She named her brand after her geriatric dog. She started her Instagram account while in chemotherapy and called it Cooking with Cancer. She photographed her own cookbook in her parents' basement with the help of her mom's mahjong friend Karen, a hobby photographer in her 70s who ended up with photos on the back cover of the finished book. And she has never once paywalled a recipe because she learned to bake from bloggers who were generous enough to share everything for free.

Alex George is the founder of Lily P Crumbs and the author of In the Mood to Bake, a cookbook that comes out September 29, 2026 and is as warm, whimsical, and genuinely joyful as everything else Alex has ever made. The brand is named after her beloved dog Lily P, who lived to 21 years old. The cookbook is a love letter to nostalgia, creativity, and the belief that knowing the rules is just the beginning of knowing how to break them.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Alex to chat growing up in the 90s Googling baking recipes on the one family desktop, majoring in public policy and interning on Capitol Hill, becoming a TV news reporter in Tennessee who filmed herself, to being diagnosed with a rare cancer at 22. From starting a baking Instagram account in the hospital to slowly and methodically building Lily P Crumbs over nearly a decade, through multiple jobs and a graduate degree and a COVID lockdown she had just emerged from a year of chemotherapy to experience. To a cookbook deal she almost did not pursue until her best friend Sam told her she would regret it forever.

This is a conversation about baking as a love language, about building something slowly and with your whole heart, and about what it means to decide that if you are lucky enough to get more life, you are going to do everything you were too scared to do before.

In this episode, we cover:

• Growing up in the ‘90s and early 2000s and the dawn of baking bloggers like Sally's Baking Blog and Cupcakes and Cashmere
• The one family desktop, waiting for her brother to finish playing Backyard Baseball, and Googling how to make a cupcake
• A middle school layered brownie cake for her best friend's brother's graduation that she genuinely thought she invented
• Majoring in public policy at college, interning on Capitol Hill, and gravitating toward storytelling and journalism
• Becoming a TV news reporter who filmed herself, set up her own satellite, and walked in front of the camera all at once
• Being diagnosed with a rare cancer at 22 while working in Tennessee and choosing to come back to Philadelphia for treatment at Penn
• Baking for her doctors and nurses during chemotherapy and starting an Instagram account called Cooking with Cancer
• Changing the name to Lily P Crumbs after her 21-year-old geriatric dog and getting her ServSafe certification
• The bag of cookies someone thought were dog treats because of the illustration of Lily licking a cupcake
• Stamping the back of every bag with "Not for canine consumption, humans only"
• Doing wholesale through a sandwich shop in Philadelphia and New Jersey
• Coming back to news as a freelancer, then moving to PR, then grad school, then finally committing to Lily P Crumbs full-time
• The moment she started posting real thoughts about cookies and people started following along
• The public spreadsheet ranking cookies by texture, effort level, and her personal analysis
• Being too afraid to show her face on camera for the first five videos and the moment that changed
• Getting approached by a publisher and the imposter syndrome that almost made her say no
• Her best friend Sam telling her she would regret it forever and the decision that followed
• Sam being on the cover of the cookbook (her thumb) after being called away from the nail salon as an emergency hand model
• Photographing the entire cookbook herself in her parents' basement after learning from her mom's mahjong friend Karen in her 70s
• What makes recipe development for a cookbook completely different from developing recipes for the internet
• The riffs sections: mix-and-match guides that help readers find their own baking voice
• The through line of In the Mood to Bake: whimsy, nostalgia, and knowing enough about the rules to break them
• Standout recipes: pumpkin ginger ice cream sandwiches, apple cider blondies that taste like apple cider donuts, Pop-Tarts in hot fudge sundae and brown sugar cinnamon, and recreated Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cheesecake Bars
• The discontinued snack section and a Ben and Jerry's flavors series
• Why she has never paywalled a recipe and the philosophy behind keeping everything free
• Revenue streams: food blog with monetized ads, brand partnerships, and the cookbook
• Book tour: New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington DC, Arkansas, San Francisco, and virtual events including a Milk Street Boston cooking class
• The Frenchtown New Jersey cookbook club where everyone makes a recipe and brings it potluck-style
• The cookie swap in New York where followers finally became real people
• Advice for founders and creators: trying is not cringey, it is cool, and the only person you have to answer to is yourself

Find Alex and Lily P Crumbs:

• Website: lilypcrumbs.com
• Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook: @lilypcrumbs
• Cookbook: In the Mood to Bake, available September 29, 2026 wherever books are sold

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