3 Comments
Dec 28, 2020Liked by Angie Liao & Dot Xu

I think you should schedule a Redemption week where, at some point, if you've amassed enough cooking failures, you dedicate a week to trying them again! Also, I messed up my own olive oil cake like 2 weeks ago, so I sympathize.

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Dot is TOO precious! I love the cast of characters you've introduced. (And I bet Joe would have wanted a slice of underdone cake with hot orange on top; honestly, I would like a slice of that.) Some days are shit, plain and simple. But even amid the shit, you managed to make a cake! I think that's pretty darn impressive.

OK, maybe I'm with your mom on the savory treat train, but the pull apart rolls and salty nut tart sound especially divine, and I am so excited for this week!

P.S. I made the vegan cannoli, because I love you, but good god am I a bad baker. Just truly awful. I tested three different filling recipes: one almond + coconut cream variant; another using Tofutti vegan ricotta; and a third (the winner!) made from a mixture of firm silken tofu, vegan cream cheese, powdered sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, orange zest, a little maple syrup, and a few limp blackberries to try to mask the tofu taste. (Clearly, this was a misguided and self-directed process. I impulsively added random ingredients in a blender until I was nauseous and tired of tasting sweet tofu.) I had way too much leftover cannoli filling after timidly frying up only 12 mini pastry taco shells, so I threw the extra filling into a vegan pound cake recipe with chocolate chips. Overall, both were--fine! I wish I had Claire's tips and tricks to shepherd me through (instead of the internet and my poor intuition). Woof, OK, I'm going to press pause on the frenetic baking for the moment, but I would have NEVER rolled my own dough (or eaten so much sugary tofu?) without your loving encouragement. It was fun; I feel oddly accomplished! Sending love.

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Sara, the people demand photos of your vegan cannoli! Please don't give up, I really believe that the pursuit is eminently worthwhile, at least until you come visit me in Connecticut and we can go to the vegan creamery for their cannolis.

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