Brought to you by lots of chocolate and many, many kitchen mishaps.
Hi there, and welcome to May Contain Sugar! This is a space where I share sweet recipes, document my love for baking, and connect with fellow foodies. I’m so happy that you’re here!
A little about me: I’m Maurine Dashney Hainsworth, and I’m living in Denver, Colorado, with my husband, Nate. (That’s me on the Brooklyn Bridge—we used to live in Jersey City, New Jersey.) I work full-time as a copywriter for a New York–based food media site. My husband is currently in a family medicine residency program, and it’s definitely been an adventure!
You may recognize me from my personal blog, Maurine Dashney. This blog is kind of a natural offshoot of that blog because I realized my love for baking truly deserved its own space.
I have a funny story about how I got into baking in case you’re interested.
It all started when I slept through my AP Lit exam in my senior year of high school.
Haha, that probably sounds dramatic, but bear with me!
During my senior year of high school, I was the student who never showed up for the AP Lit exam. Just totally slept through it. It was crazy because I probably would have done well on it had I shown up! So I didn’t get the advance college credit that I wanted.
Fast forward to college, and I had to take a course to fill that writing credit I still needed. I signed up for a course about book publishing. As part of the course, we had to self-publish our own books, and I decided to publish a cookbook. I gathered quite a few recipes from friends and family members, but when I got to the dessert section, I decided I wanted to be “the grandma who has cake recipes.” Weird life goal, I know.
So, I started experimenting and coming up with all sorts of cake recipes. And that’s how my love for creating new recipes started!
FAQ
I love the layout of your blog. How did you design it?
I have the Alder theme from Solo Pine and the Super Simple Recipes plugin (for those interactive recipe cards) from Sculpture Qode. All on WordPress. I highly recommend both Solo Pine and Sculpture Qode for great blog design!
What camera equipment do you use?
I’m a Nikon gal, and now I shoot with a D750 and a Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4 (affiliate links—see my note below). I used to shoot with a Nikon D5500 and the 35mm f/1.8G and 18–140mm f/3.5–5.6G lenses, so the earlier photos on here were taken with those.
What photo editing software do you use?
I’ve got Lightroom 6. I also have the VSCO FILM 01 presets and a couple of free VSCO presets. The filter I use on most of my photos, though, is a VSCO preset that I tweaked a ton and then saved as my own personal “preset,” if that makes sense.
How do you bake so often and stay healthy?
I feel funny answering this since “healthy” means something different for everyone. But people ask it semi-often haha. I’m a big believer in moderation and doing what makes your body happy. The end.
Are you Mormon?
Yep! I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Note: This page contains a few Amazon Affiliate links, so if you happen to buy anything on Amazon after using these links, I get a small commission (which doesn’t cost you anything). Of course, I don’t link to anything that I wouldn’t already be linking to anyway. Just a heads up!
