Hey there! Welcome to the blog section of Love & Oven. This is a space where I will be sharing my favorite recipes, testing possible new menu items, and creating a space for conversation.
Let me start off by introducing myself, my name is Melissa Clark and I am the owner and baker at Love & Oven. I live in South Dakota with my husband, Josh, and our two kids, Quinn & Wyatt. I have loved baking for many, many years, discovering my love for sweets, like most kids, at a young age and took inspiration from my mom, grandmas, and aunt in their kitchens back in Iowa.
How can I briefly recap my adult years?
- I graduated from the University of Sioux Falls, where I met dear friends and my husband.
- I became an accountant.
- Josh and I got married on 07/07/07 (also my his birthday and 10 years later, our son’s birthday).
- We moved to Charlottesville, VA where Josh went to law school. We spent our summers in Arlington, VA & Denver, CO. I continued being an accountant and started a food blog.
- We moved to Colorado in 2012.
- Our daughter, Quinn, was born in 2014.
- I left the world of accounting in 2016.
- Our son, Wyatt, was born in 2017.
- We decided to make the move from Colorado back to Sioux Falls in 2018, it seemed crazy, but we really wanted to be closer to family and pay off our student loan debts.
- We realized how important that move closer to family was in September of 2018 when Josh was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery, radiation, and chemo followed, with regular MRIs becoming part of our “normal.”
- I turned 40 in 2023 and decided to pursue my dream of owning a bakery, enter in Love & Oven.
Now, let’s get to the real talk rather than the bullet points. Baking and feeding people is a passion of mine. By starting a home bakery, I have been able to connect with people and share joy with them. In my opinion, there is no better way to develop and deepen relationships than over a bite to eat. As a baker, I am going to say something that feels controversial, I realize that dessert isn’t an essential part of our diets. I know, I know, I would love for that to not be true, but I am sure that science backs that statement up. However, I would argue that dessert can be good for our mental health and relationships. So that balances it all out, right? When we sit at a table with others over dessert, we are able to share a part of our lives with them-the celebrations, the sorrow, our thoughts, dad jokes, a bit of our day, moving past the small talk in that time together. How beautiful is that?
When Josh was diagnosed with a brain tumor, it made life a little more real, for better and for worse. It left me scared and unsure of the future I thought I had mapped out. Should I return to accounting? What is my purpose? How do I make the best of this fragile life? (Make space for me Jack Handey, I have my own deep thoughts.) Well, I decided to do something that I am historically bad at, take a leap. Love & Oven has opened up an opportunity for me to explore my love of baking while knowing that I get to be a small part of other peoples’ celebrations and gatherings at their own tables. Knowing that people have ordered a cheesecake from me (or muffins, or brownies, or…) and created new memories over it with people they care about elates me.
By adding a blog section to Love & Oven, I hope to reach more people, both in Sioux Falls and beyond. Listen, I know that spending money on dessert is an extravagance, so by adding recipes online, I hope to make the gift of desserts more accessible to all. And while I realize that a blog is a bit of a one-sided conversation, I hope to find ways to connect with you all! That concludes my TED talk, welcome to the Love & Oven blog, I hope you all can find something to make your day just a little bit better.
Melissa Clark