Truthfully, I never really understood yellow cake. I just assumed it was a vanilla cake with a lot of yellow food coloring in it. But turns out, yellow cake is not yellow from food coloring, but from the usage of butter in place of oil, and egg yolks. An abundance of egg yolks results in…
Category: Treats
Anything that didn’t quite fit into the other categories, and is “portable” or easy to eat while walking.
Matzoh Crack Rusks
This recipe was the biproduct of me making Japanese-style sando’s and cutting the crusts off the homemade milk bread I used to assemble those with. After making all of my sando’s, I literally had a fish tub-sized container of bread crusts leftover. It felt like a shame to just throw the crusts away after all…
Tokyo Banana Chiffon Sandwiches
Tokyo Banana will always take me back to trips to Japan, where I would eat the soft fluffy snack cakes, stuffed with a banana cream often. When I was conceptualizing a fun chiffon cake sandwich recipe, one of my immediate go-to’s was none other than Tokyo Banana. When it comes to banana-flavored desserts, I learned…
Matcha Cream Chiffon Sandwiches
Perfect in time for St. Patrick’s Day, my next chiffon sandwich recipe is for matcha green tea-flavored! I feel like everyone has at least had matcha in the form of green tea ice cream before, and what I love about pairing matcha with dessert is that sugar and dairy are great vehicles to balance out…
Matcha Namelaka Mille Feuille
Whenever I think of mille feuille, I actually think of my friend from college, Sena. We took some boring math general-education class together, and one day while we were bored, we were talking about our favorite desserts, mine being financier, and hers being mille feuille. A mille feuille, translated from French to mean “a million…
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…
Matcha-Red Bean Financiers
Whenever I bake a financier, I like to make a joke that I am financier(which I am, as a person who technically works in a financial role/has had prior finance/accounting experience) making a financier. Unless you’re super familiar with French cuisine, you might not even know what a financier is! And no worries, you’re not…
Chocolate-Orange Cream Chiffon Sandwiches
Continuing on with our weekly chiffon cake sandwiches, our next once is the chocolate-orange. I personally adore the chocolate chiffon cake that we use for this recipe, since it is soft and spongy, but also full of cocoa flavor. I highly recommend using black cacao powder for this recipe, because it adds a fruitiness to…
Banana Cream Puffs
These cute little puffs were my homage to banana cream pie, being comprised of a ripened banana custard, a mascarpone cream, and pate choux(cream puffs) with craquelin(thin sugar cookie). If anyone were to say that they love banana, these puffs are a great option, because that banana custard is natural banana flavor on steroids! What…
Sticky Miso Toffee Pudding with Cardamom Ice Cream
Sticky toffee or sticky date pudding is one of those desserts I grew to appreciate during my time in Boston. I once ordered this gingerbread sticky toffee pudding with brown butter, apples, and sage, and it was absolutely delicious! The combination of super soft, fluffy, brown sugary cake drowned in a rich butterscotch sauce was…
Raspberry Tea-ramisu Chiffon Sandwiches
Tiramisu is classically made with either ladyfingers or Savoiardi biscuits, soaked with coffee, layered with mascarpone cheese, and dusted with cocoa powder. It is such a classic Italian dessert, but I wanted to turn it on its head, and do a raspberry tea-ramisu. The logic here was two-fold: raspberries and coffee do not really go…
Strawberry Shortcake Chiffon Sandwiches
I can’t tell if I am late to the whole chiffon cake sandwich craze or not, but I can tell you that I am pretty obsessed with the concept! Aa chiffon cake is traditionally baked in a round cake pan with a little chimney running through it – the chimney allows for even air and…
Tofu Fraisier Rare Cheesecake
I have made rare cheesecake with tofu in the past, and fraisier cake in the past, so I figured, why not combine the two? The end result was quite straightforward, being a rare tofu cheesecake that was rippled with strawberry coulis, enrobed with slices of strawberries, and all on top of a crunchy-salty-sweet Triscuit crust….
Chocolate-Cajeta Cupcakes
These cupcakes are meant to represent decadence and indulgence. One of my personal favorite combinations is dark chocolate with salted caramel, and these cupcakes take that combination, and really drive it home. In place of using just a regular caramel, I went with Cajeta. Cajeta is a Oaxacan goat milk caramel, very similar to dulce…
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…
Persimmon Tea Cakes
I am fortunate in that a ton of my family friends own persimmon trees. While it is delightful to eat fresh persimmon in peak season at first, admittedly, when you are gifted with 5 pounds of it, you start getting… fatigued by the taste. These little tea cakes were my answer to needing a new…
Almond Tofu with Persimmon and Chrysanthemum
This dessert comes from a combination of various friendships, childhood memories, and a growing appreciation for my Taiwanese-Chinese-American upbringing. So I’m sure a good amount of people out there have zero clue what almond tofu is. Also called almond pudding, almond tofu is a Chinese dessert that consists of a sweet almond-flavored, milk-based jelly, similar…
Teddiursa Custard Buns
Teddiursa is a perfect demonstration for a cute Johto Pokemon….that turns into something less cute(I’m looking at you, Ursaring). These adorable little teddy bears with a crescent moon pattern have a simple enough shaped head for me to replicate it in pastry form! Truthfully,I had been putting off this recipe for a minute, just because…
(Shiny) Torchic Sundae
This recipe came about because I had way too many persimmons and I basically was desperate to get rid of them. So I figured, why not make an ice cream with them? Persimmons are sweet, almost creamy, and very jammy when ripe, which are nice characteristics to incorporate into an ice cream base. The skin…
Vegan Tea Scones
The first important factor is the thickness of your dough. You need to roll out the dough, keeping in mind that the height(thickness of the dough) to width(size of your cookie cutters) ratio needs to be pretty close to 1:2 for the scones to rise appropriately and proportionately. My first batch, I went 2:3 for…
Freddy's Harajuku 