Drifloon is one of the cutest Pokemon out there, being a ghostly purple balloon with a yellow cross shape(I’m assuming that the balloon was popped and patched up), and a little wispy cloud on top of its head. I still have memories of playing Pokemon Pearl and finding them in the Valley Windworks on a…
Category: Treats
Anything that didn’t quite fit into the other categories, and is “portable” or easy to eat while walking.
Honey Butter Buns with Creme Fraiche
These honey butter buns are inspired by Japanese honey butter toast, but in sticky bun form. Honey butter toast is made by spreading a paste of honey, brown sugar, and butter around a piece of bread, and toasting that until the sugars caramelize, and you get this almost creme brulee-like exterior to the toast itself….
PB&J Shortbread Sandos
After making the buttered and toast financiers using my bread slice muffin tins, I definitely wanted to do another recipe with them, but this time, shortbread sandos! I have been seeing shortbread sandwich cookies all over the internet, and I figured it would be a cute nod to do something like that, but with bread…
White Nectarine-Blackberry Pie Top
This pie top was directly inspired from when I saw Christina Tosi post this shortbread disk that was topped with jam and crumble on Instagram, and it looked delicious. So to do something similar to that, because once a Milkbar member, always a Milkbar member I made a variation on that, but with a shortbread…
Creme Brulee Financiers “Toasts”
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Sourdough Shio Pan Taiyaki
So a while back, I made these anko shio pan, but what I did not talk about was how I frozen some of the leftover shio pan, and eventually tried making taiyaki out of them! Taiyaki are a Japanese fish(sea bream)-shaped waffle, usually stuffed with either red bean paste or custard most commonly. In the…
Umami Oil Scallion Pancakes
When I was testing out a recipe for scallion pancakes, I happened to have made an umami oil with celery leaves and scallions, so I figured, why not infuse my dough with some of that? The dough itself was a subtle green color(which might not have photographed too clearly, but I promise you that there…
Stuffed Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies
Stuffed cream cheese cookies had quickly become an addiction of mine when I made those cranberry bliss cookies a while ago. The tender, soft, buttery cookie just melts in your mouth, while it is contrasted with the creamy, tangy filling. So it got me thinking, what other flavors could I go for with this cream…
Sourdough Bolognese Pizza
While I was experimenting with sourdough pizza crust, I happened to also have meal-prepped a giant vat of bolognese(meat sauce), just to have throughout the week for potential dinners. Originally, this was going to be a bolognese pasta post, but I forgot to photograph that, and decided instead, let’s use the bolognese on the pizza…
Sourdough Red Bean Shio Pan
About a year-ish ago, I made sourdough shio pan using my sourdough starter Horacio. Shio pan is a Japanese pastry, literally translating to mean “salt bread”. I like making it from time to time, and I have made sourdough variations of it in the past with my starter! The funniest thing was that I did…
Hojicha-Miso Alfajores
These cookies came about because I decided to test out making dulce de leche in my pressure cooker, and I ended needing to use said dulce de leche in a couple different recipes. So you can expect to see a few dulce de leche-based recipes in the horizon, with this being one of them! Alfajores(basically…
Peanut Milk Panna Cotta and Madeleines
This plated dessert was actually inspired by sweet peanut milk soup(花生仁汤), a popular canned beverage from my native Taiwan. I still remember the first time I had it, it was in my grandma’s apartment in the Shida district on a hot summer night. It was a milky beverage with these tender, braised peanuts. I was…
Semolina-Tahini Cake with Biko and Coconut
While I was going through my sugar fast, I was craving basically everything with sugar. This dessert specifically was one of those sugar-deprived fantasies I conceptualized around two desserts that are notoriously sugar-laden. One of the inspirations was basbousa, an Egyptian semolina cake that is baked with tahini for a nutty texture, and is normally…
Haricot Vert and Feta Pita
I had purchased green beans(or haricot vert) on a whim and was trying to figure out a way to use the last few up in a fun and creative way. That was literally how this recipe came about. When I think about haricot vert, I distinctly enjoy their snappy texture, when blanched and shocked properly,…
Red Miso-Black Garlic Pork Belly Baozi
Since I am about to travel in Taiwan/Japan in April, I was starting to think about what dishes from my youth that I missed the most. Baozi, or meat buns, were such a ubiquitous part of my childhood, being something I would eat at dim sum, for breakfast on occasion, and whenever I would visit…
Baked Chocolate Dulce de Leche Doughnuts
I wanted to make these doughnuts for a couple of different reasons. The first was that eggs are getting really expensive/hard to find about now, I wanted to do some R&D with egg-free desserts, this being one of them. The second was that I was fondly reminiscing about my time at Boston University, and recalling…
Freddy's Harajuku 