Erin Clarkson is the founder of Cloudy Kitchen - she trained as a geologist but later found herself in the world of food. Erin currently lives in New Zealand after having spent the last seven years in New York.
Erin has been writing and developing recipes since 2015 and is most passionate about highly accurate and repeatable recipes. She is an advocate for baking by weight and loves to break down complicated recipes into detailed and manageable steps that everyone can achieve with consistent results.
Erin's Story
Erin grew up in Nelson, a sunny part of New Zealand at the top of the South Island. She can remember baking with her grandma and parents as most do - though her most vivid 'baking' memory is of making 'mixtures' in the dirt with her sister.
At university Erin studied geology and geography, where she developed an understanding and appreciation for the scientific process - much of which has heavily influences the way in which she develops recipes today. After graduating Erin spent some time working on an oil rig then moved to New York with her then boyfriend/now husband Rich.
Erin's first year in New York was exciting and amazing but also often missed family & friends. She started baking a few of her favourite New Zealand recipes to bring a bit of home to her life in the USA. She started sharing photos of her baking on instagram and began adapting and creating recipes. As Erin's homesickness gradually faded, her baking and recipes began to take on more and more inspiration from her experiences in America. She fell in love with pies, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate chip cookies.
Expertise
Since 2012 Erin has developed, written, and photographed over 500 recipes ranging from the most basic two-ingredient icing right up to complex, multi-component wedding cakes.
Erin is an ambassador for Good Bitches Baking, a charity created to help redistribute food to those in need.
For several years Erin was a weekly writer for the Sunday Star Times and Stuff (New Zealand's main online source of news).
Quickfire Interview with Erin
Do you own measuring cups? Yes of course! They have their use in cooking and are a great tool - but they just aren't as accurate or consistent as a kitchen scale. For lots of things if the amount of one ingredient is off by a little bit it's not going to matter but there are also lots of other things (especially in baking) where it will - sometimes it really is the difference between you making a delicious batch of cookies vs a tray-shaped cookie puddle. I want you to have the best chance of success with each and every one of my recipes and I think that the cost of a kitchen scale and the time it takes to learn how to use one is well worth it.
How many times do you test a recipe during development? At the very least 5 times but really it depends on the recipe itself, some classic recipes don't need all that much different testing but others can be really finicky and troublesome - while testing our my Pavlova recipe I made 16 Pavlovas before I perfected it! Most of my testing is in effort to discover points of failure so that you don't have to. Wherever I can I also do my best to try to test out things like alternate pan sizes, freezing things overnight or making parts of a recipe the night before, and common ingredient substitutions.
Who eats what you make? Family, friends, and friends of friends. The bulk of the recipe tests are eaten by Rich (my husband), who often adds chocolate frosting in his own unique style. Everything else gets boxed up to bring around to friends and family. I think there is maybe a bit of a misconception about how much food I actually make - yes I might test something 5 times but thats usually over the course of a couple of weeks (or in some cases a couple of years!) so its very rare that there is too much of one thing for us to get through by ourselves.