A salad no one is making, a tofu everyone should, and the cookie finale!

Plus - cake!

Bon soir my little pomme frites - which means I am writing this at NIGHT, which is practically revelatory. I’m a night person now! Which I fully credit to the summer solstice coming, but hey, I will take any win I can get.

Between super-secret-brand-deals (I can’t share my cocktail from IG stories just yet, but soon!), doing a recipe & development series on TikTok, and your regularly scheduled posts in-feed, I’ve been feeling like I’m creating content non-stop. And looking at this week’s round-up, there’s a lot to share! This is a great thing, but it also might mean pacing will decrease in the coming weeks (also because we’re going to Nashville next weekend, so if you have any recommendations, let me know!)

I am looking forward to this summer like nobody’s business, but I do think it’s the hardest time to balance work, life, and self-care. There’s so much to do but so little time to do it, so I might make a summer bucket list of half food activities, half life activities to make sure I stay sane. If you also feel the same, maybe we can support-group it together here. That, or you can just tell me about your fabulous summer plans in the comments, I will take either. The whole goal is just to make sure this summer doesn’t fly by without me in it!

But now, the food, which will get increasingly bright, fresh and crispy as the months get hot, sticky and sweaty (yay!)

The weekly round-up

Sambal Almond Butter Salad - GOOD GOD someone please make this salad. It’s been my addiction for weeks, and while I filmed it in bad lighting, it’s so filling, wholesome and GOOD. The salty, spicy almond butter mixes with a light, gingery dressing to make one of the best combos I’ve had in a minute.

The new and improved Gideon’s Cookies! - if you want the final science and thoughts behind this, you can find it in the blog post and on TikTok. We went through a journey together on this one.

Tofu cutlet with avocado and lemony Aleppo sprouts - I wanted avocado toast, but also I wanted a cutlet. The cutlet won. Also I took your notes to improve the cutlet’s internal flavor, and honestly, thank you for the feedback!

And finally, Eric’s Birthday Cake! I used Joanne Chang’s recipe from Pastry Love for the cake, modifying it slightly to make two chocolate layers and two coffee chocolate layers, and used her recipe for the coffee syrup to brush on top of each. I used classic recipes for the chocolate, peanut butter and vanilla bean buttercreams, and the cake only used 9 sticks of butter! What a win. It was well-loved, here’s a picture of it in the wild:

And with that, a big week comes to an end. I hope your week was equally exciting, but maybe without the drama of a four layer cake. But if you add to your weekend’s drama by choosing to make a four layer cake? Well, I’d support that, too.

Ok, now enjoy this beautiful day.

Xoxo,

MakeThatSalad_Snacks