Freddy's Harajuku

Hojicha lava bundt cakes

During the pandemic, one of my absolute favorite “inventions” was this roasted miso and hojicha sugar, made by toasting sencha green tea leaves and miso paste in the oven, then blitzing them with sugar to form a fine powder. That powder is delicious as a coating for a doughnut(which is what it was originally intended…

Oreo Icebox Cake

I will admit it has been a hot second since I made an icebox cake. They are straightforward in the sense of being just layers of wafers and cream, and the fun is seeing how the cream softens the wafers, giving them that cake-y feel when you cut into one! In this case, I went…

Citrus Sfogliatelle

I love sfogliatelle. They are as crunchy, creamy, and delicious as they are tricky to make. These Italian pastries are made with a copious amount of dough that is quite similar to phyllo in composition, and filled with a mixture of semolina, ricotta, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and candied orange peel. The filling MIGHT sound a…

Yakult and Pineberry Roll Cake

When I first heard about pineberries from my coworker Georgina, I just knew I had to use them in something. Pineberries are albino strawberries that supposedly taste like pineapples – truthfully, they just tasted like tart strawberries to me, but that was fine either way, because I really wanted to use them for their beautiful…

Rowlet Inarizushi

When I was a kid who did not like raw fish yet, I found myself ordering only three things whenever we would go out for sushi: cucumber rolls, tamagoyaki(Japanese omelet), and inarizushi. Inari refers to these puffed tofu skins that are based in a sweet soy mixture, giving them a sweet, smoky, and almost salty…

Milky Way Yokan

I love Tanabata. For those unfamiliar with it, Tanabata is a Japanese holiday where they have a star festival, celebrating all things wishes! It is held to commemorate the one day in the year(July 7th) where two lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who were separated by the Milky Way can see each other. Tags with wishes…

Chocolate-Caramel-Sea Salt Cookies

These cookies were a hilarious experiment. I love aging my cookie dough by a few days just so that the exterior of the cookies get really crispy. For these cookies, I did that same technique, but because I also substituted the eggs with sourdough. From a baking standpoint, eggs provide protein to bind doughs and…

Pineapple Cake Madeleines 2.0

I did attempt to make pineapple cake madeleines before, and while I was relatively happy with the batter portion, I felt like the pineapple was not where I wanted it to be. While whole chunks of pineapple reinforce the flavor of the fruit in the end product, it was not quite enough like the jammy…

You’re my superstar: a geode cake

I’ve made so many galaxy cakes over the years. I just love the aesthetic of stars and constellations! For this specific recipe, I wanted to decorate it with konpeitou, which are these really pretty rock candies that come in different colors. They look like the star bits from Super Mario Galaxy and they are just…

Ube-coconut cupcakes

Now I did a layer cake with ube and coconut recently. But before anyone tries to tell me that I am double-dipping, there are some differences between the two recipes, beyond one being cupcakes and the other being a layer cake. The first is that the layer cake gets a soak. The second is that…

Apple brandy krempita

This dessert was an evolution of a previous post I made. Krempita is a Montenegrin dessert that consists of layers of phyllo dough and custard. It is similar to a napoleon, a mille feuille, or Greek galaktoboureko in that sense of being flaky pastry with a custard-y filling. This interpretation of it takes that Montenegrin…

Sourdough Socca

Since I have a lot of sourdough starter leftover from the pita recipe, I wanted to test out some more flatbreads that I could make with it. So that’s when I decided on socca. Also called farinata, socca is a European flatbread made from chickpea flour(also called garbonzo bean flour!). Because of that, it is…

Chocolate Fraisier Cake

Now I have done Fraisier cakes in the past. What I love is the appearance, being this perfectly cylindrical cake with slices of strawberries peeking out from the cream that the layers of sponge are sandwiching. For this rendition, I wanted to go with a chocolate-ish version of it, featuring a fluffy black cacao sponge,…

Lemon-Thyme “Rainbow” Tart

For Pride this year, I waned to go with a bit more of a whimsical take on rainbows. When I think of rainbows, immediately I think of light and water. Since you know, the two work together to create a rainbow! So for the light side of things, I went with a lemon-thyme curd tart,…

POG Jelly with Passionfruit

I was inspired by Taiwanese grass jelly when making this dessert. Grass jelly is an Asian dessert that consists of these dark brown cubes of jelly that are flavored with mesona chinensis leaves(the jelly basically tastes like a pleasant black tea with grassier notes). Usually grass jelly is topped with sweet braised peanuts and tang…

Ube Wool Buns

I have always adored the aesthetic of wool bread. The dough is scored repeatedly on one side then rolled up prior to baking to create these really pretty ridges on top of the dough. There is just something about that appearance that takes me back to Asian bakeries. I wanted to make sure that this…

Sourdough Pita

The initial idea for this recipe came about because my friend Sylvie was nonstop raving about how good the sourdough at Bavel in LA is. To quote, she said it was the fluffiest pita bread she ever had. And that piqued my interest. I happened to own the Bavel cookbook, so I looked up their…

Pistachio and EVOO Mimosa Cake

Mimosa cakes have steadily become one of my favorite kinds of cakes to bake over the past 4 years. Mostly because I love cutting up cake into cubes, in case you haven’t already figure that out. For this specific recipe, I wanted to utilize yuzu as well, just to add something tart and bright to…

Salsa Macha Noodles

I was craving some chili oil-noodle business, and I was watching the Chef Show on Netflix, where they were making salsa macha, and that was literally how this recipe came about. For those unfamiliar with it, salsa macha(not to be confused with matcha green tea), is a salsa made with dried chilies, sesame seeds and/or…

Malted miso and black vinegar chocolate cake: Season 10 Revisited

This is my updated take on the “shines forever” dessert that got Gordon Ramsay licking the plate clean. The main differences being the usage of black cacao powder to really intensify the flavor of the cake. I also updated plating style to be more in line with something I would present now, as opposed to…