This Will Make You Happy: Tanya Bush on Baking, Failing, and Storytelling

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Tanya Bush, author of Will This Make You Happy, to talk about baking as a way of moving through a year — emotionally, creatively, and practically. We discuss what it means to write from inside your own life, how recipes can hold both structure and feeling, and how Tanya expands the cookbook form through narrative, gently pushing against its traditional boundaries. We talk about what it means to break the mold without losing usefulness, and why baking often becomes a way to ask questions rather than answer them. The conversation moves between storytelling, routine, and the quiet search for meaning in everyday acts of making.

Mentioned in this episode:

Will This Make You Happy: Stories and Recipes from a Year of Baking by Tanya Bush

“Party Girl” (1995) Trailer

Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts: The Recipes of Del Posto’s James Beard Award–Winning Pastry Chef by Brooks Headley

Cooking As Though You Might Cook Again by Daniel Licht

Ruby Tandoh

Chloe Rose Crabtree, Bake Street London

Oliver Lee Costello, Toad Bakery

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen: A Memoir and Cookbook by Laurie Colwin