This recipe was the direct result of me seeing someone bake with these really cute bread-shaped muffin tins, and me wanting to do something similar. After scouring on the internet, and believe you me, it took a lot of creative word combinations on Google, I found them in a random website called AliExpress. So after…
Category: Recipes
Banana-Passionfruit Milky Way Cake
This cake came about because I wanted to do a passionfruit-banana cake of some kind, just because of the flavor contrast. Passionfruit being tart and tangy while banana is mild and sweet, both tropical fruits play off of one another beautifully here! The big debate for me, internally, was whether or not I introduce chocolate…
White Peach Blanc Manger
White peaches are my reminder that it’s finally summer. It’s crazy to think we’re over halfway through 2025(time literally flew by this year it feels like). 2020 still feels like yesterday, and the craziest part is that people born that year are already old enough to be in kindergarten now! That being said, white peaches…
S’mores Panna Cotta 2.0
One of the first plated desserts I ever made was this S’mores Panna Cotta, literally 10 years ago. Summer of 2015, I was taking summer courses at Boston University, and during my free time, I was practicing a lot with desserts and baking. That was the summer when Reynold Poernomo’s Masterchef Australia season aired, and…
Liver and Onion Piccata
I am one of those weirdos that likes liver and onions, okay? Back in college, when I was learning Montenegrin food, I noticed liver was a commonly used protein in that cuisine. I still remember when I was auditioning for Masterchef season 10, since I mentioned being a heavy baker more than a savory cook,…
Miso Caramel Banana Upside Down Cake
Whenever I purchase bananas, it’s always a struggle to use them up(without resorting to my beloved hummingbird cake). But then I remembered the idea of upside down cakes. They can be versatile, since you can use up a lot of fruit in both the caramelized layer, and in the batter itself, so it’s a good…
Chorizo Chicken Thighs with Cavatelli
A while ago, I was trying to make a dish with chorizo, but accidentally grabbed Mexican chorizo instead of Spanish chorizo. To confirm the differences here, Mexican chorizo is more like a mince or sausage meat, meant to be cooked to be crumbly. Spanish chorizo is dried and is more like a cured meat product…
Purple Sweet Potato Tart
When I was making this dessert, I was reminiscing of a time before the pandemic, when there was a popular dessert chain in L.A. called Cafe Bora. They were best known for serving these aesthetically pleasing purple sweet potato desserts that were dusted in vibrant lilac purple sweet potato powder, and they were all the…
Eggs, Bacon, and Toast Gnocchi
When I think of Americana, I just randomly think of that scene in Parks and Rec where the Gergich family is singing about eggs, bacon, and toast. So I figured, why not take that inspiration, and making a gnocchi dish? Originally, when I was conceptualizing this dish, it was going to be a pasta dish…
Ms. Jan’s White Coconut Cake
This coconut cake was actually in dedication to someone I worked with named Jan. While we only worked together for a little over a year, it was like work love at first sight – we both worked with a lot of the same people and even in some of the same hotels(at different points in…
Swablu Mousse Cookies
I would be lying if I said this was my first Swablu dessert. That being said, compared to my first one, these cookies definitely captured the color of Swablu a LOT better. When it came to the flavors, I wanted to go with something a little more tropical-leaning as an homage to Swablu, since it…
Creamy Koji-Stewed Chicken Thighs
I happened to buy a gigantic bag of bone-in chicken thighs, but I ran into a bit of a hiccup when it came time to actually cooking some of them. I was already marinating the thighs in a mixture of soy sauce and koji, but I forgot to buy frier oil(I was originally going to…
Roast Duck with Purple Yam and Radicchio
When I was thinking of a main course to serve my mom, the tricky part was the protein. Half the menu was fruit/vegetable-focused, while I also had a soup course that used poultry in the form of black chicken. I knew in terms of proteins, my mom would either want a fish, duck, or lamb,…
Heirloom Tomato Salad with Meiji Tofu and Shiso-Pistachio Pesto
This salad is a celebration of summery produce, featuring tomatoes and tofu in a very light, refreshing salad. In a lot of ways, it is like a caprese salad, but if you subbed out the basil with shiso and the mozzarella with tofu. This was one of the four courses I made for my mom…
Soy Milk Rare Cheesecake with Passionfruit and Ruby Kiwi
This dessert was what I made for Mother’s Day with my mother specifically in mind. My mom LOVES fruit-based desserts, despises carbs, and likes cheesecakes, so that actually made it super straightforward for what I was going to make for her. Initially, I was going to use just passionfruit, since it is so naturally tart,…
Tofu-Nutella Silk Pie
One of my absolute favorite components to make is my chocolate tofu mousse. I’ve been making for it years, since it’s so simple – literally just equal parts melted chocolate mixed with pureed silken tofu, and salt just to bring out the chocolate flavor a bit more. And yes, it is the same chocolate-tofu mousse…
Miso Bete Noir (Flourless) Cake
This inspired by the Black Mirror episode of a similar name(in this case, Bete Noire, which translates to “thing that people particularly dislike”), but with pastry always on my mind, I immediately thought of the chocolate cake instead. Bete noir is a French flourless chocolate cake, literally translating to “black beast”. For my variation on…
Black Chicken Tsukune with Ginger Broth
This recipe wound up being like an Asian take on an albondigas soup, using black chicken(also called silkie fowl) as the base. Black chicken is a popular ingredient in Asian cuisines because it creates a gorgeous broth. My mother actually loves eating black chicken, which is why I opted to use it to make one…
Corn-Strawberry Ice Cream Sandwiches
Whenever I think of a corn dessert, almost immediately my mind wants to pair it with some kind of berry. Corn is sweet and usually lends itself to creamy, buttery textures. Whereas with a berry, it will be sweet and tart. So the two make for a perfect contrast. Usually my default is pairing corn…
Nanaimo-Chip Cookies
This recipe was loosely inspired by a Nanaimo bar, which is a Canadian dessert featuring a chocolate-nuts-coconut water base, a custard layer, and a chocolate layer, all set into neat little chocolate bars. They are very rich, but they kind of remind me of like a Boston cream pie conceptually(at least in the sense of…
Freddy's Harajuku 