Cooked By Heart About Me
About Us
Hi, my name is Peyton!
And Cooked By Heart is my little corner of the internet where cozy comfort food meets clear instructions and recipes that actually work in a real home kitchen.
I’m the voice, recipe developer, and editor behind Cooked By Heart. I started creating recipes because I wanted one place to keep the meals I truly trust: the ones you make on a random Tuesday when you’re tired, the ones you bring to friends when you want to show love, and the ones you bake when you just need something warm in the oven.
My style is simple: I write recipes the way I’d explain them to a friend standing next to me in the kitchen. No mystery steps, no “magic” moments, and no guessing what the sauce should look like before you move on. If something is easy to mess up, I’ll tell you. If there’s a shortcut that still tastes amazing, I’m all in.
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I Love Food!
In this space, I share fresh, flavorful, cozy recipes that I genuinely make in my real, actual, everyday life. If it doesn’t feel worth the effort (or if I wouldn’t happily eat the leftovers the next day), it doesn’t make it onto the site. My goal is to help you cook food that feels both approachable and exciting whether you’re cooking for yourself, your family, your roommates, or your friends.
What shows up in our kitchen a lot: a skillet dinner that starts with onions + garlic, something cozy simmering (soups, creamy pastas, saucy chicken), and a “quick sweet” on weekends usually a simple bake where you can smell it before you see it.
Those are the recipes we test the hardest, because they’re the ones people actually rely on.
I also love seeing what you make from Cooked By Heart. If you try a recipe, tell me how it went what you swapped, what you loved, and what you’d make again. Those notes help us keep improving older favorites and making the instructions even clearer for the next person.
Going Deeper
Along with recipes, Cooked By Heart is where we share the “little extras” that make home cooking feel calmer: practical tips, the why behind a method, and the kind of small details that make a recipe turn out the way you hoped. If you’re new here, these are great places to start:
- Weeknight Dinners: Cozy mains, simple sauces, and meals that don’t require a full sink of dishes. Start here.
- Breakfast & Brunch: Easy mornings, baked breakfasts, and weekend favorites. Browse here.
- Desserts & Baking: Comfort bakes with clear doneness cues and storage notes. Explore here.
- Newest Recipes: See what we’re cooking right now on the homepage.
- Need help? If something seems off, reach out on the contact page we genuinely read and respond.
Start Here
If you’re looking for the easiest way to use this site, here’s my recommendation: pick one category that fits your week, save a few recipes, and cook one thing you’re genuinely excited about. The confidence builds fast when dinner goes right once (and then again).
Our Team
We’re a small crew behind Cooked By Heart from recipe development and editing, to Pinterest and reader support. Here’s who helps keep it all running smoothly.
Peyton
Peyton is the voice and recipe brain behind Cooked By Heart. She develops and retests recipes with a very specific goal: if you follow the steps, it should turn out. That means she’s always adding the “tiny things” most recipes skip what the onions should look like before you add garlic, how thick the sauce should be before you pour in cream, and what to do if your oven runs hot.
Cooking memory: Peyton’s “forever comfort” is the first dish she learned to make without a recipe a simple pan dinner where the real lesson was timing: don’t rush the onions, season in layers, and let the sauce simmer long enough to taste like it belongs there.
That’s why her recipes include cues like sound (“gentle sizzle”), visuals (“edges bubbling”), and textures (“thick enough to coat a spoon”).
Her favorite recipes are the ones you make on repeat: cozy dinners, comfort classics, and dependable bakes that feel special without being fussy. If a recipe is popular, she revisits it, improves the notes, tightens the instructions, and keeps the post updated so it stays helpful.
Ava
Ava is the friendly, helpful voice you’ll often meet in the comments. She replies to questions, approves comments, and helps make sure you actually get support when you’re stuck especially the practical questions like substitutions, timing changes, or “why did mine turn out different?”
Cooking memory: Ava’s “lightbulb moment” was realizing that most recipe problems aren’t big failures they’re tiny mismatches: a pan that’s too small, a heat level that’s too high, or a step that needed one extra sentence.
That’s exactly how she answers comments: she asks what you used, then gives a clear next step (and a calm fix) instead of generic advice.
Ava also develops recipes with busy days in mind: weeknight dinners, quick lunches, and “make it work with what I have” meals that still taste amazing. She’s great at adding reader-first extras like storage tips, reheating notes, and small tweaks that make leftovers even better.
Chloe
Chloe is our clarity keeper she polishes instructions, checks that ingredients and steps match perfectly, and makes sure the recipe reads smoothly from start to finish. She’s the person who catches the little things that make a big difference: confusing wording, missing timing cues, or a step that needs a better “what you’re looking for” description.
Cooking memory: Chloe grew up saving little “meal ideas” everywhere notebook margins, phone notes, and eventually Pinterest boards. Her favorite kind of recipe is the one you can trust at 6:30pm when you’re hungry and tired.
So when she runs Pinterest, she focuses on accuracy: pin titles that match the recipe, helpful descriptions, and seasonal planning that brings the right recipe to the right moment.
Chloe manages our Pinterest account: pin schedules, board organization, seasonal refreshes, and design testing. If you found Cooked By Heart through Pinterest, there’s a good chance Chloe’s work helped guide you here.
Maya
Maya focuses on desserts and baking recipes that feel comforting, doable, and worth the effort. She’s especially good at adding the kinds of notes that make baking less stressful: pan-size guidance, doneness cues, texture descriptions, and simple substitutions that keep the result consistent.
Cooking memory: Maya’s baking “origin story” is a pan of brownies she overbaked once and never forgot that moment taught her to watch the edges, test the center, and trust cues over strict minutes.
That’s why her recipes are full of specifics like “set center with a slight jiggle,” “crumbs, not wet batter,” and “cool time matters for clean slices.”
Her recipes are written for real kitchens (not perfect studio ovens) so you’ll see practical tips for storing leftovers, preventing overbakes, and getting that “just right” texture even if you’re not a confident baker yet.