Christina Tosi

If you're coming to dinner at our house, you know you're gonna be well-fed.

My first season of 'MasterChef' was tricky. I took a risk going into TV. I was confident it was the right risk and confident I'd break down barriers as the first female judge - and one that was previously only known for the sweeter side of the kitchen.

I guess technically I am a female chef, but I don't really think of myself as such.

Most of my memories are of softball games in Falls Church with my sister, yard sales across town on the weekends with my grandma, grocery-shopping and errand-running with my mom, learning to drive an old Volkswagen bug down Old Keene Mill Road with my dad.

At first, learning to bake was purely selfish, but I quickly learned I can't eat every batch of cookies myself, so I would bake and eat what I wanted and give the rest away. I fell in love with feeding others as much as I loved eating sweets myself.

I feel like a lot of the pastry chefs and chefs I worked for and worked under were always really, really big on the philosophy of 'everyone's in it together in the food world.'

When you open any kind of food service establishment, you do all this planning, but it's not until you've opened the door and people are inside that you learn what people want you to be to them.

I chose a career in the kitchen because the thought of sitting and doing the same thing every day and being stationary was not something that I could get my head around.

Whether I'm making a gluten-free cookie or a lactose-free milkshake, my end goal is always to make it so awesome, clever, and creative that you'll want to indulge whether you have a sensitivity, dietary nuance, or don't.

I didn't want a desk job; I knew I'd get bored.

It's that strength of the human spirit, the strength of what's deep down in you, that's really going to get you anywhere and everywhere.

Baking without gluten is an awesome challenge in terms of the opportunity to learn so much more about what you can create.