Freddy's Harajuku

“番茄炒蛋”: a plated dish

番茄炒蛋, or tomato-fried eggs, are a childhood staple for me, and probably every Chinese/Taiwanese person. Simply put, it’s scrambled eggs with tomato, topped with scallions and/or cilantro. A very humble dish, and because of that, a great blank canvas/ inspiration for a prettier, more complex one. My mom’s version included ginger, since it provided a…

Knafeh flavored lotus pastries

I have been meaning to make lotus pastries for a long time now. They’re a hugely popular snack in China, consisting of flaky layers of fried dough, wrapped around a filling. As the name suggests, they are assembled and cut in a way that when deep fried, the dough blossoms and resembles a lotus. It’s…

Bright lights: a plated dessert

I really wanted to come up with a dessert that showcases the beauty of dairy and light flavors. Since I was making milk bread, I decided to transform that into something akin to a baba(a brioche that is soaked in a rum syrup), but instead of doing the traditional rum soak, I decided to go…

Black sesame brioche ring

Going to Asian bakeries like JJ’s and 85 Degrees C as a child, I loved all of the different kinds of pastries you could find and buy. Flaky, bready, buttery, sweet, salty, crunchy, there were so many different kinds of treats with an equal variety of colors, ingredients, and flavors. One of my absolute favorites…

Eventide: a wagashi

I have been meaning to try making a mizugashi wagashi for a while. Mizugashi refers to clear water/translucent finish, which these desserts have. I really wanted to make one that was naturally colored, gluten-free, and vegan, just to embrace the beauty of nature, something that wagashi tries to embrace and capture. For mine, I used…

Imqaret with orange curd and honey mascarpone

So I have been studying a bunch of different Mediterranean desserts, mostly to help me broaden my range. Looking through Malta specifically, I came across a really curious dessert called imqaret(pronounced without the “q”). They’re basically these pastries stuffed with an orange blossom-date filling. Some use walnuts, others don’t. Most people fry them, but some…

Moussaka pizza

One of my favorite dishes from Greece is moussaka. It’s basically layers of ground meat, typically lamb, sometimes beef, stewed in this tomato sauce with eggplant, potatoes, and a creamy béchamel on top of that is broiled until golden brown. With the exception of the potato, honestly, all of those things could be incorporated into…

Galactic Caramel Poundcake

I recently read up on a short story series from my favorite video game franchise, Kingdom Hearts, where there was mention of a dessert called a “galactic caramel poundcake”. I literally have no idea what goes into this dessert, besides it having caramel in some capacity and it being a poundcake. So that’s really where I…

Coconut madeleines

I literally made these on a whim. I had recently come into a lot of coconut flour, and I was thinking of what I could make with it. I had also purchased a madeleine pan recently, and thought about making another gluten-free baked good, so that’s where the idea to make a coconut madeleine came…

Devil’s food-tangerine choco-pies

While I was in quarantine, I wanted to continue to bake things that either hybridized two things, or touched upon my childhood nostalgia. In this case, I made something that touched upon the latter. Growing up in a Taiwanese/Chinese-American household, I have distinct memories of going to the Asian grocery stores and getting these chocolate-covered…

Nectarine-orange blossom pie

So while I was in quarantine, I had been doing a lot of cookbook reading. And by that, I mean I was flipping through cookbooks and looking at the photos. I haven’t properly read a book since college and I don’t intend to start, even if coronavirus is going around. One of my favorite cookbooks is Everything…

Hallucinate: a plated dish

I was actually coming up with this dish when I was doing a quarantine Google Hangout cook-together with my friends, Ann and Sylvie. We agreed that we would each make a pasta dish, so I came up with this one. I took the inspiration from my childhood favorite, beef noodle soup aka Taiwan’s national dish, and transforming…

“Paopu” dole whip popsicles

In the lore of the Kingdom Hearts video game series, the fictional paopu fruit is a star-shaped fruit that is shared between people who want to be bonded together forever. To make that into a flavor, I knew starfruit was an obvious must, as it is the closest fruit in real life to a paopu…

Uni-giri: an amuse bouche

So this was really the culmination of three of my favorite things to eat when I go to a sushi restaurant. Uni(sea urchin), rice, and eggs. And arguably, all three ingredients have wonderful synergy with one another, and definitely together. Raw eggs on rice is a staple in Japan, with the fluffy rice almost cooking…

Citron mille crepe

I made this dessert as a result of having way too many lemons lying around. I have a family friend who always gives us free lemons and passionfruit straight from their trees (amazing quality and I love them for it every year!), so I knew right away that I could use a good amount of…

Signal: a petit gateau

I was feeling a bit inspired the other day to try a new flavor of petit gateau. I saw so many geode cakes before, and this is my very loose take on that. I used kohakutou to garnish petit gateaus, but used a little bit of gold leaf as well to give them a more…

Chocolate turtle thumbprint cookies

I was definitely thinking about how this blog came together when I conceptualizing this recipe. So right after I graduated college, I was approached by somebody to work in what sounded like a really exciting project: a YouTube channel featuring dessert videos. I won’t get into too many more details on it, because it was…

Dark and ruby chocolate layer cake

So my sister recently purchased a stand mixer for herself so that she can pick up baking as a hobby. Well, that and she makes a ton of bread at her house, and she is tired of kneading it by hand(I do NOT blame her, kneading bread makes my arms four times as sore as…

Can you feel the sunshine?: a plated dish

Even since MasterChef season 10, there were three things I sought to learn more about/perfect. The first was tarte tatin, the second was cooking in a cast iron, and the third, which I finally have gotten around to doing, is learning more about Latin flavors. After that disastrous showing with prickly pear, I knew I…

At dusk, I will think of you: a mirror glaze cake

I felt like it had been a while since I made a proper mirror glaze cake, so I just set out to make one for the sake of making one. I just happened to buy a mamey sapote fruit(it is a cousin of persimmon, and very similar to a papaya or sweet potato in texture),…