Alex George, the creator of Lily P. Crumbs, will publish her first cookbook this September.

ALEX GEORGE HOLDS MANY TITLES: She’s a general assignment reporter for Fox 29, a food content creator and recipe developer, and a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur, to name a few. This fall, she’s officially adding cookbook author to that list with the publication of In the Mood to Bake, her collection of 75 recipes for sweet treats including originals like salted malted pretzel blondies and twists on classics like homemade Pop-Tarts.

George is best known as the creator of Lily P. Crumbs, an online account with over 200,000 followers on Instagram and over 450,000 followers on Tik- Tok, where she shares her love of baking and the tips and tricks she has picked up along the way during her completely self-taught journey to the kitchen.

FINDING PEACE IN THE KITCHEN

After a childhood in South Jersey spent tinkering with recipes in the dawn of the food blogging era, George went off to college and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she worked as a news reporter, baking in her few free hours between sporadic morning and overnight shifts. At just 22, she was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in the body’s connective tissue, and came home to the Philadelphia area to receive treatment.

“Baking had always provided a sense of solace for me, and for the first time in my life I had full freedom to bake,” she says. “There was no work or deadlines keeping me out of the kitchen—it was really just my own energy.”

She soon launched Cooking With Cancer, a TikTok account dedicated to sharing her experiences. Her dedicated following was made up mostly of her chemo nurses and doctors, who would also receive the baked goods when she came in for her next treatment.

At the conclusion of her treatments, she transitioned the account to Lily P. Crumbs, named after her beloved dog, Lily P. In honor of her hard-fought second chance to build a career, she decided to fully commit to trying out the content-creator life.

“I would scroll Instagram watching these videos and feel a sort of jealousy thinking that I wanted to make them,” she admits. “It was my dream job. I had the skill set from often being a one-man band in the news industry—reporting, videoing, and editing everything—and the only barrier to entry was my perception. At that point, I couldn’t waste my second chance at life not doing something I knew I wanted to do.”

Her first viral series has become known as the “cookie quest”—the hunt for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe on the Internet. Always balancing science and silliness, she tried each one she could find, then ranked them in a spreadsheet based on effort, texture, and taste. The followers started rolling in. The search paid off; there are three chocolate chip cookie recipes in her upcoming book, ranging from thin and crispy to thick and chewy for every taste.

Baking should feel like play

THE BAKING PLAYGROUND

She has since become wellknown in the Philadelphia food scene and beyond; after starting out with pop-ups in Fishtown, where she sold cookies to browsing shoppers, she has been a guest on The Jennifer Hudson Show, and last year she was named Philadelphia Magazine’s Food and Drink Influencer of the Year.

She followed up her cookie quest with a series that re-created discontinued snacks from the ’90s, honoring the nostalgia for the kitchen of her childhood in all its joyful, whimsical glory.

“I grew up in a supportive family where I was allowed to experiment, make messes, and try new recipes, and food was definitely our love language,” she says. “There was such joy in making something for someone else, and it was such a carefree and fun experience, and making these snacks brings up so many fond memories of that time—it’s nostalgia in the purest sense of the word.”

That is George’s prevailing message, both on her account and in her cookbook: Baking is supposed to be fun.

“People often say baking is stressful because you have to be so exact, but once you have a gauge for it, you can find so much freedom in the process,” she says. “It’s all about knowing the rules to be able to break them, getting creative and finding the tweaks that work for you.”

In her cookbook, she aims to teach people not just how to make those 75 recipes, but how to turn that knowledge into endless possibilities.

“One of the fun things about the book is it teaches you how to riff,” she says. “I’m not asking you to develop your own recipes, but just to think more creatively using what you know about science from the front of the book and your own preferences.”

For example: Baklava monkey bread and cinnamon rolls are two distinct recipes in the cookbook. Once you understand the science, George says, what’s stopping you from adding the cinnamon roll spice mixture to the baklava monkey bread? Why not put the pistachio icing from the pistachio cupcake recipe on top of a cinnamon roll? Why not level up a sugar cookie by adding a flavor to the sugar mixture?

“I use a playground analogy,” she says. “There’s always something new you can try. We’re not adjusting the chemistry of the cookie, we’re just playing.”

IN THE PAGES

In the Mood to Bake, which will be published by W.W. Norton’s Countryman Press imprint in late September, is the culmination of several years of work. George began chatting with publishers in early 2022, putting the timeline at just over four years to go from an idea to a book on the shelf. “It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” George says. “For a long time I wondered if I had the right thing to say or if I was going to be able to give value in a saturated market, but once I found my voice in baking and felt like I could see myself in what I was making, I felt like I was ready to take it on.”

Just as she does for her accounts, George wrote, designed, and photographed everything in the book herself. In addition to a section dedicated to nostalgic bakes (Kudos Bars, Pop-Tarts, and Oreo Cakesters, anyone?) the book features cookies, cakes, bars, ice creams, and George’s personal favorite: breakfast recipes.

“Sweet breakfast is always my go-to, and the book has everything from bananas foster French toast to carrot cake scones,” she says. “I wanted it to be not just cookies or cakes, but everything that has made Lily P. Crumbs popular and everything I’ve noticed people loving.”

For baking beginners, the book has a guide to marshmallow and cereal treat bars, complete with ratios and ideas for swirls and mix-ins like chai spice, potato chips, or freeze-dried fruit.

“Cereal bars are such a fantastic place to play because the stakes are so low,” George explains. “You don’t have to worry about overbaking it because they’re all no-bake, and there are so many ways to branch off within the framework.”

George hopes the book will encourage people to try new recipes without the pressure of perfection.

“The reward for your hard work is getting to sit down and enjoy a brownie or a cookie, which is the absolute best,” she says. “And even if you mess up a cookie, you can throw it in a pint of ice cream and have something else great. What you made and messed up is probably still pretty damn delicious.”

Find George at lilypcrumbs.com or @lilypcrumbs on TikTok and Instagram