you’re reading an excerpted version of Everything Alex Writes.

 Dear ________,

I last made black sesame mochi babka three years ago in our med school dorm. I expected to spend my Friday night alone in the kitchen, but friends, one by one as I told them of my weekend plans to make the final test of the Babka, offered to help. Someone would want to help me on their Friday night in the city? 

         I was surprised because Everything Alex Cooks…had simply just been Alex at the time. I was accustomed to cooking and baking as a solo endeavor. Not solo secondary to ego. But solo in isolation and out of despair, leaning into online connection in 2020. 

          My friends did stay in with me that night and the next morning. I taught Jenn how to hand knead – slap and fold!  I forgot to buy milk, so I borrowed my friend Noelle’s. The next morning, we gathered in my friend Mia’s room. Mia lucked out with a north-south facing window. It was snowing that morning, but the sun broke through the clouds. We staged the babka against her window. Noelle held up a pillow case behind the loaf, and Celine cut the first slice while I captured the footage on my phone. I played back the original video the other day. . . and the audio was filled with laughter. We laughed because Celine’s first slice was so uneven. 

        What was my babka became our babka. The shoot was a five-person production. I remember apologizing for making them stage such a scene…for something as silly as my little Instagram. I was embarrassed. I remember that I was unsure if I got the Shot. If I was alone, I would have took five more minutes to be certain, but I did not want to make them wait any longer to eat.

       The five of us tore into the babka, sitting on Mia’s rug. While everyone was chatting, I remember my own silence. I was taking in the scene, realizing that Everything Alex Cooks was something in which people wanted to be included. That afternoon, during a break in the chatter–perhaps everyone was chewing on a large bite of mochi or perhaps we had finished the whole loaf at that point–I broached the topic of a pop-up for the very first time. I started toying with the idea a few weeks prior, but I had told no one yet.

               “What would you serve, Alex?”

               “This babka. I think that people would come out for it.”

So, why babka? Babka because the Babka was showed me that something I created in isolation was starting to bring people together in real life. I am spending four more years in NYC. I have mixed feelings! But I am trying to lean into the good ones. The good ones remind me my life does exist in the city right now. It is the life and community that I have built for the past four years, and what better way than to show myself than the Babka. See you Sunday. ⋆⭒˚｡⋆