Q & A: Sara La Fountain

"My grandmother is very good at baking and cooking, and when I was little I started helping her. When I was about three, we made cinnamon buns - she added marzipan as a special ingredient, and it was so good. I was always interested in tasting things and, as a little girl, I even tasted oysters - and loved them. Cooking was a hobby until I was a teenager. I was making cakes and baking, and then I wanted to learn more. I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life because it doesn't feel like work. I'm glad I have had the chance to do food television, cookbooks and styling. It's been a lot of fun."

"It's a little mixed because my dad is American and my mum is Finnish. And I travel quite a bit so I have an international view. I like to make international food but it also has a Scandinavian side - I love Scandinavian food and have lots of memories of it from my childhood. When you make a menu, it depends on the customers - is it a 10-year-old's birthday party or an old couple's anniversary? I have fun with cooking and don't take it too seri-ously, and I always want to create something new. You need really good ingredients - that's the soul of my cooking, something I got from Scandinavia."

"That was so much fun. I was so happy about getting my first book out I didn't even think anybody would see it, and when I got the phone call saying I was nominated, I said, 'Excuse me? Could you repeat that?' I was happy even to get nominated. When I won, I was shocked!"

"When you're doing food pictures, the most important thing is daylight. That's the key - because then [the food] looks real. There are a lot of ways to do food styling but it shouldn't be fake. Some stylists even put oil on for the shine, or they put weird stuff in the sauce. I don't do that. When we were shooting the food for my cookbooks, we ate it afterwards. And when people try out the recipes, it's going to [turn out] similar."