Our common nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Ana Gonzalez, through this complicated country.

We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature, and get closer to the things we're missing.

Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, I'm Frances Lamb, and this is Splendid Table Selects, our mini podcast about the stuff that makes us better cooks and eaters.

So the other day, we were at a potluck at our friend's place with a few other families and all of our toddlers and kidney gardeners.

And at some point, all the kids decide to entertain themselves by going to the next room and

jumping on the bed, which was actually fine by us because it meant we could eat our dessert

without them knowing it.

And then my daughter comes out and sees us.

So now we're caught, right?

And we stayed calm and said, hey, bud, want to bite a cake?

And she says, also very calmly, no thank you. What just happened? Like, how did she turn down cake?

Then she turns around and yells back to the other kids, guys, there's cake!

And now this battalion of kids is just charging at us, screaming, cake, cake!

So I have absolutely no idea why she did that.

Like why our kid turned down cake for herself but then unleashed the hordes on us?

But I absolutely do understand the thrill that the word cake brings. And what if you can have

cake on the table whenever the moment called for it, whether it's for a mob of kids or a quiet,

civilized coffee break, even if you don't consider yourself much of a baker.

That's where Odette Williams comes in.

She is the author of the new book, The Simply titled Simple Cake.

And our contributor Melissa Clark met up with Odette in New York to talk about simple cake.

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