Freddy's Harajuku

Yellow Chiffon Layer Cake with Blonde Chocolate

Truthfully, I never really understood yellow cake. I just assumed it was a vanilla cake with a lot of yellow food coloring in it. But turns out, yellow cake is not yellow from food coloring, but from the usage of butter in place of oil, and egg yolks. An abundance of egg yolks results in…

Molten Nutella Chip Cookies

While I was practicing intermittent fasting/crash dieting prior to my Hawaii trip, I was craving a lot of different things, which was both good in that I was able to really drill down on the foods I was craving to eat, and bad because I was craving food that actually tasted good, and was not…

Matzoh Crack Rusks

This recipe was the biproduct of me making Japanese-style sando’s and cutting the crusts off the homemade milk bread I used to assemble those with. After making all of my sando’s, I literally had a fish tub-sized container of bread crusts leftover. It felt like a shame to just throw the crusts away after all…

Boozy Grasshopper Pie

This dessert was a bit of an unintentional classic for me. I made my first grasshopper pie back in 2016, when I was asked to help cook for a Thanksgiving banquet at Boston University for about 90 people. I was in charge of the desserts, and grasshopper pie was one of the desserts that I…

Caviar Egg Tarts

Somewhat inspired by my trip to Oahu, where we ate at a restaurant called Senia. One of the dishes we were served were these egg tarts, which were savory, filled with an egg salad mixture, and topped with caviar. Now eggs and caviar are a classic combination. Eggs are custardy and rich, and caviar adds…

Matcha Namelaka Mille Feuille

Whenever I think of mille feuille, I actually think of my friend from college, Sena. We took some boring math general-education class together, and one day while we were bored, we were talking about our favorite desserts, mine being financier, and hers being mille feuille. A mille feuille, translated from French to mean “a million…

Matcha Kokedama(Moss Balls)

Kokedama are these decorative moss ball plants that are super popular in Japan. They are used as planters for other plants more often than not, and they give any room a pleasant, earthy aesthetic that I just adore. My first time seeing a kokedama was when I was playing Animal Crossing New Horizons, where they…

Chocolate Silk Pie

Now a lot of people might have fond memories of Southern chocolate silk pie. For me, it’s another way to consume more chocolate. That’s really it. I might have had it growing up and going to Marie Calendar’s, but honestly all I can remember from Marie Calendar’s was getting the Banana Meringue Pie, which was…

Banana Cream Puffs

These cute little puffs were my homage to banana cream pie, being comprised of a ripened banana custard, a mascarpone cream, and pate choux(cream puffs) with craquelin(thin sugar cookie). If anyone were to say that they love banana, these puffs are a great option, because that banana custard is natural banana flavor on steroids! What…

Sticky Miso Toffee Pudding with Cardamom Ice Cream

Sticky toffee or sticky date pudding is one of those desserts I grew to appreciate during my time in Boston. I once ordered this gingerbread sticky toffee pudding with brown butter, apples, and sage, and it was absolutely delicious! The combination of super soft, fluffy, brown sugary cake drowned in a rich butterscotch sauce was…

Raspberry Tea-ramisu Chiffon Sandwiches

Tiramisu is classically made with either ladyfingers or Savoiardi biscuits, soaked with coffee, layered with mascarpone cheese, and dusted with cocoa powder. It is such a classic Italian dessert, but I wanted to turn it on its head, and do a raspberry tea-ramisu. The logic here was two-fold: raspberries and coffee do not really go…

Coconut-Blood Orange Blanc Manger

Blanc manger, also spelled blancmange, is a French milk jelly, quite similar to a panna cotta, but set using gelled cornstarch instead of bloomed gelatin. The result of it is a slightly firmer consistency, and a creaminess that lingers longer(try saying that phrase three times fast) than a panna cotta would have. It is quite…

Strawberry Shortcake Chiffon Sandwiches

I can’t tell if I am late to the whole chiffon cake sandwich craze or not, but I can tell you that I am pretty obsessed with the concept! Aa chiffon cake is traditionally baked in a round cake pan with a little chimney running through it – the chimney allows for even air and…

Tofu Fraisier Rare Cheesecake

I have made rare cheesecake with tofu in the past, and fraisier cake in the past, so I figured, why not combine the two? The end result was quite straightforward, being a rare tofu cheesecake that was rippled with strawberry coulis, enrobed with slices of strawberries, and all on top of a crunchy-salty-sweet Triscuit crust….

Ruby Forest Petit Gateau

This is an homage to the black forest cake, which was my birthday cake for the first 14 years of my life. The reason why we would eat black forest cake was because we would celebrate my birthday in Taiwan, and the bakery in the Shida district where we would stay/live only made one kind…

Chocolate-Cajeta Cupcakes

These cupcakes are meant to represent decadence and indulgence. One of my personal favorite combinations is dark chocolate with salted caramel, and these cupcakes take that combination, and really drive it home. In place of using just a regular caramel, I went with Cajeta. Cajeta is a Oaxacan goat milk caramel, very similar to dulce…

Strawberry Madeleines

A while ago, my friend from Masterchef season 5, Ahran, and I decided to do a Facetime and Bake session, where we made madeleines. For my recipe, I went ahead with a strawberry madeleine, using strawberry puree in the batter, and then pressing the baked madeleines into tempered Strawberry Inspiration, in the madeleine pan, and…

Chinese Bakery Strawberry Cake

My friend Ann would tell me time and time again about her favorite cake being a Chinese Bakery Strawberry Cake. Personally, I grew up on Taiwanese Bakery Black Forest Cake, but that’s an entire recipe for another time! I wanted to try my hand at a super soft and light spongecake with whipped cream and…

Raspberry-Champagne Linzertorte “Hearts”

Linzertorte is a classic Austrian dessert that consists of a tart shell, an almond cake-like layer, and raspberry jam. I wanted to reinterpret that by embracing the almond and raspberry, while also introducing champagne to the mix! The end result were the little hearts that you see here. Special shout out to Shari or Spiced…

Persimmon Tea Cakes

I am fortunate in that a ton of my family friends own persimmon trees. While it is delightful to eat fresh persimmon in peak season at first, admittedly, when you are gifted with 5 pounds of it, you start getting… fatigued by the taste. These little tea cakes were my answer to needing a new…