Nepal, Dec. 28 -- There is a moment, early in December, when the kitchen seems to lean toward you. The light is different somehow. It is lower, softer, forgiving, and the air that wafts from the hallways carries a promise. This is the season when baking stops being an everyday act and becomes something ceremonial, almost devotional. Holiday season baking is not about efficiency or restraint. It is about excess, about warmth, about believing (if only briefly) that butter and sugar might hold the world together.

I begin every year the same way: pulling out tins that clatter loudly despite having sat untouched for months. They smell faintly of last winter. Vanilla, cocoa, a ghost of spice and opening them feels like opening a memory. Butter...