This Is TASTE 737: Read the Cookbook. No, Really. Inside Tanya Bush's Narrative Baking Memoir.
Feb 27, 2026
Tanya Bush, Brooklyn-based pastry chef, writer, and co-founder of Cake Zine, and author of Will This Make You Happy, discusses her narrative baking memoir and the year that shaped it. She talks about pandemic baking, learning through failures, finding a pastry voice, ratios and technique, her work at Little Egg, and how regional memories and storytelling shaped her recipes.
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Baking As A Personal Narrative
- Baking naturally maps to narrative because its stepwise transformations mirror personal growth.
- Tanya frames her book as a coming-of-age tied to learning pastry: assembling, waiting, hoping, and watching the narrator transform.
Italy Stage That Changed Her Pastry Direction
- Tanya's agriturismo stage in Italy became clarifying because the polished plated desserts there didn't match her pastry taste.
- Confronting that hyper-precise pastry made her prefer messier, communal desserts and reject that career vision.
Being The American Intern And Getting Burned
- Tanya recounts being treated as the American intern prop at the agriturismo, including a guest scalding her with a teabag.
- She kept diaries of the bizarre table conversations and the embarrassment that followed.
