Baking Yourself Happy

Plus, a recipe for Tanya Bush's Stone Fruit Shortcake with Mint Cream.

Hello lovely readers! How is everyone doing? I’m back from a college girlfriends reunion in the Midwest—it was so soul-filling, the soundtrack of our early 2000s playlist punctuated by sidesplitting laughs, trips down memory lane, and life updates. It’s the kind of getaway you didn’t even realize how much you needed it until you’re away! But after five days away, I was ready to be home. However, a tornado, multiple flight delays, maintenance issues, and general ineptitude turned a six-hour return trip into a 50-hour one. All this to say, I’m sorry that my newsletter is extra late! I’ve been meaning to share this delectable summer baking recipe from Tanya Bush’s Will This Make You Happy for weeks now, and once I’m back from this weekend’s trip, I plan to try making it myself. As always, thank you for being here!

Stone Fruit Shortcake with Mint Cream from Tanya Bush’s “Will This Make You Happy.” Photo by Vanessa Granda.

HAPPY: enjoying or characterized by well-being and contentment. Favored by luck or fortune. Notably fitting, effective, or well adapted.

There’s something about mashing bananas and stirring them with flour, eggs, maple syrup, and olive oil, baking the batter in a loaf pan until the house smells like cinnamon and vanilla, that has a soothing effect. Banana bread is one of the first things I learned to bake, and like other quick breads, feels like the kind of attainable treat that can turn a day around. Remember how, during the pandemic, so many of us turned to procrasti-baking? Whether it was lovingly tending to my sourdough starter and making batches of sourdough discard pizza crust or pancakes before attempting baking a loaf, obsessively baking chocolate chip cookies to find my favorite recipe, or baking up my favorite banana bread recipe (amply strewn with chocolate chips, of course!), being in the kitchen and baking, following a recipe, and having (mostly) predictable results offered us calm and contentment in an extended season of chaos and uncertainty.

Can baking make you happy? This is one of the questions that author Tanya Bush asks in her hybrid memoir-cookbook Will This Make You Happy: Stories & Recipes from a Year of Baking. It reads like a coming-of-age story, exploring self-discovery through a year of baking as she transforms from a restless, depressed, adrift twenty-three-year-old to a professional baker and someone who is more self-assured. As she moves from her Brooklyn apartment to an agri-tourism gig in Italy back to New York, it is both the recipe failures and triumphs that give meaning to her beautiful prose and define what contentment and well-being feel like for her. As Bush writes, “Baking, like life, is complicated.”

I love the way that this book unspools, with the narrative driving the structure and the recipes serving as enhancements. In recent years, more cookbooks have included personal essays woven throughout or personal anecdotes in the hednotes, but this hybrid memoir-cookbook genre gives more weight to the personal stories. Maybe it’s because I’m also writing a memoir, but I think there is such value in delving deeper into the why and who behind the recipes. It offers us a richer perspective on how cooking and life inform each other, and the discovery that sometimes the end result is beside the point.

Baking for Bush is more about the act of interrogating a need or a desire, of setting an intention to feed oneself. Or learning that we also derive fulfillment and purpose from feeding others. Leading with personal narrative here offers the same kind of pleasure that reading a well-crafted novel does, while also helping to readers consider their own desires, with the handy bonus of dispelling some of the intimidation people feel about baking. Put more simply, it’s a treat to read, and there are literal treats to be had if you so desire, too. Plus, the illustrations by Forsyth Harmon are simply delightful.

This summer shortcake recipe is perfect for stone fruit, but I think it’d be equally delicious with macerated berries. At first I thought, ‘Oh, I won’t make the mint cream because I’m the only one who will eat it.’ But one lesson I’ve learned in reading this book, while working on my own journey of self-discovery and interrogating my relationship to food through writing memoir, is that even if I’m the only one who will eat it and it will make me happy, that is reason enough to make it. Special thanks to Tanya for sharing this recipe with us!

STONE FRUIT SHORTCAKE WITH MINT CREAM

During the swampy heat of high summer, I yearn for desserts that come together quickly and showcase the bounty of fresh fruit. Shortcake is an obvious choice. The base for this dish is an adaptation of Rosa’s biscuits from Brooks Headley’s cookbook Fancy Desserts. The unbaked biscuits freeze beautifully and the dessert comes together quickly. The cream is steeped with fresh mint, but use any herb you like, such as basil or thyme. I love nectarines or peaches for the macerated fruit, but very ripe plums or apricots work just as well—simply taste the macerating liquid and adjust the acid and sweetener based on the taste of your fruit.

MAKES 12 SHORTCAKES

Mint Cream

227 g (1 cup) heavy cream, or more as needed

16 g (11⁄₃ cups packed) fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped

55 g (¼ cup) mascarpone cheese

1 rounded Tbsp powdered sugar, or more to taste

1 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp kosher salt, or more to taste

Dough

300 g (2½ cups) all-purpose flour

110 g (½ cup plus scant 1 Tbsp) granulated sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt

226 g (1 cup) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch (13 mm) cubes

180 g (¾ cup plus 2 tsps) whole milk buttermilk, plus more for brushing

1 tsp vanilla extract

Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

Macerated Stone Fruit
1 kg (about 2.2 pounds) ripe peaches or nectarines (about 5 large), halved, pitted, and thinly sliced
1 rounded Tbsp light brown sugar
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp finely chopped fresh mint leaves
¼ tsp kosher salt

Small fresh mint leaves, for serving

1. To make the mint cream: In a quart (945 ml) container or a medium bowl, stir together the cream and mint. Cover and refrigerate to infuse for at least 24 hours or up to 3 days.

2. Strain the infused cream through a fine-mesh sieve into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or a large bowl with a handheld mixer). Squeeze the liquid from the mint into the bowl, then discard the leaves. Add the mascarpone, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk together on medium speed until starting to thicken, about 4 minutes. Taste and add more powdered sugar or salt, if desired. If the mint flavor is too strong, add more cream. Continue whisking on medium speed until medium peaks form, about 2 minutes. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 4 days.

3. To make the dough: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a large bowl with a handheld mixer), mix the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt on low speed until combined, about 30 seconds.

4. Add the butter and mix on medium-low speed until the mixture looks sandy with pea-size butter pieces, about 2 minutes. The dough should hold together when pressed between your fingers or in your fist.

5. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture so you can see the bottom of the bowl and pour in the buttermilk and vanilla. Mix on low speed until the dough just comes together, about 30 seconds. Be careful not to overwork the dough.

6. Using a large cookie scoop or your hands, scoop the dough into twelve 65-gram (2-inch, or 5 cm) balls onto a sheet pan, being careful not to overwork the dough. Refrigerate the balls to chill for at least 1 hour or up to 2 hours.

7. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) and line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.

8. Brush the tops of the balls with buttermilk and sprinkle with the turbinado sugar. Transfer six balls to each prepared sheet pan, spacing them about 3 inches (7.5 cm) apart.

9. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes, rotating the sheet pans front to back halfway through baking. Let cool completely on the sheet pans.

10. Meanwhile, to make the macerated stone fruit: In a medium bowl, gently toss the peaches with the brown sugar, lemon juice, mint, and salt. Cover the bowl with plastic and let macerate at room temperature, stirring occasionally, for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.

11. Dollop the shortcakes with the mint cream, spoon some macerated stone fruit along with their juices on top, and finish with a few mint leaves. Serve immediately.

From Will This Make You Happy: Stories & Recipes from a Year of Baking by Tanya Bush, © 2026. Published by Chronicle Books. Photographs by Vanessa Granda. Illustrations by Forsyth Harmon.