Freddy's Harajuku

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…

Assam Tea Buttercream Cake

Growing up in a Taiwanese/Chinese-American household, almost all of our plateware was white and blue porcelain. To this day, I still don’t fully get why it was that color, but the pattern has really grown on me over the years. To the point where I really wanted to make a cake as an homage to…

Blood Moon: a petit gateau

For this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, I wanted to do a few different kinds of moon cakes. Some more traditional, and some, a new interpretation of the term “moon cake”. In this case, I wanted to do not one, but two petit gateau, both moon-themed. One would be inspired by the full moon, but the other,…

Moonlight Delight: a petit gateau

When Mid-Autumn Festival rolls around, that means it’s moon cake season! And while I do love moon cakes, I wanted to make a new interpretation of them, by making petit gateau(mini mousse cakes) with moon motifs! I wanted there to be two, one inspired by a blood moon using dark and red colors, and one…

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…

Cold Brew-Oreo-Tofu Rare Cheesecake

More times than not, when I was making a tofu or yogurt-based mousse cake, I found that after it thaws, the cheesecake has a soggy crust that is sitting in a massive puddle of water. Trust me, I learned this lesson the hard way not once, not twice, but three times. At first, I thought…

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…

Thai Tea-Coconut Carrot Cake

This recipe came about because I had a bunch of carrots I needed to get rid of. A while ago, my friends and I visited a farm in Irvine, with the intention of going strawberry picking. But because of all the torrential rain Southern California has been experiencing, the strawberry crops were dead, and we…

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?…

Strawberry-Rhubarb-Corn Tart

I feel like I have done variations on strawberry-rhubarb-corn tartlets in the past, but this one really takes the cake(or pie/tart?). Mostly because of the technique that went into making it. I wanted to make sure that strawberry, rhubarb, and corn were each used in two different preparations in this recipe – ironically, the tart…

Ube-Passionfruit Mousse Cake

I had the initial inspiration for this cake when I was visiting my friend, Ann, who lives in Oahu. There was a shrub with these gorgeous purple flowers, and I had the idea to make a cake with that kind of visual inspiration. In light of everything going on in Maui, I felt like it…

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,…