Eliana de Las Casas, 13, knew what she wanted to do with her life early on. She began cooking when she was four years old, food blogging and creating colorful cooking tutorials for children on YouTube when she was eight, and she was featured at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans at 10. She is unstoppable. The prodigy has a 'Cool Kids Cook' radio show and has published four cookbooks, which are geared toward young chefs, with another coming out in early 2014.

Casas has made radio and television appearances, and has found fans in celebrities, Wendy Williams, Aaron Sanchez and Andrew Zimmern.

The motivated young girl is also a philanthropist. She has been involved with the Boys and Girls of America, and involved in this year's 4th Annual Dove Self-Esteem Weekend, a three-day event that is geared toward inspiring girls and women to have confidence, self-esteem, and believe in their own beauty. She prepared a menu for the event that consisted of prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks, fruit salad with cinnamon tortilla chips, among other delicious items.

Her culinary style is greatly influenced by her mixed heritage. Her background being Cajun, Filipino, Cuban and Honduran; which means that her food and recipes carry a great blend of flavors that includes fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs from different regions of the world.

She also retrieves inspiration from other places: cookbooks, cooking shows and restaurants.

Even though Casas has made cooking her life's work, she still thinks a great deal about education. The kid chef attends Immaculate Conception School, as an eighth grader. She hopes to attend The New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts next year, a high school that four-year culinary program, and later, the Culinary Institute of America. She also intends to host her own cooking show, create a line of spices and cookware for children, and write more cookbooks.