First up — I realized that a correction needed to be made for last weekend’s vegan strawberry and cream cake recipe. You don’t want to use vanilla paste. I tried and the vegan whipped cream was no bueno because of the xanthan gum involved. Grab the updated the vegan recipe and PDF. The correction did not impact the standard recipe for the strawberry and cream cake for fans of eggs and dairy!

It’s not every week that you have a book launch and the icon Nigella Lawson says that parts of your new book are indispensable. Yes, she did. Nigella featured Cooking Thai in this week’s post at her website’s Cookbook Corner, which offers not just recipes from cookbooks but also Nigella’s inimitable voice and authentic reflections on food writing and cooking.

Cooking Thai is my eighth cookbook release and it was not as stressful because I am a co-star. At the book launch dinner at Pim’s restaurant, Nari, I got to enjoy the food cooked from the book, flowing wine, and company! I did have to work a bit for our book launch talk held at Omnivore Books in San Francisco. It was standing room only with overflow onto the sidewalk. Thankfully, they handed us microphones and had a speaker outside.

We signed many copies Cooking Thai, which ought to be en route to PTFS folks who pre-ordered from the shop. I also signed copies of my solo book projects too so if you want those, check the Omnivore Books website. It was great to briefly catch up with old friends, PTFS subscribers, and meet new cookbook authors, like , who has a fabulous new book — Great Bakes from the Midwest.

Cooking Thai condiment guide

Among the many things Nigella wrote about Cooking Thai was that the section on ingredients was indispensable. We built it to be just that but we didn’t know if others would take note of it! I’ve been in the fog about many Thai ingredients for decades. Pim answered all my Thai ingredient questions, which helped us build the book with extra detail and insights.

If you already have the book, turn to page 22. If you’re waiting for the book and gearing up or just curious about the Thai pantry, check out article on Basic Salty, Spicy Condiments and Seasonings for Cooking Thai Food at the website (it’s free!).

Cooking Thai spotlights near and far

Raise your hand if you’re a Food & Wine magazine fan! The September issue that just hit the newsstand contains a “Curry Class” feature article written by Pim and me. In the book, the curry chapter (over 50 pages long) is the biggest because curries are essential to Thai daily life and celebrations. For that reason, the chapter contains a wealth of practical tips and techniques along with some of Pim’s brilliant curry pastes formulas and favorite curry recipes.

Food & Wine editors and test kitchen crew test drove a handful of recipes for the feature, including this one. I’m thrilled by the magazine’s positive response.

If you’re more of an online reader, Nigella spotlighted the book’s Bougie Pad Gaprao (holy basil and beef stir-fry) on her website. To try some Cooking Thai recipes on Substack, check out these newsletter dispatches by Bay Area author (Savory Thai Citrus-Herb Salad) and NY-based Maggie Hoffman of (Kin Khao Wings; Maggie also interviewed Pim for her podcast and post).

For a behind-the-scenes look at cookbook making, interviewed me about my first cookbook collaboration for the Cookbook Collective.

Sharing the Cooking Thai love . . .

When you cook from Cooking Thai, tag me (on Substack Notes or on Instagram
@ andreanguyen88) and Pim (@ chezpim) so we can amplify your enthusiasm! And, please review the book on Amazon or wherever you purchased your copy to help other people realize the book’s value.

Emily (@lucylovesbooks) got her signed copy from Now Serving in Los Angeles. Maia (@thecookbooknerd) went Thai grocery shopping. Joe made a DIY book bundle from Amazon! Cooking Thai’s laab Issan and Thai tea cheesecake prepared by Nikki (@skoppbakery).

If you have any questions about Cooking Thai or Thai cooking, let me know. I might be able to help!

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I hope you had a good week yourself and I’ll be back on Thursday with a Midweek Gems — which we’ve not had in a while!

A friend asked me last week how long it takes to get a recipe right. I told him the only answer I know: As long as it takes. I’d like to be someone who could “adjust my expectations,” make peace with “close enough,” or have the slightest amount of chill when it’s clear that whatever I’m trying to do isn’t something I can pull off, but we’re wired how we’re wired.

