Melissa Gray is one of those talented people whose voices are never heard, but whose work behind the scenes gets All Things Considered on the radio every weekday. As a producer on the NPR afternoon news magazine, she is part of a team that strives to make the day’s events and other interesting developments both intelligible and listenable for two hours, Monday through Friday. Several million Americans drive home better informed, and possibly smiling, thanks to the show we call ATC. As a host of that show, as one whose voice is heard, I knowingly benefit directly from her newsy smarts and Southern wit; if you are a listener, then you benefit as well, and now you know it.
Melissa’s many gifts include a taste for baking (which is the subject of this book), an ear for radio, and a profound sense of irony. Two examples of that last gift are (1) she prepared for an utterly nonvisual career, producing radio, by going to art school and (2) she asked me to write the foreword to this magisterial work on baking for the office, knowing that I am the rare colleague who does not eat the cake she brings to work. (Avoiding cake between 9:30 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. is one of the few dietary restraints I manage to observe.) In truth, I do not have to eat Melissa’s cakes to appreciate the joy they bring to the staff of our program. For a producer, editor, or booker, partaking of a home-baked Melissa Gray cake every week is a palpable bonus of working on the program, a good thing since real bonuses are precious few and far between. Melissa’s art school training is also in evidence: her cakes look terrific.
In All Cakes Considered, I am delighted to read, at long last, Melissa’s long form writing about her baking projects. Like all of her colleagues, I am already familiar with the short form, the Monday morning e-mail message that describes what is freshly baked, edible, and sitting on the producer’s desk: “I wanted to make up something slightly different. It’s Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake, using Saigon cinnamon, which is a bit more kicky than regular cinnamon, which is not really regular cinnamon.” “ANOTHER version of the lemon-blueberry swirl that I’ve been working on for two weeks now. Changes this time involve folding meringue into the batter and adding (GASP) a sprinkle of coconut over the blueberry before layering and marbeling. Dig in. And no complaints about the coconut.” “Up front is another attempt at that *&^%$# Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake.”
These messages leaven the typical traffic of news reports, press releases, and sightings of earrings left in the fourth-floor ladies room that clog our desktop computers. They remind me that people who work together are a potential community, capable of sharing in some of life’s delights without distracting anyone from the tasks of the office. They are, of course, equally capable of being nine-to-five sharp-elbowed, paranoid snipers who steal one another’s ideas and office supplies. Of such colleagues I say, “Let them eat cake, baked according to Melissa Gray’s impressive and dependable recipes.” They will be better human beings.
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