3 Sweet Lessons We Learned From Our Cookbook Club's Cookie Swap

At our December Cookbook Club Sweets Swap at Food52 HQ on Thursday night, dried oranges hung on a balsam fir tree, pomander balls dotted the tables, and trays (and trays and trays) of sweets from Renato Poliafito’s Dolci! adorned our office’s countertops. And while the desserts satisfied our sweet tooth, we all left with a lot more than a box of cookies. Here are the three biggest lessons we took from the night.

Dolci! is all about the melding of Renato’s Italian and American cultures. His parents left Sicily for Brooklyn in 1957 and, as the youngest, he considers himself the most Americanized. His book is a mosaic of his identity in food form. “[Dolci!] is packed with the flavors I grew up with, the techniques I acquired later in life, the shared traditions of nonnas from Bensonhurst to Bologna, and the collective hearts and imaginations of Italians in two countries.” Embrace what you bring to the table, literally and figuratively.

We’ll never be using a measuring cup again. Says Renato: “If you're scooping a cup of flour, the weight will vary wildly depending on how you scoop it. But if you're measuring 500 grams of flour, it's always going to be 500 grams of flour. It's like, case closed.” Baking is a science. The recipes are tried and true experiments. Replicate accordingly.

Renato studied art and design before fulfilling a dream of opening a coffee shop. Now, he owns his own bakery, Ciao, Gloria and a new restaurant, Pasta Night, both in Brooklyn. How’d he get there? He never let doubt get in the way. “I didn’t really have the experience in the beginning,” he says. “When we opened, I was like ‘Oh okay, now I need to learn how to bake.’ You just have to put your face to the fire.” So, maybe your dream job appears a little later in life and in a different form. Just keep an open mind. This goes for recipes, too. You may think ricotta in a black and white cookie is an unnecessary addition, but as we can attest from trying it at the sweets swap, it may be the exact thing it needs. In short, dream big.

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Thank you to our partners BelGioioso for the incredible cheese spread, Smithfield for adding a little bacon kick to our evening, and Mepal for making sure our guests had to-go containers. Another special thanks to Renato Poliafito for the wonderful evening of sweets and celebration. To join our Cookbook Club on Facebook, click here.