Freddy's Harajuku

“Light as air” layer cake

This dessert was actually for a family friend, Isabel, to celebrate her birthday. Isabel is my father’s friend’s daughter, and she’s a real down to earth person. When I was asking her what kinds of flavors she liked, she told me delicate and light, so I wanted to go with lemon, white chocolate, coconut, and…

Kabocha flan with kabocha friands

This dessert has been on my to-do list since the summer. I am obsessed with flan, it being the first dessert I ever learned how to make, and I’ve been meaning to do something with kabocha squash, but I wanted to wait until it was the fall to do so. For this dessert, it’s a…

Passionfruit cheesecake shumai

These dumplings came about from my excess of passionfruit(what a problem to have, clearly) as well as me wanting to try making a steamed cheesecake dumpling. So I figured, why not mix the passionfruit into the cheesecake and make something truly original? To be a little more fun, I decided to dye the shumai shells…

S’mores potstickers

These literally came about because I wanted to do an innovative dumpling and I was craving s’mores. So I went with a graham cracker flavored wrapper, a chocolate truffle and marshmallow filling, and a cayenne chocolate dipping sauce to balance any overt sweetness in the dessert. What I love about this dessert is that we’re…

All I want: Neapolitan checkerboard cake

I really only made this dessert because I had quite a bit of leftover strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream leftover from a cake I made for a fan, so I racked my brains around what I could possibly do with it. Since I didn’t want to make the same strawberry cake for myself, I opted for…

Gravity Bounce: a plated dessert

This is probably the last “Carole and Tuesday” inspired dessert, and in this case, it is based on the song “Gravity Bounce”, also by GGK. So the song itself is upbeat, playful, catchy, and fun, and when I think of the phrase itself, I immediately am drawn to Newton’s apple. So I decided to do…

Milky way: a plated dessert

This concept came about from when I was watching a singing anime on Netflix, called “Carole & Tuesday”. Some of the sounds really stuck out to me as good inspirations or launching points for dishes, including one called “Milky Way”. For obvious reasons, I had to include milk in this dessert as a pivotal focus….

dreaming of springtime: an icebox cake

Icebox cakes are fun to make, mostly because they’re just giant cookies with fun fillings sandwiched between each layer. In this particular rendition, I wanted to use ruby chocolate, since I have a whole bag of it and I never really use it. I wanted the dessert to be pink, since Pinktober is coming up,…

One pot cheeseburger dumplings

When I saw that there was going to be a one pot challenge on MasterChef, the FIRST three things that came to mind were Japanese cream stew, the dreaded tarte tatin that I royally messed up, and the one that I would have gone for, knowing that the recipe would be in a family magazine,…

move mountains: a plated dessert

I have been watching a lot of new shows on Netflix lately. One of them in particular that I adore is a singing anime called “Carole and Tuesday” which features a ton of catchy tracks of varying genres. One song that stood out to me in particular was “Move Mountains”, mostly because of the message…

Prince of the Growing Land: A plated dessert

This would be the third of my three princes who would have led me to my MasterChef Crown, had I been in the finale(cue sad violin music I guess?). Continuing with the sea, sky, and earth motif, this would be my earth-inspired dish and dessert! It is a buckwheat financier with brown butter bavarian cream,…

Prince of the Dawning Sky: a plated dish

This would have been my main course for the finale. Inspired by the sun-filled sky, and the morning, it is duck and mushroom congee with ponzu-black garlic puree, duck egg yolk, braised duck thigh meat, crispy shallots, cilantro duck fat, caramelized mushrooms, and micro cilantro to garnish. The idea has multiple folds behind the inspiration….

Prince of the Sea Angels: a plated dish

So even though I was eliminated in top 10, I actually did have dishes in mind for the finale. The amount of thought you saw put into the crab lantern dish, trust me, a lot more were put into these. So while it is a shame I could not make these dishes for the judges,…

IDGAF(ilet mignon): a plated dish

When I was preparing for season 10, I did cook with a lot of different kinds of meats and proteins. Lamb, duck, pork, chicken, scallops, fileting and then cooking with whole fish such as salmon, rainbow trout, black cod, I even practiced cooking ribeye for steaks. I never thought to practice with filet mignon. And…

frambroise au chocolat cake

In my continued conquest of baking my way through Lady M’s menu, my next target was the frambroise au chocolate cake. It is a layer of dark chocolate cake topped with dark chocolate mousse and raspberry coulis. So relatively simple, but it might just take a hot second for everything to set is all. For…

Mapo tofu mandu

When I was coming up with creative new dumpling ideas, I wanted to do something with mapo tofu. Upon doing a little research, I found out that Korea’s national dumpling, the mandu, actually contains kimchi and tofu in it! I knew right away that I could sub out the kimchi with spicy bean paste, and…

michi: lemon-blueberry tartlets

I have always wanted to make those ovular tarts that I see on Instagram, but the issue was that I didn’t own the right tart tins. This should be the part where I say “until now”, but it’s not. I still don’t. But I do own aluminum foil, and from my previous experiences with using…

Sunset horizons: a plated dessert

This dessert was inspired by the delicious end to a meal I had at Providence Restaurant in. The dessert itself was a chocolate ganache, two ways, with apricots, glazed and poached in vanilla as well as an apricot sorbet and puree. I was addicted to the combination before realizing that these were the flavors of…

digging deep: a carrot cake

I actually quite like carrot cake. Ever since I started as a baker, carrot cake was one of those desserts that I came to appreciate, because it takes a lot of ingredients to transform a vegetable into a dessert, in my opinion. I really love the idea of making a carrot cake that resembles digging…

Frangipane, chocolate, and miso de leche babka

I actually never made babka before making it for this specific recipe. I really just was inspired to make it because I love using yeast-leavened doughs, and this one seemed really fun and playful to make, with all of the different layers of bread and chocolate. Traditionally, babka is like a brioche that is layered…