These little cookie sandwiches were something I whipped up because every Friday at work, we always have these meetings for associates under the age of 30, and I like to bring something just to make the meetings a little more fun. I… was actually surprised by how well received these were! I knew that the flavor…
It’s my life: a plated dessert concept
The name for the dessert was inspired by the Koda Kumi song of the same name. The dessert itself came from me wanting to do something unique, indigenous to almost every American’s life, and most importantly, to show that I don’t give any fucks about what others think about my cooking/baking style. I live my…
L’eclipse: the blue cheesecake
While I was sick with bronchitis, all I could think about was what I would bake the moment I stopped coughing my throat out. I thought back to my old cupcake-making days from high school, where I remembered one of the very first desserts that I have ever thought of: a blue velvet cupcake with…
Duck-scallion congee with duck fat-Chinese churros
Whenever I butcher whole ducks (this happens a lot more than you’d think, but I guess that’s the benefit of butchering whole animals), I love making stock using the bones, and then taking the scrap meat from the carcass and folding that into congee, which is Chinese rice porridge. When I was learning how to…
Italian Lemon Meringue Doughnut Creams
I just wanted to create a new flavor combination using some of my favorite ingredients. That’s how this concept came about. I love lemon and olive oil together, and herbs just perfume that. Olive oil desserts are so underrated, but I adore the rich, rustic quality that they have. For this doughnut cream, I prepared…
Na’an-lamb kofta dumplings with fattoush salad
I really came up with this dish when I was watching My Kitchen Rules and saw a pair of Jordanians, Sonya and Hadil, prepare a gorgeous fattoush salad. Fattoush is a Middle Eastern salad prepared with a lot of vegetables and a flatbread-type of component. For my take on it, I wanted to take the flatbread…
Seeds of heaven and earth: mini chocolate-mint pate choux tower
I thought of this dessert one late Thursday night when I was in a slump; I was starting to get bored with baking, just because I keep doing the same shit. Naked layer cakes, doughnut creams, the occasional ice cream and plated dessert. Bottom line, with this dessert, I was trying to do something different…
Russian Honey-Bunny Cake
The Russian honey cake, called Medovik in Russian, is very similar to the American icebox cake. It is layers of wafers or cookies sandwiching layers of cream. In the case of Medovik, you use honey-infused cookie dough, made by caramelizing honey, whipping that into eggs and butter, and slowly adding in the flour, little by…
Mixed berry naked layer cheesecake
I love cheesecake and I wanted to do something that represented the fun of being a kid. Cutting into a cake and exploring the different flavors hidden between the layers of cake, cream, and some sort of fruit-type of components, it’s a lot of fun. For my dessert, I wanted to take two kid-favorite desserts,…
Chocolate-bourbon-coffee cake
I dub this cake my “adulting” cake because it consists of two things I often need or want in my life: coffee and booze. I also made the cake look really drab and compact, to symbolize how being an adult is not as wonderful and exciting as people would expect. It’s honestly boring. Is that…
Passion fruit-coconut-caramel naked layer cake
I literally only made this cake because we had about 15 passion fruits lying around and I needed to start getting rid of them before they went bad. The cake itself has five different layers to it, being coconut-brown sugar cake, salted coconut caramel soaking liquid, coconut cream, passionfruit curd, and coconut crumble. I think…
Elderflower Eton Mess Fruit Tart
I made this mostly for Pi Day, but also because I wanted to try making a rectangular fruit tart that does not look like an ass sandwich; the first time I purchased a rectangular fluted tart pan, it was back when I was still an accounting intern in DC. As my going away gift to…
