For some, baking a cake or cookies during the holiday season means buying a box mix or refrigerated cookie dough and some prepared frosting and assembling. For others, running down to the local grocery store bakery is all of the baking they will do. Melissa Gray intends to change that with her cookbook/journey into the world of baking in "All Cakes Considered" with photographs by Annabelle Breakey and Stephen Voss (Chronicle Books, $24.95).

Gray, a producer for the NPR show "All Things Considered," became known as the NPR Cake Lady when she started on a journey to learn how to bake a from-scratch cake after her brother bought her a tube pan for Christmas after the lavish desserts of their childhood started to dwindle. She decided to share her results with her co-workers every Monday. The recipes in the book are the result of her baking year and start from a beginner's cake all the way to expert.

Gray starts her book with a bit about her cake project, including the fact she wrote her book for anyone who wants to learn how to bake. She then explains how to use the book (recipes go in chronological order from easiest to hardest) and what kind of equipment you will need to bake the cakes within. There's also a section of cookies and fruit pies for when you get sick of cake. After having tried out two cakes (one for my co-workers and then one for my family,) I decided to make some cookies. You know, like I do every weekend from Thanksgiving until Christmas.

I made the Peanut Butter Fingers, which are really Peanut Butter Oatmeal bar cookies. These cookies were mentioned as the author's favorite and the only real baking she did before this project. Having excess oats after having to make my dad cranberry oatmeal cookies again (from the Baking Kids Love book reviewed in our "Feeding Your Family" column) I went for these, making not one, but TWO double batches. They're pretty easy to make - a typical cookie batter of eggs, butter and sugars, and adding crunchy peanut butter and oatmeal before spreading in a pan and baking. They make a pretty thick bar cookie - one that satisfies the sweet tooth and fills you up so you don't go mad and eat the whole pan. Everyone who had them seemed to like them, and I'm getting suggestions that I need to make them again.