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Let’s talk about hemp milk. It’s easy to make at home (no soaking required), and yields a silky-smooth, creamy milk. Hemp milk boasts the most impressive nutrition profile of my alternative milk recipes, offering nearly 10 grams of plant-based protein per serving. While hemp milk can’t compete on the calcium front, it offers an array of nutrients that can be hard to come by otherwise.

I always feel good about sprinkling some hemp seeds into my baby’s food or serving my daughter a glass of this hemp milk. It was our house milk of choice for a couple of years, though she’s grown more particular—fingers crossed that she likes the chocolate variation I made today.

If you take nothing else away from this post, consider adding a sprinkle of hemp seeds to your next smoothie recipe! They’ll blend right in and offer an easy boost of protein.

Continue to the recipe...

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This Chinese Spinach Salad is a hearty and delicious way to enjoy lots of fresh spinach. Adding tofu skin and peanuts makes it extra tasty and nutrient-dense!  The Art of the Chinese “Cold Dish”    Every year, I like to come up with one or two new “cold dishes” that can be served chilled or room […]

This Chinese-style Steamed Lobster is cooked to perfection and finished with a garlic soy butter that brings out the very best in the sweet, tender meat. It’s a seafood treat that has the best of both worlds—the simplicity of steamed lobster and butter, with Chinese flavors!  A Lobster Recipe Bridging East and West There’s something […]

Last weekend, soon after the Strawberry and Cream Dream Cake recipe published, Anh emailed asking if I thought a vegan version was possible. I know little about vegan baking. What to do about eggs for the batter? What about the whipped cream frosting? Those are are all ingredients that brilliantly and naturally function to make baking’s chemistry work.

Could I come up with a version that would fool even non vegans?

To goad me on, Rory reminded me of the 1970s Chiffon margarine commercial:

Ha! So, I spent most of this past week working on an eggless, dairy-free version of my pandan-strawberry and cream cake. Finally, I got satisfaction on Saturday afternoon.

Just because you’re vegan doesn’t mean you should be left out of the dream cake action. I shared the cake with two neighbors — one who’d sampled the regular cake on two trials, and the other is a former vegan. They all enjoyed the vegan cake!

Rory was skeptical but was impressed by the cake’s flavor, which allowed the pandan to shine more than in the regular version. He adored the vegan whipped cream frosting. “No one would know that the whipped cream frosting is vegan,” he said.

The whipped cream

The main reason this cake took me so long to figure out was the whipped cream. I went six (6) rounds with it. Most of the experiments tasted gross or failed to fluff up. No, I didn’t want to use a commercial product because they’re unreliable and can taste funny. In the end, I manipulated a recipe by Miyoko Schindler to get the flavor, texture, and performance that I wanted for this frosting — which is icing on the cake in many ways.

With this vegan cake recipe, the Strawberry and Cream Dream Cake reaches a much a broader range of eaters!

🌱 If you follow a vegan diet— here’s your dream cake with variations and a luscious whipped cream frosting that you’ll be using for lots of other treats.

🥛 🚫 If you’re lactose intolerant, the whipped cream frosting is phenomenal. It would be great for the regular version of this cake or other cakes.

⚡️ If you’re an omnivore, these recipes offer useful takeaways on how to fool Mother Nature and up your cooking game.

While I have you here, watch my helpful video tip for moving a cake around:

There’s lots more below to help you avoid my fumbles and succeed:

• Two (2) recipes in full text and downloadable PDF

  • Vegan Pandan-Strawberry and Cream Cake

  • Vegan Vanilla Whipped Cream Frosting

• Three (3) cake variations for vegan versions of Matcha-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, Citrusy Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, and Vanilla-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake

• Explainers about why certain hero ingredients work better than others

• Advance prep pointers to help you easily make this cake

Let’s whip up this cake!

