When I was a little girl my mother, Maxine Carvalho, made the most delicious cupcakes with a “surprise filling” inside. When my brothers, sisters or anyone else asked her how she got the filling in the cupcakes, she would say – with a twinkle in her eye – “Magic”.

I soon learned how to make them and when I was ten years old, entered the Pillsbury Bake-Off Junior Division and won a regional prize for my “Magic Cupcakes”.

It seems that was the beginning of my baking career.

-Madeline Carvalho Lanciani