Freddy's Harajuku

Yuzu tofu matzoh balls with chili-fennel broth

I feel like whenever the holidays roll around, there are always weird recipes or dishes that come up. This recipe would be one of those. I purchased yuzu flavored tofu from the local Japanese grocery store on a whim, thinking it would be fun to bake a dessert with. Little did I read, it was…

Persimmon and fresh cream cake

Every time it’s the fall, I HAVE to use persimmons in something. They are such an autumnal fruit, and take me back to childhood memories of eating them off the tree in our backyard. What I love about persimmon is that they come in such different forms, depending on the ripeness. With the unripe ones,…

Hidden rose apple tarts with ruby chocolate

I just love it when fruits come in unusual or different colors. Purple kale, watermelon radishes, rainbow carrots, blood oranges, all things that I came to love when I first got into cooking over 10 years ago. Then about 3 years ago, I learned about naturally pink apples. Mountain or hidden rose apples, depending on…

Matcha purin dorayaki

I have done dorayaki in the past, and I have even done purin-stuffed dorayaki as well, but this is a slightly different take on the usual. Typically, Japanese purin(also called pudding), is made of a baked custard topped with a layer of caramel, similar if not exactly the same as Mexican flan. However, my take…

Boba milk tea-ramisu

I really only came up with these tea-ramisus while I was running. Specifically, I was thinking about how I could make boba-flavored desserts, and I was also thinking about the milk tea tiramisu that was popularized by chef Melissa King. Her version was the Hong Kong milk tea tiramisu, but I wanted to take it…

Milk tea apple tart

For me, apple pie brings back fond memories…of making a fool of myself on national television. Besides the fact that apple tarte tatin lives rent free in my head and nightmares, I do love the idea of roasted apples and a buttery pastry, regardless of if those things are directly related to one of the…

Gooey butter mochi cake with hojicha sugar

So this recipe was a hybrid between St. Louis gooey butter cake and Hawaiian butter mochi. For context, a gooey butter cake is either a yeasted cake or a yellow cake that has a TON of butter in it, and is baked with a cream cheese topping that is similar to a cheesecake. Between the…

Chicken cacciatore with egg noodles

This was literally a simple dinner that I whipped together after I butchered a chicken and had to figure out how I was going to cook the thighs. I love chicken cacciatore, the latter word in the term being the Italian word for “hunter”, because it is this super hearty dish. Think of chicken stewed…

Giant hot milk crumb cake

So a while ago, I made a take on the LAUSD coffee cake in the form of doughnut creams. I wanted to revisit that inspiration, but this time, making a giant crumb cake! For the cake batter itself, I went with a take on hot milk cake, which is a soft, springy cake made with…

Pistachio-matcha cake

I literally came up with this cake because I wanted to see how much pistachio powder I could incorporate into a chiffon cake without compromising the integrity of the cake – as pistachios do not have gluten, that would obviously affect the texture of a cake when subbing out ground pistachios with flour. The end…

Sticky Toffee-Bourbon Pecan cake

This was actually a cake I made for my boss at work’s birthday! I was talking with my coworkers in sales about what he liked, and we figured that a bourbon pecan cake of some capacity would just suit his personality and preferences, so why not go that route? For this cake, we have a…

Vegan and Gluten-free Devil’s Food Cake

I came up with the idea to make this cake because I wanted to make my vegan chocolate-tofu mousse again, but also wanted to pair it with something that would compliment it perfectly, so I figured, why not chocolate mousse on chocolate cake? For the cake itself, I went with my gluten-free and vegan devil’s…

Tiramisu wedding cake

So this (not so little) cake was actually my first wedding cake order! I usually don’t do wedding cakes, since they take forever to make and the stress of delivering these while keeping them intact is a lot to handle, but I was asked by my friend Lily to do it for our mutual friend…

“Rebirth”: a plated dessert

With this dessert, I was going for that phoenix from the ashes motif, but using all gluten-free and vegan ingredients! During the peak of 2020 quarantining, when everyone hogged all of the flour, eggs, and butter, I had to pivot and learn how to make desserts without any of those things, and this is really…

“Feathered Apple”: a plated dessert

I created this dessert from just several techniques that I fell in love with, and wanting to compose those techniques into a cohesive dessert. Homemade phyllo is always something I love to do, while the usage of Almond Inspiration was just to add a pleasant nuttiness. I wanted to use hojicha as well, since it…

“Fever Dream”: a plated dessert

I literally named this dessert after my favorite mxmtoon song, “Fever Dream”. For me, that term represents memories and milestones of your life, past, present, and future, just melting together into one moment. So I wanted to do that in this dessert! For starters, I wanted to use cherries, since my birthday cake growing up…

Forêt de cauchemars: a petit gateau

This dessert literally only happened because I purchased a ton of cherries to make another recipe with, and I had to figure out what to do with them before they went moldy. Which is always a great motivator when you purchase way too much of an ingredient! So I went ahead and pureed my remaining…

Amethyst: lavender-honey gemstone cookies

It has been a minute since I made any of my gemstone cookies, so I felt like I needed to bring out a new flavor! I still have a lot of lavender from the last time I used it(yes, that was over a year ago), so I wanted to use some of it in this…

Gluten free pumpkin cake roll

I literally came up with this recipe for my coworker, Holly. It was her last day at work, and she has a gluten allergy, so I wanted to make something that embraced the seasonality of it being fall, but also made 100% without gluten. I have never quite made a gluten-free chiffon cake before, so…

Okra noodles with dashi and shisso

This dish came about because my friend Karen was growing okra in her backyard, and she gifted me with a ton of it when I hung out with her. My initial thoughts on what to do with the okra were either a curry or a gumbo, but then I thought about something lighter and more…