The intoxicating scent of chocolate cake wafting from the oven kindled kindled a love for the kitchen in Meredith Hirschman ’22 from a young age. Observing her older sister, Leah Hirschman ’19, along with using Pinterest for inspiration, Hirschman gained confidence steadily – and it is reflected in her treats. With her sister’s encouragement, she now follows in her footsteps and serves as Editor-in-Chief for Spork, the PHS food magazine.

How did you originally start working for Spork?

My oldest sister was the Editor-in-Chief as a freshman. I had known about the magazine prior to even entering high school. I knew I wanted to do that because I always had a passion for baking. I applied, and I got to be a member. Then I worked my way up; I was Social Media Manager, then last year I was the Production Manager, and now I’m Editor-in-Chief.

What is the process of writing and creating each issue of Spork magazine?

The first thing we do is we come up with ideas of what themes we want to do. This past one, we did a strawberry and lemon theme. So we had strawberry lemonade, strawberry-lemon cake, something like that. And then we would ask our contributors to find those recipes specifically. They would write them down and format them correctly. We then buy the ingredients from those recipes and have recipe testing days, which are usually over the weekends. It’s one day, and we get everyone together in one kitchen. We make the recipes and set up the shot. So we make the food and then we put it all together and make it look pretty to take the picture. And then after that it’s production, which is about four days long, maybe longer. We take those photos, and we put them into Adobe InDesign. Then, we add all of the text and all of the needed recipes, and then we print them.

What is you favorite dish that you have made?It was a strawberry lemon cake, which, actually, I made earlier in March 2020. In between those three layers of strawberry cake was a strawberry-and-lemon curd. On the outside, it was strawberry buttercream. And then for decoration, I piped cartoon stuffed flowers with yellow buttercream petals, and a white center. Not only did it look good, but it tasted great as well!

During quarantine, at-home cooking and baking took over the internet, with trials of sourdough bread and dalgona coffees. Do you feel that in quarantine, you also gained more creativity in your cooking?

Yeah definitely. I also had more time to bake and cook, so I used that time. I followed the trends and made all the recipes. I made a frog bread, which was definitely trendy then. With all of that extra time, I also looked up pictures of food. I like to look on Pinterest, and I just like to search for something to make next.