Treats – Page 14 – Freddy's Harajuku

Citrus Sfogliatelle

I love sfogliatelle. They are as crunchy, creamy, and delicious as they are tricky to make. These Italian pastries are made with a copious amount of dough that is quite similar to phyllo in composition, and filled with a mixture of semolina, ricotta, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and candied orange peel. The filling MIGHT sound a…

Rowlet Inarizushi

When I was a kid who did not like raw fish yet, I found myself ordering only three things whenever we would go out for sushi: cucumber rolls, tamagoyaki(Japanese omelet), and inarizushi. Inari refers to these puffed tofu skins that are based in a sweet soy mixture, giving them a sweet, smoky, and almost salty…

Milky Way Yokan

I love Tanabata. For those unfamiliar with it, Tanabata is a Japanese holiday where they have a star festival, celebrating all things wishes! It is held to commemorate the one day in the year(July 7th) where two lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who were separated by the Milky Way can see each other. Tags with wishes…

Lemon-Thyme “Rainbow” Tart

For Pride this year, I waned to go with a bit more of a whimsical take on rainbows. When I think of rainbows, immediately I think of light and water. Since you know, the two work together to create a rainbow! So for the light side of things, I went with a lemon-thyme curd tart,…

Ube Wool Buns

I have always adored the aesthetic of wool bread. The dough is scored repeatedly on one side then rolled up prior to baking to create these really pretty ridges on top of the dough. There is just something about that appearance that takes me back to Asian bakeries. I wanted to make sure that this…

Coconut Sago with Yuzu and Milk Jellies

One of my earliest childhood memories was eating at this Chinese restaurant with my parents and being served a bowl of sago pudding for dessert. The tapioca pearls were swimming in this sweet coconut milk-based dessert soup-type of thing, which had bits of seaweed in there as well! That was the baseline inspiration for this…

Violet Ohagi

So this recipe came about because I had a lot of red bean paste, and I had to use it up somehow. One of the first things that came to mind when I was trying to figure out what to do with the red bean paste was ohagi. Ohagi is a type of Japanese wagashi(confection)…

Chrysanthemum Douhua

One of my earliest food memories was going to dim sum with my parents on Sundays. We would be served chrysanthemum tea with everything we ate and we would usually finish off a meal of spareribs, sticky rice, and dumplings and fried radish cakes with egg tarts and a sweet tofu called douhua. Douhua, which…

Brioche and pesto buns

I have been meaning to make these for a couple months now. A few years ago, my sister and I were watching Mind of a Chef, and more specifically, an episode that featured chef April Bloomfield. In that episode, she was making these “breakfast buns”, which consisted of puff pastry and a broccoli rabe pesto….

Pink velvet cupcakes with basque cheesecake mousseline

This recipe came up from a cake order, actually! The client was requesting pink velvet cupcakes for a Hollywood-type of party, so I wanted to try my best and embody a sort of glamorous and cute aesthetic. When it came to the cakes, I knew that I could do this super fluffy cake with pink…

Honeybee Doughnuts

My initial idea when I came up with these doughnuts were to do these little puffy fritters and garnish them with a honey drizzle and bee pollen. But then I really got thinking about them, and wanted to do a more literal translation of what these could be. I thought first about striping the doughnut…

Rippled hazelnut and coffee brownies

These brownies came about because I was really craving something crunchy, fudgey, and rich. I had quite a bit of leftover ingredients and prep from a variety of other recipes I had made, and I kind of wanted to find a productive way to use them all. And that was really how these brownies came…

Hotcakes with purin and cream

Whenever I am bored, I watch videos of people eating at Japanese cafes. I don’t know why, but it’s always fun to live vicariously through other peoples experiences! In one particular video, I saw people eating this super thick Japanese hotcakes, which are basically just fluffier, cakier pancakes. I also wanted to do something with…

Vegan and gluten-free pecan praline brownie sundae

I came up with this recipe because I wanted to see how challenging it would be to make a dessert that is both gluten-free and vegan. I wanted to take the most decadent, self-indulgent dessert, being a brownie sundae, and make it 100% free of animal products and gluten. Truthfully, making a vegan and gluten-free…

Vietnamese Coffee Sticky Buns

There are two beautiful things about being on a diet. The first is obviously that you lose weight and in a healthier way. The second is that you continuously develop cravings for things you know you should not be eating, and that is a wonderful basis for some really delicious desserts. These sticky buns are…

Lemon-Blueberry Gateau Breton Tart

So this dessert was initially meant to be like a 2.0 version of a lapis lazuli tart I made YEARS ago. But I knew I had to do a few things differently this time around. The first is the tart shell. Instead of just doing a pastry in a tart tin, I went with a…

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…

Chocolate chip-cookie butter cupcakes

This recipe primarily came about because I was craving cookie dough ice cream, and I happened to still have a jar of Speculoos cookie butter lying around. So I figured, why not make a cupcake that was chocolate chip cookie-flavored? I would make a cake with brown sugar, brown butter, and chocolate chips, just to…

Super simple pita bread

While in the midst of my crash dieting, I have developed some hilariously random cravings. Super fluffy pita bread has been one of those. About a year ago, I had dinner with my friends in downtown LA, at a restaurant called Girl and the Goat(which is best known for their flagship in Chicago, and being…

Shaymin Nerikiri

I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Namely because it took me 4 hours from start to finish. A lot of it, not going to lie, is just the amount of time it took perfecting the color and shape of these little nuggets. That and I tried to make a half-batch…