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This Chinese milk pudding is light and creamy. You may recognize it from dim sum restaurants. They’re chilled cubes of milk pudding coated in coconut that are the perfect little sweet treat! A Lightly Sweet Chinese Dessert I’m always looking for desserts that aren’t too sweet, and this Chinese milk pudding coated in coconut flakes […]

It’s been over a year since our last garden/farm update, but we’ve been busy working on a big project: our new kitchen and studio! Who doesn’t like a good before and after home renovation project? Let’s jump in!  At this point, it’s become a bit of a cliche for barns to become food blogging central […]

When Asian people celebrate — birthdays, graduations, retirement, whatever — there’s likely to be a layer cake featuring fresh strawberries and light, fluffy whipped cream. Such cakes are stalwarts at Asian bakeries, which churn them out daily. But truth be told, the cakes are rather tasteless because they are mass produced with unripe, sturdy fruit. The whipped cream doesn’t taste like much and neither does the cake itself. I’ve been disappointed too many times by these perfect looking cakes. So I bake my own.

Gearing up for my mom’s 92nd birthday luncheon, I dreamt of baking her a pandan cake. My initial thoughts went to a favorite pandan chiffon cake recipe (🆓 on my website). It’s showstopper green and fragrant from the alluring vanilla-coconut flavor of pandan leaf (screwpine, lá dứa in Vietnamese). Baked in an angel food cake mold, pandan chiffon cake is casual. I needed easy-ish celebratory sparkle, a cake I could bake after a day of work and one that would hold up to an 8-hour roadtrip to my mom’s house. 💖

In the end, I tweaked Shilpa Uskokovic’s strawberry roll cake recipe in a recent issue of Bon Appetit. My creation was a pandan-strawberry cake filled with a coconutty whipped cream. We had twelve adults and two toddlers and when it came time for dessert, I presented the cake. Viola!

My sister Tasha gasped. “You made that?” she said. She’d eaten lots of strawberry and cream cakes with me when we lived near Monterey Park in the 1990s.

Everyone loved the cake, though Linh, my avid baker sister, said, “The cream is delicious but I’d like more cake.” I agreed. You didn’t taste enough pandan. Plus the cake was strangely salty. (Linh had baked a Sicilian orange cake for my mom so our cakes shared the plates.)

Driving home, I sketched out a new recipe for a thicker cake in my head. It took two more bakes before I arrived at the versatile recipe I’m sharing with you today.

Along the way, test cakes went to the neighbors. One neighbor shared a big piece with their grieving best friend who’d just lost her mother to a long battle with breast cancer. The friend ate the biggest piece, I was told.

As I aimed for a thicker cake, I realized that you can’t roll it because the cake cracks and breaks. You can’t see it in the cake on the left but there’s a fissure that kept getting bigger as the cake sat. The neighbors didn’t mind, though!

I tinkered with the batter again and the cake broke during rolling. What to do?

I patched up the cake and pivoted to building a rectangular layer cake. Rory said it looked much fancier than the roll cake. They’re the same cake! 😆 😆 I gifted cake #4 to a different neighbor, who’d just finished an arduous week on a construction project. He couldn’t believe I had baked it and as you see (in his text above), he was so happy.

What began as an Asian celebration cake turned out to be a happiness cake for everyone. Along the way, I made different flavored cakes — pandan, matcha, citrus, and vanilla. I also made two kinds of whipped cream: vanilla and coconut. And yes, I also crafted roll and layer cakes. There were so many wondrous possibilities.

For all those reasons, this is my Strawberry and Cream Dream Cake recipe!

Below you’ll find a versatile, useful package of information containing.

• The Pandan-Strawberry and Cream Cake recipe that you can make as a roll cake or as a layer cake (in full text and downloable PDF), with vanilla whipped cream or a coconutty whipped cream!

• Three (3) cake variations for Matcha-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, Citrusy Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake, and Vanilla-Strawberry and Cream Layer Cake

• Pointers for choosing flavorful berries, natural pandan shortcuts, and making fluffy, stable whipped cream that holds up for days

• A video tips for making billowy cake batter

• Make ahead timing tips so you won’t get cranky

I’m not a skilled cake baker but I mastered this one enough to impress my jaded family and neighbors. It took me a few tries to get here but you’ll make a knockout cake on your first time out because I’ve eliminated a lot of the vagaries.

Bring this dreamy strawberry and cream cake into your dessert rotation.

