes, but also the whys and the hows of baking.
I may have chosen a different path than the typical chemist, but I feel it's the right one. I haven't completely abandoned my background: I apply my knowledge and skills in science every day when I am testing/analyzing recipes. My OXO scale, my pink Thermapen and my KitchenAid stand mixer are probably my most prized kitchen tools, along with my kitchen notebook filled to the brim with scribbles and tidbits.
Today I work in Montreal as a recipe developer, a cookbook tester, as well as a food stylist and food photographer. Please visit my portfolio to see some of my work!