Founder Files: Olive Oil Cake, Sweater Weather & Creamy Curry Udon

Welcome to the latest edition of Food52 Founder Amanda Hesser’s weekly newsletter, Hey there, it’s Amanda, packed with food, travel, and shopping tips, Food52 doings, and other matters that catch her eye. Get inspired—sign up here for her emails.

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I’m in Morocco on a sourcing trip for our Shop with Jojo, Food52’s GM—lots more to come on this in my next newsletter. In the meantime, my big news is that last week a friend asked if I could bake the Maialino Olive Oil Cake with her 14-year-old son, Axel.

If you haven’t made this cake, add it to your cooking bucket list. It took us all of 10 minutes to get it ready to go in the oven, and the resulting dessert was stellar. Thank you, Danny Meyer, for creating the place that bore this classic!

Axel has a lot of opinions, and so do I. He doesn’t like to measure; I’m a dip-and-sweep baker. He thought the orange zest looked gross; I think it makes the cake. We found our way—cake diplomacy!—and while it baked, he taught me how to ride a one-wheel and I introduced him to badminton and let him drink soda (sorry, Axel’s mom!). I used to like to cook alone; Axel reminded me that cooking with people and finding middle ground on your styles makes it all more joyful. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was Axel’s highly-approximate measurement of baking soda, but the cake turned out better than ever.

Addendum: I like this cake plate because it makes a good fruit platter when you don’t have a cake to house, and it’s low enough to double as a cheese plate when you have friends over.

Now that we’ve crossed the Labor Day threshold and are fully in September, César is getting us ready for nights with a chill in the air with his creamy curry udon. Here’s a good pan to make it in.

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

“Sweater Weather” is also a great song. Just sayin'.

Do you have a problem area or item in your home that you need fixed? Take a video of it—like Nicole, our Community Editor, did here—post it on your Instagram or TikTok, tag Food52 and include #f52problemsolvers. For the Food52ers whose videos we re-post, we’ll send a product that can help! We look forward to seeing what's bugging you!

We now have an Instagram account dedicated to our Cookbook and Baking Clubs! Follow and cook with us from our September books: Ali Stafford’s Pizza Night and Sam Seneviratne’s Bake Smart.

If I were home, I’d be watching the Open while ~sending emails and~ sipping Nea’s ginger-and-prosecco infused Big Batch Honey Deuce Spritz, her twist on the official drink of the US Open. Her parents, the makers of AO Glass, designed one of the winner’s trophies—how cool is that? So cool, we filmed them at their Vermont studio for a recent episode of our maker series.

Have a great week!

Amanda

P.S. Two days after baking the cake with Axel, I came home to find a package on our counter. Axel had made the cake on his own at home, and brought me some to bake. His baking future is bright!