If you were to ask me what I have been up to in terms of my cooking, I would probably present you with these lucuma tarts. They perfectly represent how much I have been doing research on Latin American-cuisine, as well as tie into my background at Milkbar. The shells are made with lucuma, being…
Category: Treats
Anything that didn’t quite fit into the other categories, and is “portable” or easy to eat while walking.
Ube Basque cheesecake
I’ve made Basque cheesecakes before, but I wanted to try making another flavor, using leftover use paste that I had in my refrigerator. You know, a two in one. Practice a baked good, and also use up an ingredient/flavor that I have not necessarily touched in a while. Ube is a Filipino purple yam, and…
Duo of eclairs: ruby chocolate-apple and chocolate “Inca gold”
I just wanted to make really artsy eclairs, so I opted for two flavors, being a ruby chocolate-apple and a chocolate “Inca gold”. For the ruby chocolate eclairs, they are glazed in ruby chocolate and garnished with shards, while the inside is an apple butter pastry cream. I wanted to keep this one aesthetically pleasing,…
If I believe: a Mont Blanc
When I was doing a Google Hangout baking session with my friends, Ann and Sylvie, I was struggling hardcore with what to make. I really wanted to do a strawberry Mont Blanc, but I had these dates in my refrigerator that have been laying there for at least four weeks, and I also had a…
Sea salt ice cream popsicles
Now that I finally have proper popsicle molds, I can make the actual sea salt ice cream from Kingdom Hearts. I have done renditions on it in the past, but this time, I feel like this is as close to the ice cream as I can possibly get. Just to make these more interesting, I…
Matcha bundt babka
Babka are always so much fun to make, and every more fun to eat! I wanted to do a fun little take on the classic babka, and use a matcha filling instead of the traditional chocolate, and bake them in my doughnut molds instead of the loaf pans, just to give them more of a…
Duck fat-grilled onigiri
These rice balls were just a way for me to utilize a bucketload of leftover brown rice. With rice of any kind, it can be very bland. In the case of brown rice, that is no exception. I knew that I had to inject as much flavor as I could into it, so I wanted…
Chocolate covered banana craquelin choux puffs
I was doing some recipe testing with craquelin pate choux, since I am planning to use them for quite a few different projects and concepts coming up. For these choux pastries, I decided upon the flavor pretty quickly. I had bananas in the freezer that were taking up space, so I wanted to get rid…
Knafeh flavored lotus pastries
I have been meaning to make lotus pastries for a long time now. They’re a hugely popular snack in China, consisting of flaky layers of fried dough, wrapped around a filling. As the name suggests, they are assembled and cut in a way that when deep fried, the dough blossoms and resembles a lotus. It’s…
Black sesame brioche ring
Going to Asian bakeries like JJ’s and 85 Degrees C as a child, I loved all of the different kinds of pastries you could find and buy. Flaky, bready, buttery, sweet, salty, crunchy, there were so many different kinds of treats with an equal variety of colors, ingredients, and flavors. One of my absolute favorites…
Eventide: a wagashi
I have been meaning to try making a mizugashi wagashi for a while. Mizugashi refers to clear water/translucent finish, which these desserts have. I really wanted to make one that was naturally colored, gluten-free, and vegan, just to embrace the beauty of nature, something that wagashi tries to embrace and capture. For mine, I used…
Imqaret with orange curd and honey mascarpone
So I have been studying a bunch of different Mediterranean desserts, mostly to help me broaden my range. Looking through Malta specifically, I came across a really curious dessert called imqaret(pronounced without the “q”). They’re basically these pastries stuffed with an orange blossom-date filling. Some use walnuts, others don’t. Most people fry them, but some…
Moussaka pizza
One of my favorite dishes from Greece is moussaka. It’s basically layers of ground meat, typically lamb, sometimes beef, stewed in this tomato sauce with eggplant, potatoes, and a creamy béchamel on top of that is broiled until golden brown. With the exception of the potato, honestly, all of those things could be incorporated into…
Coconut madeleines
I literally made these on a whim. I had recently come into a lot of coconut flour, and I was thinking of what I could make with it. I had also purchased a madeleine pan recently, and thought about making another gluten-free baked good, so that’s where the idea to make a coconut madeleine came…
Devil’s food-tangerine choco-pies
While I was in quarantine, I wanted to continue to bake things that either hybridized two things, or touched upon my childhood nostalgia. In this case, I made something that touched upon the latter. Growing up in a Taiwanese/Chinese-American household, I have distinct memories of going to the Asian grocery stores and getting these chocolate-covered…
“Paopu” dole whip popsicles
In the lore of the Kingdom Hearts video game series, the fictional paopu fruit is a star-shaped fruit that is shared between people who want to be bonded together forever. To make that into a flavor, I knew starfruit was an obvious must, as it is the closest fruit in real life to a paopu…
Chocolate turtle thumbprint cookies
I was definitely thinking about how this blog came together when I conceptualizing this recipe. So right after I graduated college, I was approached by somebody to work in what sounded like a really exciting project: a YouTube channel featuring dessert videos. I won’t get into too many more details on it, because it was…
Marimo truffles
I love how the Japanese manage to make everything cute. From clione (basically sea slugs, but they’re called sea angels), to daruma (those giant red and white dolls with the crazy eyes and mustaches), to marimo (little aquatic moss balls that some children even keep as pets). Marimo are super adorable, just because they’re perfectly…
Duck banh mi with homemade baguette and purple yam chips
One of my absolute favorite sandwiches is the banh mi. A Vietnamese-French hybrid, it features a baguette that has pate, some sort of meat, pickled vegetables, chilies, and cilantro on it. It’s been one of my favorites for years ever since I had one from Lee’s Sandwiches(yes, I know it’s a chain, but still, the banh…
Raspberry craquelin choux
These puffs are super simple to make, and so satisfying to see coming out of the oven. Craquelin or sablage refers to the cookie that is baked on top of the pate choux. It is really gorgeous and I have used it several times throughout my recipes on this blog. Besides the craquelin itself, the…
Freddy's Harajuku 