Freddy's Harajuku

Fluffy buttermilk biscuits

I’m not going to lie and claim that I grew up making biscuits with my mother from scratch, or even talk about the first time I remember eating a biscuit, because I would be lying on both counts – we probably used the Pillsbury dough if we ever made them, and I really can’t remember…

Squash blossom and ricotta pizza

This pizza is my love letter to Pizzeria Mozza in West Hollywood. Namely because I love that restaurant, but driving all the way over there from the South Bay area in Southern California is a giant pain. They have this wonderful pizza with Nancy Silverton’s perfected O.G. La Brea Bakery bread that has a blanket…

Maritozzo buns with cream and Earl Grey tea

I have been wanting to make these buns for what feels like a century(in actuality, closer to 2 months). The idea of these fluffy buns with a perfect line of cream, it just sounds like eating a cloud! For those unfamiliar with what maritozzo are, they are Roman(Italian) bread buns that are stuffed with cream….

Chocolate covered banana roll cake

Whenever I think of quintessential beach treats, chocolate-covered bananas always come to mind. Mostly because of Arrested Development. I love the idea of taking nostalgic things like that, and recreating them in something more in my style. In this case, that would be a roll cake. Using a fluffy chocolate chiffon, blonde chocolate, and Korean…

Blood orange upside down cake

I have made this recipe before, but I think it was on TikTok, back when I actually had/used that app. This cake consists of a layer of caramel-laden blood orange slices that are sitting on top of a dense but delicious olive oil cake. It’s fairly straightforward in flavor profile, and pretty fun to make,…

Ricotta gnocchi with squash, fennel, and salsa verde

So this dish was actually inspired from when I was watching The Chef’s Line on Netflix. For those unfamiliar with the program, it’s a cooking competition show that was originally in Australia, before it premiered on Netflix as well. Sadly the show is no longer running, but there were a lot of cool recipes and…

Mini milk bread toasts with homemade bread and jams

I just randomly had an epiphany the other day to make mini brick toasts with ricotta and jam. Mostly because I was missing the brick toasts from Sqirl(yes I know that’s controversial to be a fan of that restaurant with all of the moldy jam and recipe-stealing scandals, but you can’t deny that the food…

Double decker buttermilk Fraisier cake

I do love myself a good fraisier cake, or a fraisier dessert of any kind, honestly! For those unfamiliar with the term, a fraisier cake is just a strawberry cake, usually featuring two layers of vanilla sponge with strawberries surrounding it and a vanilla cream between the layers. I have made a couple in the…

Rainbow dango(suama)

So I was brainstorming different rainbow desserts for Pride this year, and I literally came up with the idea to do these when I was walking through my local Japanese grocery store(which I frequent a lot these days), and stumbled upon Fugetsu-Do‘s rainbow dango, also called suama. For those unfamiliar, Fugetsu-Do is a highly popular…

Passionfruit chouquettes with passionfruit spun sugar

I made these chouquettes with a friend of mine, Sylvie, as a thank you for sowing up a couple of holes I had in one of my sleeveless hoodies, and one of my pairs of work pants. Sylvie loves passionfruit, and in exchange for agreeing to sow up my clothes like the talented seamstress that…

Beef cappelletti with brodo and fennel

I really only came up with this dish because I had a lot of oxtail and oxtail broth leftover, and wanted to use it in something. So I came up with this idea to make a stuffed pasta with the leftover oxtail meat, and serve it in the broth to finish. But that just felt…

Meyer lemon basque cheesecake with Meyer lemon cream

Basque cheesecake will forever be that quintessential ugly delicious dessert for me. Well, that and worms and dirt. You can’t make worms and dirt look pretty, and that’s perfectly fine with me. With this particular basque cheesecake, I had a ton of Meyer lemons lying around, to the point where you’d think that they just…

Congee with mini youtiao

I love congee. To the point where I’ve posted about it at least a couple of times now. What makes this congee a little different than the other ones I have made it is that it’s a lot simpler. The other ones used game birds or meats, or were a little less accessible. But this…

Mixed berry chiffon cake

This cake was inspired from my favorite Paris Baguette item, which literally is named the same thing. Back in college, I was obsessed with the mixed berry chiffon cakes that they had, and it would be my go to order there all the time. Fluffy cake with cream and fresh berries, it was always a…

Gluten-free coconut-lime cheesecakes

I have been craving Magnolia Bakery’s lime and coconut cheesecake since I had it years ago when I visited New York. While one can make the argument that I could just drive to Downtown L.A. to get it, I’m lazy. Lazy enough to try making my own version of it, anyways. So for the cake,…

Red velvet loaves with whipped cream cheese

I will admit that red velvet is a guilty pleasure of mine. I love to talk a ton of crap about it being a red-colored chocolate cake, but I still go out of my way to order it whenever I’m at a bakery and want to buy more than just one flavor of cake or…

Kirimochi waffles

This is literally the simplest recipe I have ever posted on this blog. Mostly because it was something I thought of randomly when I was watching videos of Japanese chefs making yakimochi. Yakimochi is a grilled mochi, made by slowly charring kirimochi. Now, kirimochi is a mochi that is slowly dried out until it is…

Tea-smoked duck with green apple and onion

I came up with this dish because I was thinking about what the prettiest duck dish I could make, and this is what I thought up of. I love to tea smoke proteins, and I love tea smoked duck. Smoking the duck in chamomile tea specifically gives it a pleasant earthiness, and I wanted to…

Mango lassi mille feuille

So with this dessert, I wanted to combine Indian flavors with Albanian and French techniques. For the pastry, I went with a homemade phyllo, brushed with ghee just to guarantee that beautiful browning on the dough. With the filling, I did a yogurt and cardamom namelaka, which is a ganache that is whipped. For this…

Fried “cauli”-mari with tofu aioli

I literally only came up with this because of a conversation I had with a friend, Christy. She was making salt and pepper cauliflower, and I realized that cauliflower stems could be cut to resemble calamari! Hence the name, “cauli”-mari. But stems on their own don’t taste that good, so I opted to marinate the…