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Scrambled Eggs with Shiso is my new favorite egg stir-fry. Aromatic shiso leaves, also known as perilla leaves, are sliced up and quickly scrambled with tender fluffy eggs for a tasty egg dish you feel good about eating.  (It’s even taken the lead over our family’s go-to Chinese Chive and Egg Stir-Fry, which says a […]

Hello friends!

Rob from Asheville, NC, emailed earlier this week asking about Thai cooking classes and I pointed him to Cooking Thai, which releases on August 25. I wish I had had this video to share with him. It’s the playback of our cookbook preview talk last Wednesday, August 12.

In the Zoom session, you’ll learn how we structured the book, worked together, and how much we love Cooking Thai. We hope you do too!

We appreciate IACP giving us the space to share our new book baby. I’ve been a member of the organization for decades. If you’re interested in joining, IACP shared this code » 20%offjoinnow « for a discount on your membership.

A zillion thanks to the PTFSers who attended from as far as New Zealand where it was very, very early in the morning! You asked standout questions on topics such as wine pairing and fresh coconut milk (Grant), tofu substitutions (Ann), turmeric storage (Jen), and the joy of cookbook collaboration (Nina). More about the book at my website.

If you have not already pre-ordered — head to a local bookshop or check out various online vendors. If you’re in the Bay Area, we’d love to meet you!

• Wed., Aug. 26, 6:30pm book talk @ Omnivore Books, SF

• Tues., Sept. 1, 7pm, book talk and tastings @ Bookshop Santa Cruz

Coming up on Sunday is a pandan-strawberry and cream cake recipe I’ve been developing for too long. After going four (4) rounds with the recipe, I’m happy to report that it’s finally ready for you.

You won’t believe that these blueberry muffins are gluten-free, but they are! The recipe has much in common with my Healthy Blueberry Muffins, but it uses almond flour instead of regular flour. No xanthan gum, no starches, just simple ingredients built around one gluten-free flour.

Transitioning a recipe from conventional wheat-based flour to almond flour is never straightforward. It requires reducing the amount of liquid, since almond flour is less absorbent, and fat, since almond flour naturally contains some. It took over ten tries to get the texture of this muffin just right, but it was worth the effort.

Like any great blueberry muffin, they’re golden on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and punctuated by jammy blueberries. Unlike most blueberry muffins, this recipe is quite wholesome but still tastes like a treat.

Continue to the recipe...

The post Almond Flour Blueberry Muffins (Gluten-Free) appeared first on Cookie and Kate.

While many things have been replaced by technology, keys are still with us: stiff, sharp metal objects we carry around in our pockets and handbags, messenger bags, and backpacks. We live in fear of losing them or getting locked out for a lack of them. While digital locks have made inroads somewhere, here in France, we live in the land of keys, and I regularly carry around almost a dozen or so every day, attached to a key ring that has fobs, badges, buttons. I don’t know if there’s a comparable word in French*, but I feel like a high school janitor.

I also recently added an Air Tag to the mishigas after I lost my keys six months ago and literally had a panic attack. Not because I was worried someone was going to find them and break into our apartment, but because it would have cost me over €600 ($700) to replace them, not to mention all the paperwork attached to getting them remade. And as I recently learned, all the time that it takes.

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I’ve lived in cities like San Francisco and New York, and having a key made cost $2 a pop at my local Ace Hardware store. When I was in New York last year, I had a key made but didn’t have any cash on me. The guy just looked at me and said, “Fuggedaboudit.” Here, I would have had to submit to a prise de sang, giving a blood sample and getting fingerprinted, with a promise to give them my first-born male child, before I’d be able to leave without paying.

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This Cherry Tomato Pasta recipe is for when you have more cherry (or grape) tomatoes than you know what to do with, or simply when they’re in season and most enjoyable!  Little tomatoes, butter, garlic, and olive oil are simmered to make a deliciously effortless sauce that’s more than the sum of its parts. It […]

It is an error that needs correcting that in the near-20 years of plugging recipes into this url, only a few truly star cucumbers — and highly unrepresentative too, given that we are probably eating some format of cucumbers at half the nights of the week with dinner, and snacking on them throughout all of the other days. Crunchy, cold, hydrating, inexpensive, and taking well to any region of ingredients you wish to apply, I don’t need to sell you on their appeal, especially as we slog through our nth heat wave of the summer. I suspect that the lack of cucumber representation in the archives has more to do with the fact that little about cucumber salads brings out my inner obsessive recipe finetuner; usually I’m just throwing it together.

