Will This Make You Happy
Stories & Recipes from a Year of Baking
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Chronicle Books
Published:5th Mar '26
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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.
As featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker,Publishers Weekly, Cherry Bombe, Cultured Mag, and more. Named a Best Cookbook of Winter 2026 by Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and Epicurious.
“Beautiful—smart, funny and effortlessly lyrical.” —Ruby Tandoh, bestselling author of Cook As You Are
“This is an entirely different kind of cookbook, one that makes you want to curl up and read cover to cover. I loved it.”—Sohla El-Waylly, James Beard Award winner and author of the bestselling cookbook Start Here
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 cookb
“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. 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, New York Times bestselling author of Splinters and Make it Scream, Make it Burn
"In what feels like literary magic, Tanya Bush bakes every element of taste, every sensation of sweet, salty, bitter and sour into her recipes and, most enticingly, into her stories. We follow her through a year of cookies and clafoutis, of confusion, love, infatuation and disappointment, of discovery and pleasure. It’s the stuff of a real life. That we ride the ups and downs with Bush, feel the dizziness and the joy, and see her world through her sharp eye, is a measure of her talent: She is such a good writer."
—Dorie Greenspan, five-time James Beard Award winner
“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 cover to cover. That is, until you're overcome by the urge to bake a brown butter buckwheat madeleine or Neapolitan pavlova. Once in the kitchen, with Tanya'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 the New York Times best-selling cookbook 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 the head notes 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, New York Times bestselling author of Real Americans
"Will This Make You Happy is sensual and alive, a sensitively illustrated document of adriftness, trial and error, and the decadence that awaits on the other side. Bush has rendered, through food, a vulnerable journey toward epiphany."
—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
"Sectioned by seasons, readers are able to bake along with Bush as she recalls the highs and lows of learning new techniques and discovers her culinary voice. The recipes, like Bush’s storytelling, are cheerful and unpretentious, like Blueberry Jam Corn Muffins and Spicy Olive Oil Molasses Ginger Cookies." —Food Wine
"In staking out the premise of this book, called 'Will This Make You Happy,' Ms. Bush took a risky bet: The exact thing you said you didn’t want to wade through before reading a recipe online — the origin story, or the particular pleasures of a seasonal ingredient, or any obliquely related anecdote from the recipe writer’s life? You actually want more of that. And as someone who is primarily a dessert maker, Ms. Bush is an expert in knowing when people want more of something." —The New York Times
ISBN: 9781797227214
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 31mm
Weight: unknown
344 pages