Olive oil cake, sweater weather and creamy curry udon

Welcome to the latest edition of Food52 founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly newsletter. Hi, I’m Amanda.packed with tips on food, travel and shopping, Food52 activities and other topics that catch your attention. Get inspired: sign up here to receive their emails.

I’m in Morocco on a sourcing trip for our shop with Jojo, the CEO of Food52. I’ll tell you much more about this in my next newsletter. In the meantime, my big news is that last week a friend asked me if I could make Maialino olive oil cake with her 14-year-old son, Axel.

If you haven’t made this cake yet, add it to your kitchen to-do list. It took us 10 minutes to prepare and pop into the oven, and the resulting dessert was spectacular. Thank you, Danny Meyer, for creating the place that gave birth to this classic!

Axel has a lot of opinions, and so do I. He doesn’t like to measure; I make everything with ingredients that can’t be mixed. He thought orange zest looked gross; I think it makes the cake richer. We found our way (cake diplomacy!) and while it baked, he taught me how to ride a one-wheeled bike and I introduced him to badminton and let him drink soda (sorry, Axel’s mom!). I liked to cook alone; Axel reminded me that cooking with other people and finding a middle ground in styles makes everything more joyful. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was Axel’s very rough measurement of baking soda, but the cake turned out better than ever.

Addition: I like this cake plate because it makes a nice fruit plate when you don’t have a cake to place on it and it’s low enough to also be used as a cheese plate when you have friends over.

Now that we’ve crossed the threshold of Labor Day and are in the middle of September, Caesar prepares us for the cool nights with his creamy curry udon. Here’s a good pan to prepare it.

Merrill—Merrill!—I was given this sweater brush for Christmas one year and I love it so much that I travel with it. I recently purchased the lint comb as well. No more pilling! We just added both to our shop.

“Sweater Weather” is also a great song. Just saying.

Do you have a problem or item around your home that needs fixing? Record a video (like our Community Editor Nicole did) and post it on Instagram or TikTok, tag Food52 and include #f52problemsolvers. Food52ers whose videos we repost will be sent a product that can help. We can’t wait to see what’s troubling you!

We now have an Instagram account dedicated to our cooking and baking book clubs! Follow along and cook from our September books: Ali Stafford’s Pizza night and Sam Seneviratne Bake Smart.

If I were at home, I’d be watching the Open while ~emailing and~ drinking Nea’s ginger- and prosecco-infused Big Batch Honey Deuce Spritz, her take on the official drink of the U.S. Open. Her parents, the creators of AO Glass, designed one of the winners’ trophies. How cool is that? So cool that we filmed them in their Vermont studio for a recent episode of our maker series.

Have a great week!

Amanda

PS: Two days after baking the cake with Axel, I came home to find a package on the counter. Axel had made the cake himself at home and had brought me some to bake. His future in baking is promising!