cardamom pistachio snickerdoodles

and some thoughts on creativity

Helloooooo friends!!! It’s been a minute since I’ve written you #itsnotyouitsme. But I promise it’s for good reasons.

Something happened around the turn of this year. Maybe it’s this new moon cycle, settling into a post-pandemic world, or reemerging after a breakup … but I am HERE and I am LIVING.

It feels like I’m tapping into the fullest expression of myself. And she bursting with creativity.

I believe we are all born creative beings, but then we get beat down so much by society to fit into certain paradigms, that we forget this along the way.

For many years, I thought I wasn’t creative because I didn’t draw, sing, or play an instrument. But one day, I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” and these words struck me to my core:

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels — that’s creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place — that’s what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one.

I realized that creativity is within us all - it’s just up to us to find it. And going on that hunt is what makes an enchanting life. It’s not about doing it perfectly, it’s about going hunting in the first place. And doesn’t it sound way more fun that way?!

So, in 2020, at 30 years old, I started going hunting by playing around with something that has always excited me : food & writing. I decided to start this newsletter upon encouragement by my friend Jesse. I look back at younger me, and remember how scared I was to *put myself out there.* Especially in a city like NYC where literally everyone is doing amazing, creative, inspiring things all the damn time (not to mention seeming to make a liveable income while doing it) and it’s so easy to fall into the trap of “why bother - someone is just going to do it better than me anyway.”

But I remember pushing myself to post the newsletter every week, pouring hours and hours over the recipe, the photos, the accompanying Instagram video, and the writing. I literally had to do breathing exercises before posting each one because I was so nervous (mind you, this has always been a free newsletter).

And then something interesting happened when I started to announce my creativity to the world. The world started to pay attention.

I started to get cooking gigs, and while it still feels weird calling myself a “chef” - I very much became one starting in 2022. People paying me to ….be creative.

So at the turn of this year, after shedding some dead emotional weight and gaining a lil confidence in my step, I wanted to dig a little deeper.

I got very clear on what is it that I wanted to explore, regardless of what the outcome was or what people thought. A true “throwing spaghetti on the wall” moment (note : no spaghetti was actually harmed in this creative pursuit).

And here is what I came up with:

1. I wanted to start a experiential dinner series party at my apartment

2. I wanted to find a chef community and co-collaborators

3. I wanted to start a Podcast with my bff talking about our feelings and friendship

And I’ve been doing the damn thing!

So this is a VERY roundabout way of telling you my “good excuse” for not writing the Sobremesa in awhile ; )

Toning my creativity has made me confident in so many other ways than just cooking. It led me to say fuck it and start the dinner party series, accept some outrageous cooking opportunities, and start the Podcast. Always framing it in my mind that this was “hunting for creative jewels” and also having a deep trust that even the act of hunting would provide an enchanting life. Basically a really nice way of saying “fuck around and find out.”

I say all of this to remind each of you that YOU too are creative. And I think there is a lot of pressure from the internet to make us feel like we should be doing the thing perfectly off the jump. But I am here to reassure you that it can start small. For me, it started with giving myself permission to play around with food and writing.

It’s been a blast to truly name how I wanted to express myself and then trust myself to make it happen.

It’s also made me *quite* busy as I have been juggling this with working about 3 jobs and still trying to have some friends and fun along the way.

Let’s just say I was hitting the streets SO HARD that I somehow hurt my foot and have been homebound for the last 2 weeks….

After some initial devastation that my what-seemed-like skyrocketing life would have to take a pause, I settled into believing that this was the universe’s way of telling me to sit my ass down and recenter.

Which led me back to revisiting my first creative loves, this newsletter & cooking while I shake my ass!

As some of the best recipes come along, I was bored in my house, craving a creative project and something sweet, and unable to go out and buy new ingredients due to le foot.

I had pistachios, I had some bomb fresh cardamom that my friend Sanket brought back to me from India, I had flour, sugar, spices…

What about a cardamom pistachio snickerdoodle!?

And so here you go.

Pistachio Cardamom Snickerdoodles

Ingredients

1 stick + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1 tablespoon molasses

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

½ tablespoon salt

½ tsp cardamom (I ground fresh cardamom, but you can certainly use pre-ground)

Pistachio sugar mix

½ cup sugar

¼ tsp cinnamon

½ cup crushed pistachios (like a fine powder)

Now do it!

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F.

2. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and cardamom in a medium bowl and whisk together.

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar with a stand mixer or electric hand mixer until fluffy (about 3-5 minutes)

4. Add the eggs, molasses & vanilla

5. Add the dry ingredients to this wet mixture.

6. Mix until just incorporated (it may look like little dough balls, so at this point just use your hands to knead together into one dough ball - keep in mind that this is a tough dough (unlike say, a chocolate chip cookie).

7. Roll the cookie dough balls to your desired size and press into 2” diameter.

8. Roll each ball in the pistachio sugar mixture.

9. Top each with a crushed pistachio (just bc it looks cute)

10. Bake at 350 F for 10-12 mins.

11. The cookie is finished when the bottom of the cookie is brown and the edges start to firm up. It may look like it’s not finished at first, but it is! Be careful to not over-bake if you want that chewy snickerdoodle vibe.

Love you mucho,

Tessa