Freddy's Harajuku

My Key to Happiness: a plated dessert

This dessert is meant to be inspired by a ton o things I love to eat or make me happy. That included salted caramel, chocolate, cream, butter, and flowers. We have a chocolate-peanut crumble on the bottom, a tempered chocolate sphere with gold leaf, stuffed with chocolate mousse and caramel-braised peanuts, edible flowers and micro…

Black tea, honey, and bee pollen macarons

These macarons were just something I was making because I was craving some tea. So I did a honey, bee pollen, and black tea French buttercream to fill them! Surprisingly, these ones actually came out quite nicely, and I was happy with almost every single shell, which is very rare for me! I really just…

Scattered wind chime: a plated dessert

So this was my first dessert where I attempted to use isomalt for blown sugar. I was trying to redo a dessert I made years ago, but using some more interesting technique. The base of the dessert is a blackberry-yuzu posset, while we also have matcha crumble, blackberry-yuzu gelee, yuzu curd, and the isomalt to…

Ube, mango, and pandan layer cake

So I actually made this cake as an order for one of my closest friends’ boyfriend’s birthday! She requested it to have ube since he’s Filipino, and he loves the color purple. So I went with an ube cake with a mango-lime pudding layer, as well as a pandan-buko French buttercream, and ube crumble as…

Peach-almond-lavender layer cake

So I actually made this cake as an order for a classmate since elementary school’s older sister! When I asked about her favorite flavors, lavender was among them, and I knew I could play around with that to make a really pretty, summery cake! So I thought about what paired well with it. The obvious…

Time: a plated dessert

When I was listening to Utada Hikaru’s song “Time”, I was thinking about what kinds of desserts could accompany that soulful, slow, jazzy tune. I thought about coffee, cafes, and other things pertaining to that, and from there, my mind went to hojicha. Hojicha is a toasted Japanese green tea, with this nutty, earthy flavor…

Great white way vanilla cake

So this cake was actually ordered and the request was for a plain vanilla cake. The thing is, I don’t like plain vanilla cake. That’s boring. So I wanted to do something a little more refined, and I went with a vanilla chiffon cake with pastry cream, French buttercream, and tempered white chocolate curls. I…

Black cacao tiramisu: a petit gateau

The first time I ever worked with black cacao was actually at Milkbar, when I had some downtime to test whatever I wanted. I stumbled upon a small container of black cacao powder, and I was really curious. I opened it, sniffed it a little, and it had this earthy, but fragrant aroma. It was…

Curation: a plated dessert

So this dessert was inspired by a summer road trip going to the Flower Fields in Carlsbad and getting strawberry shortcake by the road! I wanted to take that memory and turn it into a dessert, which is what we have here. So we have an elderflower and pistachio mousse with a strawberry liquid core,…

Ramune-Calpico ice pops

I used to have ramune popsicles all the time in Taiwan at my grandma’s house. Also referred to as “soda pop” over there, they were these popsicles made from ramune, a popular melon-citrus flavored soda, made popular in Japan, but available in almost any Asian supermarket. Ramune are typically packaged in these blue bottles with…

Fireflies in the night: a plated dessert

So when I first acquired pandan-buko extract, I had to play around with it a ton, since I had very little familiarity with it. Upon testing it with dango, I found out that it turns things green because of how strong of a green coloring that extract had. So I wanted to capitalize on that,…

Coconut-taro layer cake

I grew up on taro cake. And truthfully, I hated it. There was something heavy, unpleasant, and stodgy about it that wasn’t appealing to me as a child. It wasn’t until I ate ube(the Filipino cousin to taro) desserts that my palate was more adjusted and accepting to the concept of putting a starchy, unpleasant…

Almond-cherry-chocolate layer cake

Whenever summer rolls around, some of my favorite ingredients to work with include lychees, peaches, rhubarb, and cherries. I wanted to make a dessert that showcases fresh cherries, but I did not want to make another cherry tart, since I spent an entire summer making way too many of those. So instead, I went the…

“Wishing star”: a plated dessert

I really only came up with this dessert because I wanted to test my new chocolate sphere molds. So I knew chocolate was going to be a central part of the dessert, but then I thought about what I could pair that with. Luckily, there was a large bin of pistachios in front of me,…

Bee who I want 2 bee: a plated dessert

I came up with this dessert because I was craving medovik, or Russian honey cake. That is essentially just an icebox cake with honey wafers. I love to infuse mine with bee pollen, just to give it a unique flavor. Since it would be kind of boring to just do the medovik, I went with…

Kinako chiffon sandwiches with black rice cream and mochi

These were really just my take on a dorayaki sandwich. I wanted to do something wagashi-inspired, and I also wanted to try baking chiffon cake in circles, like a whoopie pie, so that’s how this dessert came about! I used kinako, a toasted soy bean powder, to flavor the actual chiffon cake itself, while I…

Starry night: lucuma tarts

If you were to ask me what I have been up to in terms of my cooking, I would probably present you with these lucuma tarts. They perfectly represent how much I have been doing research on Latin American-cuisine, as well as tie into my background at Milkbar. The shells are made with lucuma, being…

Summertime: a plated dessert

When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I wanted to focus on three specific ingredients, being peaches, blood orange, and olive oil. I have done olive oil desserts in the past, but most, if not basically all of them, featured an olive oil cake, or an olive oil gelato. So I decided to go a different…

“Worms and dirt”: a plated dessert

I mostly made this dessert because I was craving black rice pudding, and just felt like making it. So I made a take on it, being more like a custard. But I wanted to also make a conceptualized dessert out of it, and celebrate rice in general. So I thought about what else I could…

Ube Basque cheesecake

I’ve made Basque cheesecakes before, but I wanted to try making another flavor, using leftover use paste that I had in my refrigerator. You know, a two in one. Practice a baked good, and also use up an ingredient/flavor that I have not necessarily touched in a while. Ube is a Filipino purple yam, and…