Chocolate-Rose Quartz-Pistachio Cookies

So I have made a version of these rose quartz cookies in the past, but I wanted to revisit the original recipe I made during my time at Milkbar, which featured a chocolate cookie embedded with Turkish delight(also called loukoumi, and they are like these sugary, pink rose-flavored jellies). The Turkish delight, which are primarily…

Fig Leaf Financier

For starters, this is a gluten-free and vegan recipe. I had to get that out of the way first and foremost. Secondly, you might be asking, what is fig leaf, and what does it taste like? As the name implies, a fig leaf is literally the leaf of a fig plant. It has an herbaceous,…

Pink Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes

Pineapple cakes, or in Chinese 鳳梨酥(feng-li-su), are these buttery, flaky pastries that are stuffed with a sweet pineapple jam. Honestly, I have never bothered to make them before, since it’s so easy to purchase them, and almost every Taiwanese household has them just lying around to snack on! However, I had leftover pink pineapple that…

Miso Eggplant Onigiri

Miso eggplant is one of those flavor combinations that I really wanted to dislike, but actually loved from the get-go. For context, growing up, my mom would always serve bitter melon with miso paste, which caused me to develop a bit of a gag reflex towards vegetables served with miso for a long, long time….

Om Ali with Pistachio-Cardamom Cream

I came up with this recipe because I had a lot of leftover brioche and phyllo, and I needed to use it up someway, somehow. Luckily for me, there is a dessert that literally can use up both, which meant that I did not have to sacrifice space in my freezer for either of those…

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Muffins

I am actually surprised by how few times in my life I have made muffins. Back before I even started learning how to bake, my sister would make these banana-Nutella muffins all the time, so you would think that I would have taken my hand at something similar, but I guess I just haven’t felt…

Black Sesame-Cherry Crostata

Sometimes a good recipe comes about because you have a TON of leftover components in your refrigerator, and it forces you to get creative. I don’t think I would have come up with the combination of black sesame and cherry anytime soon had it not been for the fact that I had leftover black sesame…

Blueberry-Yuzu Mochi Ice Cream

I adore the combination of blueberry and citrus. It just takes me back to living in New England, where the Maine blueberries and the abundance or either Meyer lemon or blood orange was such a common yet effective dessert combination. I also love making mochi ice cream, and plating it up in a presentable dessert…

Clodsire Mochi Puffs

Clodsire is a new friend-shaped Pokemon that is an alternate evolution to Wooper. In a way, it’s a Quagsire that decided to live life laying down, and somehow developed these purple spots on its back where it can spring out its poisonous spines. So despite looking hilariously adorable, Clodsire can be extremely terrifying. Luckily, these…

Maple Langue de Chat

Langue de chat are a thin French cookie, similar to like a tuile, or a Milano cookie. The translation to English is rather unappetizing, meaning “cat tongues”, but I can assure you that these cookies are quite addictive. In Japan, a popular method of preparing them includes baking them into ornate squares, and sandwiching them…

White Rabbit Carrot Cheese Tarts

I was inspired to make this recipe by the Pablo Cheese Tarts, which I was fortunate enough to have on my second last day in Japan. Those cheese tarts featured a buttery crust, and an oozy, gooey cheese filling, very reminiscent of both a basque cheesecake and a molten lava cake. I only bought six…

Banana-Custard Phyllo Pita

I came up with this recipe because I was craving something banana pudding/banana cream pie-esque, but with super flaky, laminated pastry, like puff pastry or a croissant. The thought of crispy dough, custard, and cooked down bananas just sounded really good to me in the moment, so I figured, why not make that a reality?…

Vegan Spumoni Ice Cream Sandwiches

I am unashamed to admit that the recipe you are about to read was the result of me needing to clean out my refrigerator of several leftover components. I purchased way too many fresh cherries, I had half a block of unpureed bright green edamame tofu that I needed to use up, some chocolate ganache…

Carrot Cake Bunny Shortbreads

These carrot cake shortbreads came about because I had about half a bottle of carrot juice in my refrigerator, and I needed to find a creative use for it. So then I thought, why not reduce it down into a jammy consistency, which will then have an intense carrot flavor to it, and then use…

Gooey Lemon Curd-Olive Oil Cakes 2.0

So a while ago, I made a gooey olive oil cake with lemon curd, but I wanted to do another rendition of that recipe. While this version is also 100% vegan, I wanted to try a couple of different things. The first is instead of piping the lemon curd into each cake before baking it,…

Matcha-Frog Shortbreads

I am hesitant to put this out there on the Internet, but I used to have a gigantic phobia of frogs. I’m not 100% what it was, but until the Pokemon Froakie came out, I found frogs to be kind of gross? Slimy, bulbous eyes, the expanding throats, the randomly differently colored underbellies, and the…

“Buffet-Food” Lemon-Strawberry Tartlets

I feel like this recipe is classic, and not trendy. These tartlets are the stereotypical catering or banquet dessert you would find in a gala or at a golf club buffet. A perfectly round tart with a lemon filling and a meringue, torched on top. Or a dessert with cut up berries on top of…

Sesame Panda Shortbreads

Whenever I make panda-themed anything, I always think about one of my friends from high school, Karen. Fun fact, I had two friends from high school named Karen, who weirdly enough, I still keep in touch with, but also, they have never met each other before. That Karen-themed tidbit about myself aside, the panda-loving Karen…

Sweet Corn Coffee

So I was watching Single’s Inferno, and to semi-avoid spoilers(I won’t include specific names), there was an instance in one of the seasons a contestant was so enamored with the concept of sweet corn coffee that, at least it seemed like this to me anyways, she dumped all of her other prospective suitors to pursue…

Poliwag Tang Yuan

When I think of cute O.G./Gen 1 Pokemon, Poliwag immediately comes to mind. Mostly because I remember accidentally running them over in Pokemon Snap in the River stage(whoops), and seeing Misty’s Poliwag(which managed to make it all the way to a Politoed!) back in the original anime series. Poliwag are these round, blue tadpole-like Pokemon…