Cake Zine is a hedonistic exploration of history, pop culture, literature, and art through sweets. The fourth issue, Tough Cookie, presents a hearty batch of trials and triumphs all in the context of cookies. It's ninety-six pages of recipes, essays, illustrations, poems, fiction, and photographs include:
- A wartime dispatch from the Ukrainian bakery keeping the ovens alight and the frontline fueled by Felicity Spector
- An interview with a Times Square Cookie Monster mascot trading selfies for tips by Katie Way
- Sweet and surreal fiction by Catherine Lacey, Hilary Leichter, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva
- An admiring salute to the cookiecutter shark by Sabrina Imbler
- A feature on the coalition of international workers staffing the Canadian Oreo factory assembly line by Soobin Kim
- Recipes for cookies tough in texture, technique, or tone by Abi Balingit, Briana Holt, Caroline Schiff, Chloe-Rose Crabtree, Paola Velez, and Yesenia Castañon
- An ode to the psychic pleasures of wearing gourmand perfumes by Tracy Wan
- Plus a dishy reflection on being the head chef at a powerful Wall Street bank in the eighties, a eulogy for the end of the browser cookie, using Lorna Doones as currency in the psych ward, and much more.
