Sally McKenney was working what she called a “dull” corporate job in downtown Baltimore when she turned to baking as a creative outlet.

Her recipes delighted friends, family members and co-workers. So in 2011, McKenney began posting them to a blog she called Sally’s Baking Addiction.

“There was no plan,” McKenney recalled. “I just loved to bake and share my recipes and bring joy to other people.”

Fifteen years later, the blog has become a hub for home bakers, drawing 25 million views a month. It’s known for rigorously tested, approachable and, above all, delicious recipes.

She’s written four cookbooks. Her latest, “Sally’s Baking 101,” features recipes such as chewy chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon rolls and “the focaccia of your dreams.” It debuted last fall at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.

All along, McKenney’s growing baking empire has been based in the greater Baltimore area.

She started her blog out of a small kitchen in Federal Hill, where she lived after graduating from Loyola University Maryland. Today, McKenney and six employees operate from her Baltimore County home and have built a catalog of over 1,200 recipes and hundreds of video tutorials.

Going viral

McKenney traces her love of baking to her childhood in the Philadelphia suburbs, where her mother and grandmother taught her to make pies, Irish soda bread and chocolate brownies from scratch.

She moved to Baltimore to attend Loyola, graduating in 2007 with degrees in communications and marketing. After college, she remained in the city and took a job with a financial services company.

She found the work creatively unfulfilling, though she did enjoy baking for her colleagues.

“Everyone smiles when they get a homemade dessert,” McKenney said. “I became known as ‘the baker,’ and that made me feel really good.”

McKenney said she started her blog in 2011 because many people asked for her recipes and she wanted a place where friends and family could find them.

A much larger audience soon discovered them. In 2012, her recipes for cake batter chocolate chip cookies and peppermint puppy chow went viral on Pinterest. McKenney also used Facebook to connect with other bloggers, who amplified her content.

McKenney said she built her following by tailoring her content to home bakers. Recipes use readily available ingredients and come with clear instructions and video tutorials.

She also tests and retests recipes, sometimes up to 15 times, to give readers confidence they’ll work in their kitchens. She’s candid on her site about the trial and error behind her work.

“I’m honest that I’m learning as I’m going,” McKenney said. “That’s what baking is all about — you get better the more you do it.”

Baltimore resident Beth Walk works for McKenney, helping to develop and write her recipes. But she first started following the blog as a fan and learned to bake from it.

“Her recipes were ones I could trust,” Walk said. “If I needed a chocolate cake recipe, I would type ‘Sally’s chocolate cake’ into Google. I knew it would be a good, trusted recipe that would give me a good result.”

In 2013, a book editor who found the site contacted McKenney and signed her to a contract. “Sally’s Baking Addiction,” her first cookbook, was released the following year.

By then, McKenney was earning enough to quit her day job, though jumping full-time into food blogging still required a leap of faith.

“Back then, blogs were this very small little thing that people didn’t take seriously, so it was very strange to do this,” McKenney said. “But I trusted myself.”

‘A pinch-me moment’

McKenney has never received formal training and still considers herself a home baker. For the last decade, she and her team have produced content from her kitchen, designed with a double-wall oven, a long L-shaped island and ample natural light for photos and videos.

In recent years, McKenney and Walk spent several long days in the kitchen working on their most ambitious project to date: “Sally’s Baking 101,” a collection of over 100 cookies, cakes, pies, breads and more. It’s also a guidebook for bakers of all levels, with tips on how to prepare butter, measure ingredients and handle a temperamental oven.

The project took two years and reflected McKenney’s trademark meticulousness. Recipes went through several tweaks on ingredient ratios, oven temperatures and mixing methods. They were reviewed by a professional recipe tester overseas to ensure that they worked outside the U.S.

Every recipe includes photos of the finished bake. McKenney took most of the images herself, waiting until ingredients were in-season to produce the most vibrant shots.

“It was a big labor of love,” said Walk, the book’s co-author. “Lots of sweat and tears.”

The book was released last September and landed that same month on the Times’ bestseller list.

“That was a pinch-me moment,” McKenney said. “My publisher and my editor FaceTimed me, and I just remember being frozen.”

Following the whirlwind of the cookbook, McKenney has returned to focusing on her website. She plans to spend this year revisiting and refining some older recipes, applying lessons she’s learned in the kitchen over the last 15 years.

She’s already rolled out an improved version of her “seriously fudgy brownies.” She recently debuted a recipe for fougasse, a rustic French flatbread that resembles a leaf.

“It’s so humbling to look back and remember doing this out of my small, little Baltimore City apartment, by myself,” McKenney said. “It’s so different now — and so much bigger.”