Mirror glaze cakes – Freddy's Harajuku

Sesame-Kinako-Chocolate: a Petit Gateau

This recipe came about because I was craving something kinako-flavored. Kinako is a toasted soybean flour, which is 100% gluten-free! It kind of tastes like peanut butter, in that it is nutty and warming. I personally love using it with flavors like sesame, which is where the inspiration to pair the two came into play…

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…

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…

Ube-Passionfruit-Coconut Cake

This recipe came about because I had ube paste, coconut milk, and fresh passionfruit, all of which I wanted to use, and preferably together. Ube(pronounced oo-beh) is a Filipino purple yam that is sweet and nutty in flavor. Almost like if you took a purple yam and toasted it with brown butter. Ube is a…

Dijonnaise de Chocolat

So this is probably the most random thing to admit to, but I grew up on shoujou anime(aka CardCaptor Sakura, a pinch of Sailor Moon, and Mirumo De Pon to name the main ones I watched), and there was an anime I was exposed to called “Yumeiro Patissiere”, which was a baking anime. I had…

“Present Box” Petit Gateau

Before you ask, these little egg nog-cranberry present boxes are my modern, gluten-free interpretation of a Christmas cake. Christmas Cake, at least in Japanese culture, are soft spongecakes with cream and usually strawberries, just to capture this red and white aesthetic. I wanted to take the red and white aesthetic, along with some more traditionally…

Pumpkin-Persimmon Mirror Glaze Cake

This recipe came about because I had a buttload of pumpkin-dulcey(blonde chocolate or roasted white chocolate) ganache that I left in my freezer for when fall rolled around. And the moment that it did, I went ahead and busted out my pumpkin-blonde chocolate ganache and made this cake with it and randomly a persimmon that…

Kir Royale Cakes

One of my favorite hobbies back when I was first learning about pastry was visiting bakeries and patisseries and buying their most intriguing or unique items. At Patisserie Chantilly in Lomita, CA, that item for me was their Kir Royale. Being 15 at the time, I had no clue what that was. But the cake…

Black Rose Entremet

It’s been a minute since I’ve last tackled an entremet, so I wanted to do another one, as I had a bunch of random components here and there that I knew I could use. I was making Turkish delight for Pinktober and realized that I had an entire piping bag of leftover ruby chocolate mousse…

Rhubarb-Elderflower Petit Gateaus

About 5 years ago(which is such a weird preface to say out loud because man, time FLIES), I made a dessert that featured rhubarb and elderflower. Ironically, it featured strawberries as well, so I opted to not even include rhubarb or elderflower in the name of the dessert. The cake itself featured elderflower mousse, and…

Blackberry Blood Orange Sunset Cake

Back in high school, my “signature” cupcake was a blue velvet cake with orange curd, blackberry Italian meringue buttercream, and white chocolate “stems”, with the entire cupcake designed to resemble a flower with the shades of an oceanside sunset. It was inspired specifically by the oceanside sunsets that I would see growing up in a…

You’re my superstar: a geode cake

I’ve made so many galaxy cakes over the years. I just love the aesthetic of stars and constellations! For this specific recipe, I wanted to decorate it with konpeitou, which are these really pretty rock candies that come in different colors. They look like the star bits from Super Mario Galaxy and they are just…

Chocolate-Whiskey-Tangerine Mousse Cake

My family friend was kind enough to gift me with their homegrown tangerines, something that I look forward to every spring. For this year, I wanted to go back to a project I did years back, which is recreating Lady M desserts in my own way. This time, I went with their Whisky Dark Chocolate…

Lil Peep Egg Tarts

While I do not celebrate Easter in the religious sense, I can still appreciate the fact that the holiday is closely associated with rabbits and eggs. Those are cute things to make desserts from, and the latter if what inspired this dessert! Well, that and marshmallow peeps. Fun fact: I was originally going to do…

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…

Red velvet and white rose mirror glaze cake

So I have a weird relationship with red velvet cake. In that I do not like it, but I actually order it from bakeries as my way of gauging how good of a bakery they are – if they can make me enjoy a cake I inherently dislike, then they are definitely doing something right….

Clione: a petit gateau

As an awkward middle schooler who was just diving into Japanese pop culture, I was stunned to find out how popular clione(also called sea angels) were. Pronounced “klee-oh-neh”, they are a relative to the sea slug, and are these little, translucent creatures that float through the ocean. If you have ever played Pokemon games before,…

“Butterfly Skies”(blueberry-yuzu) entremet

Now I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Or very doable. Or simple. I would not be lying if I said this recipe takes multiple days to execute without a blast chiller or liquid nitrogen. This is the kind of cake you would only make for special occasions. Between the techniques,…

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…

Ruby chocolate-berry cake

When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I actually had a ton of leftover components and ingredients in my fridge. I had a ruby chocolate-sakura mousse from a plated dessert, leftover pate brisee pie crust from a pie I made, leftover ruby chocolate snow the same aforementioned plated dessert, and a bag of berries that turned…