This Will Make You Happy

Cake friends,

Tanya here. Five years ago, I began baking, persuaded by a chorus around me that making banana bread or sourdough would soothe existential dread. This sounded a bit overblown to me, so I took to the internet to complain. But, it turned out that I liked making something. I liked how disparate ingredients combined to make something whole. I liked finishing a task in a day. I liked the way people looked at me as they tasted the dessert that I had made. Somehow a single year in my life led me to becoming a baker, and a literary magazine co-founder, emailing you right now.

Recently, I reread my diary from that time. Once I got past the self-involved moaning (of which there was plenty), I found long passages about hunger for community, for pleasure, for a life that felt creative, and vivid, and connected. I wrote about that appetite in a narrative cookbook that is out today. Many of those feelings and questions are still with me—the world feels horribly uncertain and devastating, and the future does too. But I feel more rooted because I know how to make myself happy, which is what helps me, in turn, to show up for others.

Below is a little excerpt from the book. I hope you sink into the story and find comfort in moments of doubt and yearning. I hope it sends you into the kitchen to attempt something you might not have thought yourself capable of. And I hope you share it with the people you care about. Most of all I hope this makes you happy.

I’ll be going on book tour soon, in conversation with Lexie Smith at Stissing House in upstate NY, my co-founder Aliza Abarbanel in Los Angeles at Skylight Books, and Ruby Tandoh in London at Tenderbooks, plus more cities—full details here. Please come say hello. I’d love to meet you.

Corn Muffin with Jam

Excerpt from Will This Make Me Happy

The identification of a desire often occurs in the same instant as the realization that it may not be attainable. Admitting that you love someone invites the possibility that they don’t love you back; touring a light-flooded apartment makes you imagine a happier life even as other would-be renters line up by the door. The clarity of wanting comes with the hazard of rejection.

On a walk around my neighborhood, I pass a cafe I’ve never really noticed. There is a sign in the window: “Pastry production help needed.” It’s a place I’ve walked by many times without ever going inside. Now I am awash with longing. It strikes me as the ideal opportunity, a job that will take me closer to my purpose. And it’s stupidly convenient, just a fifteen-minute walk from home. A new path unfurls: I can see myself settling into a routine in a professional kitchen, crimping rounds of pie dough, a haze of flour dusting my apron. I picture my hands kneading butter into flour, moving through the recipe with all the ease and purpose of a seasoned baker. I decide to email the cafe; to my surprise, I am granted a trial.

It’s hot. Now that it’s summer, it seems like no one is working. Everyone chatters outside coffee shops sipping iced matchas, or strolls hand in hand, unburdened by plans or urgency. There’s a crackling energy in the air, a sense that people are coming back to life after months of languishing at home.

Inside, the cafe is calm. Chopin tinkles brightly, and the air-conditioning blows so powerfully that the humidity of the street becomes a distant dream. The pastry case is stocked neatly with twisted brioche buns and lofty muffins arranged precisely. The moment someone orders a pastry, it is swiftly replaced with another. They look delicious: charmingly rustic, each slightly different, clearly made by hand.

“I’ve got a meeting with the chef,” I tell the bored Australian woman behind the counter, and she instructs me to wait at a table in the back. Ten minutes pass and then a man who looks like a graying Jude Law approaches. “Here for the trial, right?” he says.

I can feel my mouth twitching into a dumb smile. I’ve always loved Jude Law. “Yes.”

“Jim,” he says, extending his hand. “Did you bring a mask?”

Fuck, I think, how stupid am I to forget. I hadn’t thought to. In Italy no one had masked. I shake my head. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like a strike against me. He pulls a crumpled disposable from a cabinet behind the counter. “Follow me.” The door swings into the kitchen and suddenly we are awash in fluorescent lighting, and there’s banging, whistling, sizzling, chopping, Gwen Stefani blaring on a speaker through static. Jim’s voice is louder here, out of necessity. “This is Jesús,” he shouts, “prep.” “This is Ernesto,” he shouts, “meat.” “This is Melissa. Dishes.” No one looks up, everyone is engrossed in their work.

We descend into the tiny basement, his Crocs squeaking on the mat. What I’d been manifesting involved sun-soaked stations and people moving in a silent, elegant dance, like a restaurant in a movie. Here there are no windows, just massive bins of spelt, whole-wheat, and all-purpose flours, and a hodgepodge of kitchen tools in a single tub. Everything is jumbled—the opposite of the orderly kitchen in Italy. “This is pastry,” Jim says.

Support: A big bake sale supporting NYC immigrant communities in Greenpoint on March 7. All proceeds will support Make the Road NYC’s important work providing legal, health, and education services.

Cook: Contributor and friend-of-the-mag Mehreen Karim shared a round-up of her best Ramadan meals for hangry cooks. Come for the hot honey za’atar salmon, stay for the one-bowl chocolate chip cookie cake.

Shop: The Strategist just did a big baking week full of recommendations for pro-level bakeware, from sourdough staples to mooncake molds. Avoid if you’re on a no-buy pledge, or click in to be tempted.

Learn: Cookbook author Julia Turshen wrote a very helpful guide to working as a full-time freelancer.

Read: A profile of Tanya in the New York Times on recipes and writing. She also did an interview with Cultured Mag all about—you guessed it!—her book and baking as a narrative for transformation.