Podcast Summary: "How Baking Spreads Love And Improves Mental Health"

Podcast: All Of It
Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guest: Helen Goh—award-winning recipe developer, chef, therapist, and author of "Baking and the Meaning of Life: How to Find Joy in 100 Recipes"
Date: February 13, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the emotional, psychological, and communal power of baking through a rich conversation between host Alison Stewart and chef/therapist/author Helen Goh. Drawing from Helen’s latest cookbook—which fuses her culinary expertise with her background in psychology—the discussion uncovers how baking nurtures connections, enshrines tradition, and serves as a language of love. Listeners join in, sharing their own meaningful baking experiences.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of Helen Goh’s Book [02:33]

• Personal Motivation: After a successful collaboration with restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi, Helen felt a pull to explore more personal, domestic forms of baking, focusing on “comfort and small, everyday joys.”
• Baking and Emotion: “Underpinning that domestic kind of baking is emotion. There’s always someone around, there’s always a relationship around, you know, something that you’re baking, you know, for someone or with somebody.”
• Combining Disciplines: Helen’s training in psychology, especially existentialism, helped her reflect on why we bake—to foster connection, create meaning, and mark life’s moments, even though “none of us needs to eat cake.”

Existential Psychology and Baking [03:53]

• Existentialism in Baking: Defined simply as “how to lead a good life.” Baking, like art, isn’t essential for survival, “and yet it imbues our life with something inexpressibly beautiful and wonderful.”
  • “You have this one short life. What do you do to make it the best life? And it’s about taking responsibility and agency.” [03:56, Helen Goh]

The Symbolism and Ritual of Baking [05:09]

• Baking as Connection: Baked goods mark special occasions and create lasting traditions. From birthday cakes to holiday bakes, these rituals “help us to locate ourselves in time and also in community.”
  • “The very fact that it’s not essential means… why. And I think from a very early age, we’ve known that being given a birthday cake, you’re being celebrated… It’s a connection with reward. It’s a connection with a special time.” [05:15, Helen Goh]

Listener Stories: Baking and Memory

Challah and Family Ritual [08:48]

• Caller Deborah (Westchester): Baking challah as an intergenerational family ritual—children participate, grandmothers join in, and the whole house fills with warmth and shared time:

  • “The way the house smells, the idea that you have to walk away and you have this connective time together… That’s also really special and lends itself to just a wonderful experience together.” [09:12, Deborah]

• Helen’s Variation: Included a less-rich challah recipe in her book to keep the ritual without spoiling kids’ appetites.

Jamaican Black Cake & Diaspora [10:49]

• Caller Sean (NYC): Described making black cake, a process that spans a year, for Christmas and weddings—fruits soaked in wine and rum, cakes sent globally:
  • “The black cake tradition for me is just the most amazing tradition because when my aunts and my grandmother and everyone would come together to make it, it’s a whole day event… it would end up in Brooklyn, Fort Lauderdale, Toronto, England.” [11:09, Sean]
  • “Just thinking about it makes me feel very rich and just happy. It gives me so much joy.” [11:32, Sean]

Shortbread & Performance Rituals [15:39]

• Caller Hannah (Highland Park): Described a Scottish shortbread recipe—baked before every performance or recital, tying baking to family legacy and artistic ritual:
  • “Making shortbreads the morning before performance has become quite a ritual for me… it really connects me to my aunts and relatives that have since passed, that were great bakers and taught me how to bake.” [16:24, Hannah]

Friendship, Story-Telling & "Lore Pies" [17:04]

• Caller River (Brooklyn): Explained the tradition of baking "lore pies" with a friend—sharing personal histories while pies bake (sometimes burning in the process because of storytelling!):
  • “We create pies and then while they’re baking in the oven, we tell each other like, the histories of our lives and like our quote unquote, lore. And a lot of the times the pies end up burning because we get so into each other’s histories, and it’s allowed us to get really close.” [17:12, River]
  • “Now it’s like, I’ll ask her, like a question about her life and she’ll be like, ‘No, save it for a lore pie.’” [17:31, River]

The Structure of the Cookbook: Baking’s Themes [06:54]

• Each recipe in Helen’s book is categorized by the meaning or emotional context it holds—nurturing, sharing, ritual, remembering, and continuity.
• Example: The "Remembering and Continuity" chapter features the Shanghai pancakes she once shared with her father, now with her own children.
  • “That sense of remembering and also a continuation of something that I used to do with my father.” [08:21, Helen Goh]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Baking, as something we don’t need to eat… speaks to the idea that there must be another reason. It’s like art, you know, nobody needs it to survive, and yet it imbues our life with something inexpressibly beautiful and wonderful.”
—Helen Goh [04:34]

“Challah baking. Everyone should do it, Jewish or not.”
—Deborah (caller) [09:45]

“The black cake tradition for me is just the most amazing tradition… the richness, the family, the history.”
—Sean (caller) [11:10]

“We create pies and while they’re baking in the oven, we tell each other the histories of our lives and our ‘lore’… now, if I ask her a personal question, she’ll say, ‘Save it for a lore pie.’”
—River (caller) [17:12, 17:31]

Recipe Highlights & Baking Tips

Chocolate Ginger Beer Cake Story [12:44]

• Originated as a riff on Guinness cake—“my children love anything ginger… so I thought, what about using ginger beer?”
• “I love the affinity with ginger and chocolate together.” [13:09, Helen Goh]

Vanilla & Nutmeg Caramel (Gluten Free) [13:43]

• A flan-like dessert with a unique twist: predominantly milk for a lighter texture, a whole grated nutmeg infused for a “mysterious” edge.
  • “I used to loathe nutmeg until I… infused the creme caramel with this and now I absolutely love it.”

Puttanesca Galette [18:03]

• Inspired by her husband’s love for puttanesca—created as a savory, celebratory galette with olives, capers, anchovies, tomatoes, and lemon ricotta.
  • “Part of [galettes’] charm is their rusticity… a galette could be a cake when I place it on the table and we slice it into wedges just like a cake.” [18:32, Helen Goh]

Easiest Recipe [19:28]

• Cheese crackers using store-bought pita—grated cheese, baked for 7 minutes.
• “There’s also a Yorkshire pudding kind of… called a Dutch baby. My children love to have that—it just so easy to make… it puffs up into this glorious… giant popover.” [19:39, Helen Goh]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Introduction and Helen Goh’s Background: [00:09 – 02:33]
• Combining Psychology and Baking: [02:33 – 04:59]
• Symbolism of Baking and Community Rituals: [05:09 – 08:42]
• Listener Calls: Challah, Black Cake, Shortbread, Lore Pies: [08:42 – 17:38]
• Recipe Stories and Tips (Chocolate Ginger Beer Cake, Nutmeg Caramel, Puttanesca Galette, Easy Crackers): [12:27 – 20:22]

Conclusion

Helen Goh and Alison Stewart celebrate baking as a vibrant thread weaving together love, memory, and wellbeing. From heartfelt listener stories to Helen’s insights on baking’s existential meaning, the episode illustrates how sharing food—especially through baking—helps us feel seen, connected, and joyful.

“I just love that, the connectivity of cake. You know, very rarely do we make a cake for ourselves. There’s usually a relationship around it and a story.”
—Helen Goh [17:38]

Book: Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh
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