It’s New Years Eve, and to close out 2025, we have a special edition of Inside The Arts.
We begin with a question: are fancy cakes and pies art?
WKAR’s Scott Pohl has the story behind a cookbook recently published by a Lansing TV news anchor.
The oft-heard phrase “breaking news” lends itself to a cookbook by a TV news anchor. News 10’s David Andrews has adapted it to fit his new cookbook. Baking News features recipes and photos from his hobby: baking decorative cakes and pies.
It isn’t a big stretch to consider his creations to be works of art.
When Andrews was anchoring morning newscasts, he developed a hobby of going home after his Friday shows to make what he called a “weekend cake.” It started simply, with box cakes and frosting from a can. Then came the pandemic. “I thought, I’ve got to bump these weekend cakes up a little bit, you know? I’ve got to do something!” He went on to say “at the same time, you have a lot of time on your hands. You’re watching these cooking shows and the Food Network, and all of these different recipes and elaborate things, so I thought I should start making some of these from scratch instead of using the box.”
As his love for baking from scratch grew, Andrews found himself receiving baking supplies as gifts for his birthdays and at Christmas, and he started to up his game. As his designs became more elaborate, he started posting pictures on social media, and his followers took notice.
He doesn’t have a particularly artistic background and has had no formal training as a decorative baker. Andrews says he simply has a knack for seeing something he admires, maybe from a baking competition TV show, and mimicking it. “It’s uncanny,” he continued, “but I can look at somebody’s design on a cake and kind of recreate it, and then embellish and make it my own, you know, and take ideas from different designs I see on cakes and then combine them into my own creation.”
As for the pies he makes, Andrews says they require an entirely different skill set from his cakes, skills that he almost likes better. He loves making pie dough by hand, and he uses cutouts to help with his precision.
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With all that baking, you might wonder how these cakes and pies taste. Andrews and his wife Monica Harris are empty nesters, so they can’t possibly eat everything he bakes. He winds up taking a lot of these desserts in to the station to share with his TV-10 colleagues, adding “I’ve had no complaints yet, and people are still asking ‘what are you bringing in from the weekend?’ And so, it gets consumed pretty quickly.”
Treating the people he works with ultimately led WILX general manager Debbie Petersmark to suggest the cookbook. It took Andrews the better part of a year to compile his recipes and photographs. He wanted any proceeds to go to charity, so two non-profits were chosen. To date, more than 1,000 copies have been sold.
Along with cakes and pies, Baking News includes recipes for frosting, cookies, breads, and breakfast bakes. There are also submissions from other TV-10 personalities, including Tim Staudt, Taylor Gattoni, and Darrin Rockcole.
Andrews says his kitchen has become a source of peace in his life. “It’s very calming”, he concluded. “It’s very focused, and so that I can block most everything out of my mind and just focus on that. And so, to me, it’s kind of like therapy.”
With the success of Baking News, Andrews says he has already started collecting more recipes and pictures for a possible sequel.
NEW YEAR’S EVE EVENTS:
Electric Flower Company will play at the Green Door in Lansing. Doors open at 7.
Jeff Baldori will be at Urban Beat in Old Town Lansing tonight. That’s at 7.
Starfarm will perform at a New Year’s Eve Party at Grewal Hall in Lansing tonight, with doors opening at 8 p.m.
Ten Pound Fiddle will hold a contra dance tonight with a potluck dinner at 6:30, a dance workshop at 7:30, and a contra dance from 8 to midnight with the Sligo Creek Ramblers at Central United Methodist Church in Lansing.
