Freddy's Harajuku

Pistachio-lemon-blueberry layer cake

This cake sort of was the result of utilizing leftover/surplus ingredients in our house. It was made for a family gathering, and because we had a TON of lemons in our house that we needed to get rid of, this cake kind of was a huge no-brainer. I love making olive oil and lemon cakes,…

Cherry blossom orgel: a sakura tart

This was my first time working with salted sakura blossoms. And let me tell you, they are saltier than me when I am told that I have to work overtime when I was an accountant. I wanted to cook with these to celebrate the cherry blossom viewing season, but I did not realize that they…

Super simple strawberry-phyllo mille feuille

Not everything I make has to be super complex or difficult. With this dessert, I tried my best to edit it down to just three things: crispy caramelized phyllo dough, Bismarck cream, and balsamic macerated strawberries. What? It’s simple by my standards. I mean, look at it! No mirror glaze, tempered chocolate, none of those bells…

Matcha cheese tea doughnut creams

I love making matcha desserts. And I have recently fallen in love with cheese tea, which is where a whipped cream cheese mixture is added on top of your bubble tea, creating a really pleasant sweet and savory drinking experience. So I wanted to utilize that as the inspiration for this dessert. I have made…

Red velvet with white chocolate mousse

I actually made this cake to celebrate the birthday of my co-worker, Alex. She said she likes red velvet, so whomp, there it is. Traditionally, red velvet is served with a cream cheese frosting. However, I did not have cream cheese in my pantry, nor was I in the position to go out and buy…

Banoffee Pudding Galaxy Cake

The inspiration for this cake came from…. I honestly don’t know. I just wanted to make something using Korean banana milk, and I had already done a banana pudding with that and misugaru over a year ago, so I figured why not take that and transform it into something a little more special? So for…

Lemon roll cake

About a year ago, I made this very same cake….only for my dad to eat the whole goddamn thing before I could decorate or even photograph it. So you can imagine that the salt was real. Flashforward a year, and I decided to give it another go. Only this time, I made sure to finish…

Strawberry-ambrosia cake

I love pairing corn with strawberries. I also love pairing strawberries with lemon. And strawberry and ginger. And ginger and lemon. And ginger and corn. Basically, you get where this is going. I put all four of these flavors together into a single package. The idea behind the dessert was to make something cute and…

Mint-chocolate mousse cake

I am always in the mood for chocolate cake. Souffles, lava cake, Hostess cakes, etc., I just love fluffiness with chocolate. I also love the pairing of chocolate with dairy, as well as chocolate with yogurt, so I wanted to use Yakult, which reminds me now and forever onwards of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys…

Matcha-sesame checkerboard cookies

I love making cookies, but one of the coolest kinds (and most common to find an any Asian bakery) are the checkerboard cookies. Typically, they’re chocolate and vanilla, but I wanted to do a different spin on them. So I went with the two most mainstream Asian dessert flavors I know matcha and black sesame,…

7 layer chocolate-raspberry cake

This was a behemoth to table. Mostly because for whatever reason, the cake starting leaning the moment I stacked on the mini cake. It was probably because I used chiffon cake as a base, which is super fluffy, so I recommend using dowels (or boba straws that are cut down to the height of the…

6 layer blueberry-citrus-hot milk cake

Making hot milk cake has proven to be a huge challenge for me in the past. Every damn time I would make it, the cake would come out like a hockey puck. And then I realized that I was an idiot, and I did not use NEARLY enough leavening. Most cakes would require about 1…

Red wine-chocolate cake with namelaka cream and chocolate ganache

“Am I going to die?” – My sister’s reaction to eating/hearing about namelaka cream for the first time when eating this particular dessert Since this needs to be established first and foremost, no, you cannot die from eating namelaka cream. Unless somebody has poisoned it or tampered with it or you choke on it, or…

Spring pea agnolotti with squash, brown butter, and pomegranate

I love making pasta from scratch. There’s something so satisfying about getting this golden, stretchy dough super thin, and being able to take something so flat and paper-like and fold it into all sort of fun shapes. I guess that’s why I love origami so much. The transformation is exciting! For my pasta, I did…

Cattleya – rose apple and pear cheesecake

This is yet another carbon copy of Pierre Herme’s Venus cake, this time, featuring mountain rose apples! They are a naturally pink apple, and a little starchier than the normal Fuji or Red Delicious. I figured that they would be gorgeous, and since I did not want to rip off the naming, I opted to…

Fred Bread Buns with Roast Duck and Scallions

I love making “Fred Bread”, which is my take on Japanese milk bread. I also adore making steamed buns with duck. So I figured, why not combine the two? The end result? A really light, fluffy steamed bun with a buttery crumb. It’s pretty awesome. We made these for new years, and since the recipe…

Peanut milk panna cotta

The concept of this dessert came about when I was thinking about childhood favorites. Growing up in an immigrant family, we had this milk peanut soup dessert from a can that we would often enjoy during the summer. It was almost like a sweetened milk with these peeled and poached peanuts inside of it, which…

Fruitcake with citrus curd glaze

Continuing on my festive holiday baking spree, I wanted to create yet another classic, being fruitcake. Now, I’ve never made fruitcake before, nor have I ever even eaten one. I have seen them on TV and I recall these dense, molasses-y cakes embedded with a ton of fruit in them. So I went with that…

Snowball fight in the icebox: gingerbread icebox cake

Now I don’t really eat or make gingerbread men that often. Mostly because I was only raised with 50% of American traditions, being an immigrant, so gingerbread baking was not really something we did in our family. Highly ironic, given how much ginger we had at home, from fresh ginger root to powdered ginger to…

Stormy seas, clear skies tart

This was loosely inspired by a smoothie bowl aesthetic, but I wanted to that take and make a pie out of it. I don’t know. That’s just how I was feeling. There was something about round things being placed into swirly things that looks really cool. So I went ahead and made a purple ube…