Jessica Merchant’s hugely successful food blog, How Sweet Eats, offers a range of recipes from healthy meals to comfort food, indulgent desserts to cocktails and mocktails. A passionate foodie, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Merchant admits she’s inexplicably in love with food, a love that also comes across her mouthwatering, and very colorful, Instagram page, where she shares her cooking experiments.
“I test most of my recipes at least once, but by no means claim to be a culinary genius,” admits Merchant, in a bio published on her website. Indeed, with no formal culinary training, Merchant is completely self-taught, which also makes her approach to cooking more down to earth. “My first priority is to create unique recipes to share that find a balance between healthy meals, comfort food, and indulgent desserts that I can share with my invisible internet friends,” she explains.
Having amassed a great following online, Merchant proceeded to write two cookbooks: Seriously Delish and The Pretty Dish, both bestsellers and include recipes that weren’t published on her blog.
“I get recipe inspiration anywhere,” remarked the full-time blogger and recipe developer in an interview with Nicole Culver. “I get it from seeing a billboard when I’m driving, from seeing a magazine cover, through looking through a magazine, from a beautiful cookbook. Having a creative mind it’s easy to pick up inspiration from anything. You kind of look around and see it.”
She also isn’t afraid of making a mess in the kitchen, as part of her experimentation with new foods. Recent recipes include one for a grilled chicken blueberry salad and another for summer salmon tacos (which we absolutely crave). “I really have not done anything that am not super passionate about or believe in,” says Merchant.
We’re just as passionate!
