TRAVEL/FOOD

Pip: There's a school of thought that says baking is just chemistry with better lighting. Helen Goh would like a word.

Mara: We're covering a debut solo cookbook that asks what baking actually does for us — the recipes, the philosophy, and the recipes inside the recipes. Jane Simon Ammeson brings us into that conversation today.

Pip: Let's start with the book itself — what it is, what it's arguing, and why a psychotherapist-pastry-chef is the person to make that argument.

Helen Goh: Baking and the Meaning of Life

Mara: The premise here is that baking isn't just technique — it's a way of building connection. Goh is a trained psychologist as well as a pastry chef, and the book holds both things at once.

Pip: And she puts it plainly in the book's framing: the recipes are about "how baking can bring us together and add meaning and joy to both significant and everyday moments."

Mara: That's not just jacket-copy warmth. The structure of the book follows through — more than a hundred recipes organized around occasions and relationships, from a Champagne and Blackcurrant Celebration Cake for graduations to a batch of Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes for a charity bake sale.

Pip: A charity bake sale as a building block of solidarity. That's either the most optimistic sentence in food writing or the most accurate one.

Mara: Possibly both. The flavor combinations are doing real work here too — Chocolate Tahini Cake with Sesame Brittle, Plum and Pistachio Bars, Pandan and Coconut Chiffon Cake. Her background in Malaysian and Australian cooking, plus a decade developing recipes with Ottolenghi in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditions, shows up in every pairing.

Pip: The book also includes more than fifteen savory bakes — a Puttanesca Galette with Lemon Ricotta, a Potato, Garlic, and Rosemary Focaccia. The sweet-to-savory range is wider than the title suggests.

Mara: And the book is a 2026 James Beard Award nominee in Baking and Desserts, which tracks — this is her first solo work after co-authoring the bestselling Sweet and Comfort with Ottolenghi.

Pip: The included recipe, Crepes with Red Bean Paste and Walnut Praline, is a direct line back to her childhood in Malaysia — her mother interrogating chefs at a favorite Chinese restaurant, the evening always ending in Shanghai pancakes.

Mara: The Persimmon and Pecan Cake with Maple Frosting follows the same logic: a personal puzzle — why do persimmons taste different every time — resolved through research, then baked into something shareable.

Pip: Both recipes carry the book's argument in miniature. The food is the philosophy.

Mara: What stays with me is the idea that a recipe can be a reflection on how to live — not as metaphor, but as actual structure.

Pip: Next time, more of that territory — food as memory, place, and the small decisions that turn an ingredient into something worth passing on.