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…
Category: Cookies
Cookies from all over the world, including classic American style to French sable and macarons.
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…
Gluten-Free Levain Cookies
So I am fully aware of my penchant for making giant cookies. I just happen to own a really large ice cream scoop, so with that comes really large scoops of ice cream and cookie dough! So when I would visit New York, once of the most iconic bakeries there was Levain. Known for their…
Oatmeal-chocolate chip scones
These scones came about because I dun goof’d on an oatmeal cookie recipe – I did not sub out enough flour when adding in the oats, resulting in what were supposed to be cookies not spreading as much, and developing a more biscuit/scone-like texture. I know with scones, there is usually a stigma with them…
Soft Matcha Cookies
Green tea shortbreads are something I usually make in the fall ever since I did a fundraiser with them in my sophomore year in college for the Taiwanese club. The combination of bitter, floral matcha against a sweet, buttery cookie is so pleasant and fun, and gives a similarly enjoyable experience to eating green tea…
Strawberry-Pistachio Ice Cream Sandwiches
I love strawberry-pistachio anything. One is sweet and tart, the other is smoky and salty. Together, they really just work together. Personally, I think strawberries and any nut work well together, hence why peanut butter and jelly is such a great pairing(I’m team strawberry jam on that topic, but grape jam isn’t bad either). Though…
Chocolate-Caramel-Sea Salt Cookies
These cookies were a hilarious experiment. I love aging my cookie dough by a few days just so that the exterior of the cookies get really crispy. For these cookies, I did that same technique, but because I also substituted the eggs with sourdough. From a baking standpoint, eggs provide protein to bind doughs and…
Passion Pearl: a petit gateau
These little pearls only came about because I had an abundance of passionfruit(what a problem to have), and I wanted to find some interesting or fun ways to utilize them! For the dessert itself, we have a coconut mousse that is surrounding a passionfruit gelee, on top of a blue spirulina cookie. I wanted to…
Matcha checkerboard ombre cookies
I love checkerboard cookies. I feel like in almost any Asian bakery you go to, checkerboard cookies are always on display. I appreciate the fact that you’re getting more than one flavor in them, since the color contrast usually comes from differently flavored doughs. I won’t lie, they can be finnicky to make, since you…
Furikake(seaweed-sesame) cookies
I feel like this recipe would raise a lot of eyebrows. For those unfamiliar with it, furikake is a Japanese seasoning mix, usually made of seaweed and sesame seeds. It is sprinkled on rice to give the it more flavor and a little bit of texture. Furikake is also popular with Hawaiian poke as well!…
Penguin coconut macaroons
So a couple years ago, I made a penguin-themed haupia pie using yuzu, coconut, and these coconut macaroons I shaped to resemble little penguins. I was somehow able to get the actual body of the macaroon to resemble a penguin, dying half of it black with activated charcoal, and using almonds to resemble the beaks….
Vegan “Oreo” macarons
Randomly enough, one of my earliest childhood memories in Taiwan was actually buying Oreos from the 7-11 at the first floor of our Linkuo apartment, and dipping them into Taiwanese milk. Besides the fact that Taiwanese milk is absolutely delicious(it’s something in the grass those cows eat, I swear, but it’s naturally a lot sweeter…
“Tiramisu” cookies
I always wanted to do a take on a ricotta cookie, but I was never quite sure what direction to go with them beyond that. The idea of putting a soft cheese into a cookie dough was intriguing , just because I was always curious how that would affect a cookie’s consistency over using butter…
Gluten-free misugaru-chip cookies
These were literally inspired by the very first thing I made at Milkbar Lab, being gluten-free cookies that use Korean misugaru. For those unfamiliar with it, misugaru is a 7 to 23-grain blend from Korean that tastes like peanut butter, and is 100% gluten-free and vegan! I subbed out some of the flour in the…
Matcha-gjetost cookies
So I technically made these cookies when I was trying to use up leftover French buttercream. French buttercream is made by emulsifying egg yolks with simple syrup and butter to create this luxurious mousse-like cream. I usually use it in macarons as a filling, but I found that it could be re-purposed into shortbread dough…
Forêt de cauchemars: a petit gateau
This dessert literally only happened because I purchased a ton of cherries to make another recipe with, and I had to figure out what to do with them before they went moldy. Which is always a great motivator when you purchase way too much of an ingredient! So I went ahead and pureed my remaining…
Amethyst: lavender-honey gemstone cookies
It has been a minute since I made any of my gemstone cookies, so I felt like I needed to bring out a new flavor! I still have a lot of lavender from the last time I used it(yes, that was over a year ago), so I wanted to use some of it in this…
Giant ass (toasted milk and brown butter) cookies
I made these cookies to test primarily one thing, and that was how toasted milk powder would taste in a cookie dough. I stumbled upon the concept of toasted milk powder when I was watching a video about a chocolatier in Miami who incorporated that into her milk chocolate. She claimed that it gave her…
Incan gold cookies
I don’t even know why I didn’t think about making these cookies the first time I ever used lucuma. It just makes so much sense, especially since corn is such a huge part of Peruvian cuisine, and lucuma, being a fruit that tastes exactly like caramel, would compliment that so perfectly! For these cookies, I…
Chocolate, olive oil, and sea salt macarons
I just randomly had the urge to make macarons with this specific flavor combination one day. The idea of rich dark chocolate against grassy olive oil, and sea salt to just bring both together, it made a lot of sense to me. Kind of like a chocolate zucchini bread, which as weird as it sounds,…
Freddy's Harajuku 