Above and beyond: a galaxy cheesecake

Truthfully, I have done a galaxy entremet before. But this one is slightly different in that the filling is made with cream cheese, and it’s a little less ficklesome. That and I topped it with zefir, a Russian marshmallow made with apple puree, but instead of apple, I used cherimoya, aka custard apple. Why? Because…

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Blood orange-mascarpone cake doughnuts

These literally just came from an experiment where I wanted to make doughnuts, but I didn’t have any yeast, and I was too lazy to buy any/I had no patience to wait for yeast to proof anyways. I knew that you could make cake doughnuts, which would not require yeast, and I decided to go…

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O-parts: a plated dessert

I am obsessed with Oreo cereal. Even as a kid, Oreo O’s were one of my favorites. I don’t know if it’s because I have early childhood memories of buying them from Taiwanese 7-11’s and dunking them into milk or whatever, but I knew for a dessert called “O-parts”, oreos had to be a focus….

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Sunny-Joy Lemon Tart

This was a signature dessert from the now-defunct baked goods delivery service I ran with my friend, Joy. The name was inspired by our two Chinese names, mine being “sun” and hers literally being “joy”. The tart itself was a pate brisee that had panko bread crumbs and goat milk powder in it, just to…

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Liz’s banana-chocolate tarte tatin

So this dessert goes out to a very special lady, Ms. Elizabeth Linn. She blew us all away during the tarte tatin challenge(the same one I’m probably never going to fully live down), when she made a banana tarte tatin with chocolate crème anglaise. I remember when we were planning our tarte tatins out, she…

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Mixed Berry Opera cake

I made this cake with my friend Adrienne just because I’m still trying to convince her to audition for season 11 of MasterChef and I wanted to see how quickly she can pick up arguably a tricky cake to make. Ever since my first Opera cake, I wanted to do another rendition, but using more…

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your silver garden: a plated dessert

This dessert was named after a song by Kalafina, a Japanese music group known for their slightly edgier songs. However, “your silver garden” honestly sounded more like a nursery rhyme, at least compared to some of their darker songs like “Magia” or “heavenly blue”. So I went with that name to symbolize a mint-chocolate dessert!…

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Making my way: a plated dessert

As I do have a habit of naming my desserts after songs and lyrics, it is very easy to assume I named this one after “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. And I don’t blame you if you think that, because that is a touching song and it reminds me of White Chicks, a movie that…

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Face my fears tarte tatin redemption

Fucking tarte tatin. Let me tell you now, this was the LAST dessert I expected to ever have PTSD from during my reality cooking competition journey. I love apples, I love caramel, and I love flaky pastry. And I’ve made this before(as the judges let everyone know to the point where they made it seem…

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Stronger than you: a plated dish

For this dish, it was my chance to redeem my horrendous performance with the Latin America brief. Being a panicky idiot, I had no clue what to make. So I opted for the snapper, made a yucca puree that was wallpaper glue(fun fact, yucca should NEVER go into a food processor, because the starch content…

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