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…

Blackberry-almond Arnold Palmer cake

This was a cake I made with my dad in mind, for his birthday. He loves to golf, so the Arnold Palmer is a caddy shack reference. He loves my lemon curd cakes, to the point where he has actually eaten a cake I made before I even finished decorating or photographing it before, so…

Forest of de-lights: a layer cake

I really wanted to make a cake similar to a Black Forest cake, but when I was rummaging through my pantry, I realized that I just had a ton of bananas lying around. So I looked through my other ingredients, and also saw coconut. From there, I was just thinking about maybe doing something inspired…

Driftwood cake: a chocolate and caramel layer cake

The inspiration for the cake came from an accident: I was attempting to make tarte tatin, but I kept screwing it up. So instead, I took my leftover shortbread dough, kneaded in some cacao powder, and formed it into branches to go onto a chocolate cake. When in doubt, make a chocolate cake. That’s my…

Blossom cake: elderflower, lemon, and bee pollen

The flavors for this dessert are inspired by two things: my current boss, as it was her birthday when I made this, and the British royal wedding cake for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. My boss, who I shall leave anonymous, just out of respect for her privacy, is a very kind, loving person, who…

Gateau Opera

So Gateau Opera is one of those desserts that I have read a lot about, but never really bothered to try making on my own. I have made the sponge, jaconde, before, and obviously, I have made ganache before. But the other filling, which is a coffee infused French buttercream, not so much. For those…

Chocolate Arc-En-Ciel Cake

Arc-En-Ciel is just French for rainbow. This cake, it literally is a chocolate rainbow, split by different shades of chocolate brown. I wanted to make this cake because I love ripping off of Lady M’s menu, since their cakes, while gorgeous and delicious, are too damn expensive. I am NOT going to pay $65-90 for…

Pistachio-lemon-blueberry layer cake

This cake sort of was the result of utilizing leftover/surplus ingredients in our house. It was made for a family gathering, and because we had a TON of lemons in our house that we needed to get rid of, this cake kind of was a huge no-brainer. I love making olive oil and lemon cakes,…

Red velvet with white chocolate mousse

I actually made this cake to celebrate the birthday of my co-worker, Alex. She said she likes red velvet, so whomp, there it is. Traditionally, red velvet is served with a cream cheese frosting. However, I did not have cream cheese in my pantry, nor was I in the position to go out and buy…

Banoffee Pudding Galaxy Cake

The inspiration for this cake came from…. I honestly don’t know. I just wanted to make something using Korean banana milk, and I had already done a banana pudding with that and misugaru over a year ago, so I figured why not take that and transform it into something a little more special? So for…

Strawberry-ambrosia cake

I love pairing corn with strawberries. I also love pairing strawberries with lemon. And strawberry and ginger. And ginger and lemon. And ginger and corn. Basically, you get where this is going. I put all four of these flavors together into a single package. The idea behind the dessert was to make something cute and…

Mint-chocolate mousse cake

I am always in the mood for chocolate cake. Souffles, lava cake, Hostess cakes, etc., I just love fluffiness with chocolate. I also love the pairing of chocolate with dairy, as well as chocolate with yogurt, so I wanted to use Yakult, which reminds me now and forever onwards of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys…

7 layer chocolate-raspberry cake

This was a behemoth to table. Mostly because for whatever reason, the cake starting leaning the moment I stacked on the mini cake. It was probably because I used chiffon cake as a base, which is super fluffy, so I recommend using dowels (or boba straws that are cut down to the height of the…

6 layer blueberry-citrus-hot milk cake

Making hot milk cake has proven to be a huge challenge for me in the past. Every damn time I would make it, the cake would come out like a hockey puck. And then I realized that I was an idiot, and I did not use NEARLY enough leavening. Most cakes would require about 1…

Snowball fight in the icebox: gingerbread icebox cake

Now I don’t really eat or make gingerbread men that often. Mostly because I was only raised with 50% of American traditions, being an immigrant, so gingerbread baking was not really something we did in our family. Highly ironic, given how much ginger we had at home, from fresh ginger root to powdered ginger to…

Thai tea-black sesame mousse cake

I really just made this dessert because I wanted to. It was such a perfect dessert for Halloween too, just because of the color scheme, but it can also represent the fall as well, I guess? I went with black sesame jaconde sponge, Thai tea syrup, black sesame mousse, Thai tea Bavarian cream, and black…

Yogurt-peach-Turkish delight cake

This dessert came about because we had a fuck-ton of peaches in my fridge that we needed to get rid of. I love yogurt-semolina cake and I knew that it would have the perfect dryness in the crumb to hold up to the moisture in the peaches, so I went that route with baking them…

Cookies and cream tres leches cake

The inspiration for this dessert actually came from Housekeeping Appreciation Week. Since our team was only 22 people, it was actually a doable task to make something for them. I wanted to make something amazing for the housekeeping team that works hard to make sure that our guests don’t realize that our hotels rooms have…

Meyer lemon Mimosa cake

When I was doing research on Lady M (I need to better understand my enemy to spite them) I came across a cake that was called a Mimosa cake. It was this cake covered in cubes, and it was vanilla flavored. Now, I was expecting champagne and oranges, so I was really disappointed at first….

Naked German chocolate cake

I just love chocolate cake. And this chocolate cake, no exceptions. I layered devil’s food cake with salted caramel-pecan milk bavarian, coconut-chocolate cremeux, and coconut-pecan macarons to make for a fun, delicious, and semi-interactive eating experience. For the pecan milk 1/2 cup pecans 1 cup water Bring pecans and water to a simmer for 15…