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I was thrilled when Sami Tamimi told me he was coming to Paris. Sami recently released his third book, Boustany: A celebration of vegetables from my Palestine, so I invited him into my kitchen to make a recipe from it with me. And the weather was so nice, we decided to prepare it outside.

Get Boustany!

Sami is the co-founder of the Ottolenghi restaurants and delis, and the author of Falastin, one of my favorite cookbooks, which explores his Palestinian heritage through stories and recipes from his homeland. Boustany focuses ore squarely on the vegetable dishes of Palestine.

Sami’s book features a bounty of recipes that focus on vegetables, such as salads like the Fridge-raid fattoush, and there are beautifully verdant Gazan fava bean falafels. I’ve never made falafels, but his recipe and the gorgeous photo that accompanies it make me want to. Other recipes that I’ve bookmarked are the spicy Shatta condiment, Bulghur wheat dumplings & lentil soup, and Ouzi phyllo parcels, which are individual dishes filled with rice, orzo, vegetables, nuts, and spices.

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Where does chocolate fit in? Well, like tomatoes and squash (which are lavishly featured in the book), chocolate is also technically a fruit. And besides, who doesn’t love chocolate?

Since I’ve been in the chocolate mode, thanks to The Great Book of Chocolate coming out, I was glad Sami was up for doing some baking and showed up ready to make his Tahini, Halvah, and Coffee Brownies.

Pan-baked tahini, halva & coffee brownie
(Qahwa w Halaweh brownie)

Reprinted with permission from Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from my Palestine by Sami Tamimi, copyright © 2025. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House

Serves 6

“Imagine yourself sitting in one of many coffee shops dotted around the souk in Jerusalem’s old city, having a piece of chocolate and a strong, sweet Arabic cardamom coffee. One mouthful of this dessert can almost definitely transport you there. It’s a dessert meant for sharing, to be spooned straight from the pan. A great, easy, chewy and fudgy brownie which can be ready in under 20 minutes. It hits all the right spots for chocolate lovers like me.”

Rounded ½ cup / 150g tahini paste

½ cup / 120ml lukewarm water

Heaping ½ cup | 3% oz / 110g granulated sugar

2 large eggs

½ cup / 20g unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tbsp instant espresso coffee

¼ cup / 1 oz / 30g all-purpose flour

½ tsp ground cardamom

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp baking powder

salt

1½ oz / 40g dark chocolate chips or chocolate roughly chopped into ¼ inch | ½ cm pieces (70% cocoa solids) (½ cup chopped)

For the toppings

1½ tbsp sesame seeds

1½ oz / 40g dark chocolate chips or chocolate roughly chopped into ¼ inch | ½ cm pieces (70% cocoa solids) (½ cup chopped)

⅓ cup | 70g plain or vanilla halva, broken into chunks

vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a 8-inch | 22cm square baking pan or dish with sunflower oil and set aside.

Put the tahini and water into the bowl of a stand mixer, with the paddle attachment in place, and mix on medium-high speed for 2 minutes, until pale and smooth. Reduce to low speed, add the sugar, then the eggs, one at a time, and mix for a further 2 minutes.

Sift all the dry ingredients, using a fine sieve, and add them to the tahini mixture, along with aheaping ¼ teaspoon of salt and the chocolate. Mix for a minute more. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Sprinkle the top with the sesame seeds and chocolate and dot with the halva. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are set and the center is not runny (it needs to be slightly wet). Set aside for 10 minutes before serving.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

The brownie can be stored in the fridge for up to a week.

Visit Sami's Website

You can also watch me and Sami make the Chocolate salted butter caramel lava cakes (below) from The Great Book of Chocolate here.

Get The Great Book of Chocolate

Follow Sami on Instagram

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