Freddy's Harajuku

Pork belly and mushroom cream stew

I love making cream stew. In Japan, they make it all the time, and it’s this velvety, creamy(as the name would suggest) sauce with braised meat and vegetables in it. If you have ever had Japanese curry before, it’s like that, but without the spices, making for a very delicate flavor profile. Truthfully, it has…

The clock strikes 12: a plated dessert

So this dessert is obviously inspired by Cinderella and her pumpkin carriage. I wanted the dessert to resemble the carriage first, but when you crack into it, you’re undoing the enchantment, and you’re left with a pumpkin flan, or in this case, a kabocha squash flan. I went with more Asian flavors on this one…

Odessa: a plated dessert

So this dessert was my take on an almost-entirely black and white dish. I went with a sesame chocolate cake with tahini mousse, white chocolate mirror glaze, white chocolate-sesame bark, chocolate-sesame crumble, and white sesame ice cream. I was really happy with how this dessert came out visually, and I was also stunned when the…

Strawberry Jewel Box Cake

I came up with this recipe for a friend of mine’s birthday. She happened to be a designer, so I knew this cake needed to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible. When it come to preferences, she specified liking lighter cakes with lots of cream and fresh fruit, so I knew I could do something…

Yo-Yo- Tsuri: a plated dessert

When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I was mostly just focusing on what things come to mind when I think of the summer. In this case, I remembered Omasturi(お祭) which is a festival in Japan where they celebrate the village gods(御神輿) with games and other celebrations. One such game was where you fish for water…

Double chocolate macarons

I love all things chocolate. With these macarons, I wanted to feature a chocolate or cocoa infused shell, but I also wanted to make a French buttercream-ganache hybrid, since the cocoa fat in chocolate can emulsify beautifully with both egg yolk and butterfat to create a beautiful, luscious mouthfeel(albeit one that may or may not…

Strawberry-elderflower macarons

I love strawberry and elderflower anything. I think that this should be a more popular and recognized combination, just because it combines tart and sweet red fruit with floral, lychee-like elderflower for a balanced, pleasant combination. I had to use food coloring in these, as my usual go-to’s of pitaya powder and beetroot powder actually…

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…