SerpApi.Org
“You guys, it’s 11:28 p.m., and I just woke up to the smell of fresh baked cookies,” Morgan Graham tells viewers from the darkness of her bedroom.
The full-time content creator, who lives near Apple Valley, California, explains that her 15-year-old nephew is staying with her for the summer, and it’s not the first late night he’s been “cooking up a storm.”
“I don’t care,” she continues, adding that she previously woke up to the smell of tacos. “He’s very responsible. He’s not gonna burn the house down, so therefore, cook whatever you want.”
Her now-viral video, posted on both Instagram and TikTok, launched her nephew Amir Jackson’s online culinary career.
Graham says she filmed the confessional-style video after discovering her nephew making from-scratch pizza and even his own coffee creamer on other nights.
“He’s spending his days looking at recipes, going through the pantry, in all the cabinets and finding the ingredients of all the things he wants to make,” she says toward the end of the video.
“In his world, he’s having the time of his life,” she adds. “In my world, I just want to stop waking up close to midnight to the smell of food.”
One clearly envious viewer commented, “My steak is tender, my lobster is too buttery… You have a midnight cafe in yo house😂.”
After racking up more than a million views on both social media platforms, Graham decided to introduce the internet to her rambunctious nephew in a follow-up video, where he says his dream trip is Japan, and he loves the relative quiet of cooking in the middle of the night.
Jackson, who has been dubbed the “Midnight Chef” by a growing number of online fans, says you can’t fault him for his late-night snack cravings.
“I just woke up and was kind of like having the munchies, you know?” he tells TODAY.com, clarifying that he doesn’t mean those kind of munchies.
“I was like, ‘Man, I could go for some cookies right now.’ I saw they had cookie dough, so I started just making them, just randomly,” he adds. “I was trying to make sure nobody was up. My thought process was just like, ‘Man, why not?’”
Since that first viral video, he has been the cause of many more deliciously disruptive nights for his aunt, baking a cake for her birthday and whipping up golden brown cornbread. He also started his own Instagram page, run by his aunt for now.
Morgan says she actually encourages her sister’s son’s nocturnal culinary habit.
“He spends summers here most of the time,” she tells TODAY.com. “It started with him just trying to figure out what he likes, as far as desserts or pastries and stuff like that. He likes making pastries, so every other night now, I’ll wake up and he’s cooking something.”
Does he plan to be a professional chef when he grows up? Maybe, but he’s also interested in journalism.
“I just want to experiment while I still got the chance to experiment. I’ll maybe like branch into different fields,” he says. “Explore what I can do while I still got time to.”
‘
Graham says her nephew is excited about his upcoming trip to — you guessed it — Japan. And he knows exactly what he’s going to eat when he gets there.
“Mochi, onigiri, maybe more, like, delicacies or desserts,” he says, excitedly. “They have a lot.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
