Freddy's Harajuku

Matcha Mooncakes

Normally mooncakes are eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the fall, but I wanted to do a matcha version of them, and that wound up fitting the green theme of St. Patrick’s Day as well, so I am posting these during March, even though I technically made these during the fall! What I love about…

“Edamame”: a plated dessert

This dessert came about because I had a bag of frozen edamame, and another bag of mugwort powder, and I wanted to use them both. That and with St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, I wanted to do a green dessert that was not just lime, matcha, or pandan. Mugwort, also called yomogi in Japanese,…

Matcha-Chocolate Bonsai Tartlet

It is really rare where I get so happy and ecstatic about a dessert I make, simply because of how exciting and unique the end product is. This would be one of those desserts. Easily in my personal top 5 for best-looking desserts I have ever made, this bonsai tree came about because I had…

Cranberry Bliss Cheesecake Stuffed Cookies

So I actually posted this recipe on Instagram back in December 2023, but I never bothered to post it on the blog itself! The main reason being that my December blog posts were already heavily backlogged with cookie posts, so I wanted to space it out a little bit. What I love about baking cookies…

Roasted eggplant with spicy lamb marmalade

This recipe is my homage to both an Italian ragout and stewed lamb. I love stewing lamb with lots of chilies and tomatoes, just because it is such has enough gamey-ness to hold up to a lot of flavors. Lamb curries are some of my favorite curries for that reason, but even stewed lamb chops…

Fudgemallow Naked Cake

In a lot of ways, this cake is an homage to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Specifically, the chocolate bar that Charlie found the golden ticket in, which was a “Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight”. Now, I have never eaten a Wonka bar in my life. I always wanted to, and that actually may be a future project…

Mini Cereal Milk Baked Doughnuts

Cereal milk is a Milkbar classic, made by steeping unsweetened cornflakes into milk, and then straining out said cornflakes so that the milk is more flavorful. You can toast the cornflakes before you steep them into the milk as well, which will add to the flavor slightly! However, one thing I always wanted to figure…

Fidough Lop Cheong Bao

My childhood favorite dim sum order were lop cheong bao, which were a long string of bao dough that was wrapped around Chinese sausage, and steamed. Chinese sausage on its own is oily, sweet, and salty. It is highly seasoned, very flavorful, and works beautifully against the relatively neutral-flavored, but really light and fluffy bao…

Milk Tea-Sesame Semolina Cake

I came up with this recipe because I was craving semolina cake. This cake was initially inspired by the Middle Eastern semolina cake called basbousa – a dense semolina flour-based cake that is usually baked with ghee and tahini, which gives it this nutty, toasty flavor profile and a dense, rich texture, and the baked…

Strawberry Christmas Cake

I feel like a lot of countries have their version of a Christmas cake. The Germans have baumkuchen, the French have bouche de noel. In Japan(and by a larger extension, a lot of east Asian countries), Christmas cake takes the form of a vanilla cake with vanilla cream and strawberries. The red and white color…

Hidden Rose Apple-Ruby Chocolate Eclairs

These Hidden Rose apple eclairs were the result of me buying way too many Hidden Rose apples, and needing a way to conveniently use them up. Hidden Rose apples are apples with naturally pink-colored flesh(not to be confused with the Pink Lady apples, which have a pink peel, but a regular yellow-white interior). They are…

Nian Gao Basque Cheesecake

To celebrate Lunar New Year, I wanted to do a dessert that was inspired by nian gao, which are these brown sugar-infused glutinous rice cakes. I grew up eating nian gao, and admittedly as a child, I thought they contained fish. Mostly because the texture, being so dense and chewy, made it seem like these…

Fruity Pebble Baked Tofu Doughnuts

I love doing baking tofu doughnuts. Not only is it a great way to use up any leftover silken tofu, but the actual doughnuts themselves have this soft, chewy texture and are the furthest thing from dry! I wanted to showcase a fun flavor combination, since I was playing around with ruby chocolate and Fruity…

Charsiu Milk Buns

Charsiu is comfort. Back when I was a child, I was an EXTREMELY picky eater. All the caps were needed there to emphasize how I basically wouldn’t eat seafood, certain kinds of fruits(pineapples, mangoes, and blueberries) and vegetables(bitter melon understandably, lettuce, gourds of any kind, and squash), and randomly coconut flakes(but I would still eat…

Mango Pudding with Coconut Sago

Now I would be a flat-out liar if I said I grew up loving mango pudding. Truthfully, I couldn’t even eat a mango when I was a child, until the age of 15. It was a textural thing. The first time I ate a mango, that I can remember, I was 4 years old, and…

Acorn Sticky Toffee Puddings

This recipe came up because my friend and talented chef, Kesha Taro, and I were talking about acorn flour. Kesha worked for Gordon Ramsay doing culinary production for decades. She worked briefly on season 10, but I didn’t meet her until season 11 open casting calls, and she was super kind. Flash forward years later,…

Black Sesame Hotcakes

I have been on a real hotcake kick lately. Hotcakes are pancakes, but fatter and thicker. They are very popular in Japan, and are often ordered at cafes! When I was in Kyoto, I was able to get some at the hotel we were staying at, and they were super fluffy and tender. So I…

“Chicken and Dumplings”: a plated dish

This dish is a revisited version of a recipe I made a few years ago, but as a more composed plated dish. The dish itself was what I made for a collaboration dinner at Mader Lao in Oklahoma, with my friends Gabriel and Dara(from season 12 of Masterchef!). I offered to do the entree, which…

Hot Chocolate-Stretchy Ice Cream Sundae

Even though I’m posting this recipe in January, I wanted to take hot chocolate, and turn it into something more California-friendly. Because let’s be real here, Southern California has two seasons: warm and slightly less warm. I personally love drinking hot chocolate in the winter – when I went to college in Boston, doing to…

Gluten-Free Chocolate Milkbar Birthday Cake

So back when I worked at Milkbar, my least favorite cake to assemble was the chocolate birthday cake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love eating chocolate cake. However, when it came to assembling this one, it was tricky. At Milkbar, at least for their actual bakery operation, each layer of buttercream needs to be…