Will This Make You Happy
by Tanya Bush
Illustrated by Forsyth Harmon
For fans of Nora Ephron and Nigel Slater, this hybrid memoir and cookbook brings together over fifty inventive baking recipes with a lyrical coming-of-age story about desire and dessert. Perfect for home cooks, lovers of literature, and anyone who finds comfort in the kitchen.
Tanya Bush is adrift in the uncertainty of her early twenties—unemployed, uninspired, and stuck in a long-term relationship that's lost its spark. One day, just to do something, she decides to bake a cake. It's gooey in the center, woefully underbaked, an absolute disaster—but it also reminds her of the pleasures of baking: sugar crystals under her fingernails, flour in her hair, and the hard-earned satisfaction of following the steps of a recipe to the end.
Over the course of a year, Tanya embarks on a journey that carries her from her tiny apartment to the sunlit kitchens of an Italian agriturismo to the basement of a bustling Brooklyn bakery, where she rediscovers her appetite for pleasure, indulgence, and meaningful work.
A culinary memoir and love story, interwoven with over fifty innovative and approachable baking recipes, Will This Make You Happy is for readers and bakers looking for something messier, more experimental, and honest than the typical aspirational cookbook.
Preorder here ︎︎︎
by Tanya Bush
Illustrated by Forsyth Harmon
For fans of Nora Ephron and Nigel Slater, this hybrid memoir and cookbook brings together over fifty inventive baking recipes with a lyrical coming-of-age story about desire and dessert. Perfect for home cooks, lovers of literature, and anyone who finds comfort in the kitchen.
Tanya Bush is adrift in the uncertainty of her early twenties—unemployed, uninspired, and stuck in a long-term relationship that's lost its spark. One day, just to do something, she decides to bake a cake. It's gooey in the center, woefully underbaked, an absolute disaster—but it also reminds her of the pleasures of baking: sugar crystals under her fingernails, flour in her hair, and the hard-earned satisfaction of following the steps of a recipe to the end.
Over the course of a year, Tanya embarks on a journey that carries her from her tiny apartment to the sunlit kitchens of an Italian agriturismo to the basement of a bustling Brooklyn bakery, where she rediscovers her appetite for pleasure, indulgence, and meaningful work.
A culinary memoir and love story, interwoven with over fifty innovative and approachable baking recipes, Will This Make You Happy is for readers and bakers looking for something messier, more experimental, and honest than the typical aspirational cookbook.
Preorder here ︎︎︎
“In what feels like literary magic, Tanya Bush bakes every element of taste and every sensation of sweet, salty, bitter, and sour into her recipes and, most enticingly, into her stories. We follow her through a year of confusion, love, infatuation, and disappointment; of discovery and pleasure. That we ride the ups and downs with Bush, feel the dizziness and the joy, and see her world through her sharp eyes is a measure of her talent: She is such a good writer.”
— Dorie Greenspan, five-time James Beard Award winner
“Will This Make You Happy is an ode to the wild pleasures of transformation—how sugar and heat become sustenance, how a psychic flatline shivers upward into curiosity and hope. This book is a testimony to pleasure as survival, self-creation as a long glorious fumbling toward the grace of others. I gulped it down, eager for every last crumb—and will be grateful for its gospel of mess and care for the rest of my days.”
— Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
“Beautiful—smart, funny, and effortlessly lyrical. Lots of books capture the romance of the kitchen, and lots address the emotional knots of cooking and eating, but Will This Make You Happy does both. It reminds me of so many writers whose work I love and return to and have learned from. Assured and brilliant.”
— Ruby Tandoh, bestselling and award-winning author of Cook As You Are and Eat Up!
“This is an entirely different kind of cookbook, one that makes you want to curl up and read it cover to cover. That is, until you’re overcome by the urge to bake a Neapolitan Pavlova. Once in the kitchen, with Bush’s luminous prose and gentle instruction, you can bake your way to catharsis. I loved it.”
— Sohla El-Waylly, James Beard Award winner and author of Start Here
“For fans of Nigel Slater and Sally Rooney, this lushly illustrated and gorgeously photographed cookbook / love story is for anyone who has wished that the headnote of a recipe also detailed the myriad desires and failures that went into each bite.”
— Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X and The Möbius Book
“In loving and tender prose, Tanya Bush writes honestly and lyrically about finding one’s way through life’s downs and ups, through depression and desire. Her recipes will make you happy: unfussy, resourceful, and comforting all at once. Forsyth Harmon’s accompanying illustrations are magical.”
— Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
— Dorie Greenspan, five-time James Beard Award winner
“Will This Make You Happy is an ode to the wild pleasures of transformation—how sugar and heat become sustenance, how a psychic flatline shivers upward into curiosity and hope. This book is a testimony to pleasure as survival, self-creation as a long glorious fumbling toward the grace of others. I gulped it down, eager for every last crumb—and will be grateful for its gospel of mess and care for the rest of my days.”
— Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
“Beautiful—smart, funny, and effortlessly lyrical. Lots of books capture the romance of the kitchen, and lots address the emotional knots of cooking and eating, but Will This Make You Happy does both. It reminds me of so many writers whose work I love and return to and have learned from. Assured and brilliant.”
— Ruby Tandoh, bestselling and award-winning author of Cook As You Are and Eat Up!
“This is an entirely different kind of cookbook, one that makes you want to curl up and read it cover to cover. That is, until you’re overcome by the urge to bake a Neapolitan Pavlova. Once in the kitchen, with Bush’s luminous prose and gentle instruction, you can bake your way to catharsis. I loved it.”
— Sohla El-Waylly, James Beard Award winner and author of Start Here
“For fans of Nigel Slater and Sally Rooney, this lushly illustrated and gorgeously photographed cookbook / love story is for anyone who has wished that the headnote of a recipe also detailed the myriad desires and failures that went into each bite.”
— Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X and The Möbius Book
“In loving and tender prose, Tanya Bush writes honestly and lyrically about finding one’s way through life’s downs and ups, through depression and desire. Her recipes will make you happy: unfussy, resourceful, and comforting all at once. Forsyth Harmon’s accompanying illustrations are magical.”
— Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans