Freddy's Harajuku

Salted Caramel “Black Thunder” Bars

I don’t know how I went as long as I have without ever eating a Black Thunder cookie bar. These popular Japanese candy bars consist of a black cacao cookie with crunchy rice and a chocolate coating. They are texturally addictive, and I can only assume that the name “Black Thunder” refers to both the…

Dubai Chocolate Muffins

I have been toying around with Dubai chocolate-flavored things, because chocolate-pistachio is one of my favorite flavor combinations. The chocolate bar is stuffed with a mixture of pistachio cream and toasted kataifi(shredded phyllo dough), which is a loose homage to knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert that uses those ingredients. Smoky, salty, crunchy, creamy, bitter, and…

Devil’s Food Cauldron Cakes

This recipe was me creating my take on Cauldron Cakes from the Harry Potter series. I did get the Cauldron Cakes from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and while it was not terrible by any means, my one gripe was that the cauldron part of the cake was just a silicone…

Marbled Sesame Cheesecake Brulee

So I was scouring the internet, and found this gorgeous rectangular cheesecake with a bruleed top, that was sold by the popular Japanese brand, Mr. Cheesecake. That store features these rectangular slabs of cheesecake with a caramelized top and a custard-like center – think like a more aesthetically pleasing basque cheesecake. What was cool was…

Beef Heart with Lemon-Pecorino Risotto

Beef heart is a very fascinating ingredient. Being a high-activity muscle, heart as an ingredient can eat chewy after being treated with most cooking methods. However, I love preparing it in a marinade, then searing it, almost like how you treat ahi tuna. I actually never touched a beef heart before I made this recipe….

Shiny Cottonee (Hojicha) Tea-ramisu

So I had already made a regular Cottonee tea-ramisu(tiramisu but using tea instead of coffee) before, but I figured, why not invert the matcha and hojicha in the recipe, and somehow we wound up with shiny Cottonee. Unlike normal Cottonee, which features a white body, orange eyes, and green leaves, a shiny Cottonee features a…

Cottonee Matcha Tea-ramisu

These tea-ramisu were the end result of me wanting to use these silicone cloud molds I purchased, and wanting to do something Pokemon-themed. So after thinking through what I could do, it just made sense to go the route of Cottonee. Cottonee, as the name may imply, is a cotton ball-themed Grass/Fairy type Pokemon. It…

Olive Oil-Peach Galette

This galette is an homage to one I made over a year ago when I was visiting my friend Amanda in Austin! It featured a buttery crust with a frangipane filling and tons of juicy, roasted Fredericksburg(obviously I HAD to make a dessert with those for just the namesake alone) peaches perched on top. It…

Strawberry-Pistachio-Lemon Mirror Glaze Cake

Strawberry and pistachio will always be on of my favorite dessert combinations – the tartness of red fruit against the salty, crunchy, smokiness of a pistachio is just so addictive. It also might be because my birthday is so close to Christmas that I just love the color contrast between red/pink and green. Pistachio and…

Pink Sprinkled Sourdough Doughnuts

These doughnuts were the byproduct of me feeding my sourdough starter, and it overflowing from being fed and me having roughly 16oz of starter that I had to use up. A decent portion of it went towards making these air-fried sourdough doughnuts. Yes, air-fried and sourdough-based. The idea here was that I did not want…

Red-Stripped Mini Croissants

I did not have it in my 2024 bingo card that I would be making croissants again. The last time I tackled croissants this frequently was 4 years ago during the pandemic, when there was literally nothing else to do. Croissant dough usually takes a long time to make, since the dough is laminated, but…

Hidden Rose Apple Krempita

So I was fortunate enough to procure some hidden rose apples, and I just had to use them in a couple recipes while I had the chance! Hidden rose apples are usually available in a relatively short span between November and December, so I always feel a need to make a couple of recipes with…

Vanilla-Apple-Almond Entremet

I had these red delicious apples laying around in my fridge that I wanted to use up, so I started making kohakutou with them. Kohakutou is a Japanese crystal-like candy, made by creating a sugary gelee, then allowing it to slowly dry out over time(anywhere from 3 days to even 3 weeks) so that the…

Sourdough Black Pepper Biscuits

Biscuits are always a guilty pleasure for me. Flaky or fluffy, light, and buttery, all words I would use to describe the perfect biscuit. Back in college, I was fortunate enough to go to school in Boston, where Sweet Cheeks Q is located. Sweet Cheeks is known for their iconic biscuit, which is the size…

Cappelletti with Walnut-Miso Dashi

This literally was a recipe that came about because I had about 8oz of ricotta cheese leftover and I was not 100% sure what to do with it. I made a poll on Instagram, giving a couple of the options I was leaning towards: the choices were: ravioli, cheesecake, doughnuts, or whatever Google told me…

White Chocolate-Macadamia Sourdough Scones

If there was one quintessential childhood cookie for me growing up, it was the white chocolate-macadamia nut cookie from Subway(eat Fresh). Whenever we had field trips, my mom would get me a footlong Italian sandwich with one of those cookies, so I always looked forward to field trips for that very reason. Even as an…

Tofu Cheesecake with Honeyed Plums

This cheesecake was the brain child of me wanting to use silken tofu in a dessert, but also wanting to play around with plums while they were still in season. I have been playing around with what I call “blank slate”-types of desserts, where the dessert components are left super open-ended in a way where…

Dark Chocolate-Dried Cherry Sourdough Scones

Now that I am officially a sourdough parent, I am always finding fun and new ways to use up my sourdough starter. One of those ways was by making scones. I was really just thinking about items that could be served in an afternoon tea, since a lot of those things are dough-based pastries or…

Wintermelon Mooncakes

These wintermelon mooncakes are my homage to wintermelon tea. Wintermelon is not a super popular ingredient outside of Asia, as it is a relatively bland gourd that is caramelized and used as an ingredient for boba milk tea frequently. I grew up drinking wintermelon tea all the time, so I wanted to use that as…

Tofu-Miso Panna Cotta with Textures of Soy

I will not lie, this recipe is similar to an old dessert I did a while ago featuring a tahini panna cotta. but I wanted to feature Meiji tofu instead. Meiji tofu is a type of tofu made with double the amount of soy beans, resulting in a silkier texture and a more intense soy…