Freddy's Harajuku

koi no tsubomi: elderflower-citrus anmitsu

This was a dessert inspired by Koda Kumi’s song of the same name; the meaning of it in Japanese literally translates to blossoms of love. When I first heard the song, it was from the Driving Hits 7 soundtrack, so it was remixed and sounded really foreboding and intense. I didn’t quite like it. But…

Vegan chocolate-raspberry cupcakes

I was going on a Cupcake Wars binge on YouTube the other day and I was watching arguably the best episode in the series, the Tournament of Roses episode. It featured four returning winners competing again, including the very baker who inspired me to bake, Chloe Coscarelli. Seeing her gorgeous vegan creations again made me…

Cider doughnut creams

Whenever I think of the fall, I think of apple picking in New England and drinking hot cider and shit. It’s hilarious because I never actually would go apple picking because I could just go into my dining hall and steal a fuckload of apples anyways, so why travel miles and miles to do it…

Malted chocolate campfire cake

I love malt balls. They are crunchy, chocolate-covered, and taste of childhood. Sickly sweet to the point where it’s painful. I wanted to take that candy and transform it into a delicious, decadent chocolate cake, so that’s exactly what I did. I made a chocolate cake batter using the malt balls, melted down into ovaltine,…

Ube-Kaya and Pepita-Pumpkin Pie Cookies

I love doing cookies during the fall and winter, mostly because it reminds me of my dear friend Amanda. When we were still in charge of a food publication together during college, she had the cutest and most brilliant idea to do a cookie swap for our holiday event. Seeing a variety of cookies, it…

YUMEKATARI: buckwheat soba with butterfly pea and mushroom broths

I have always wanted to make my own soba noodles, because it looks really cool and I just love being able to make my own pasta or dough from scratch. The trick behind buckwheat flour (besides the fact that I had to go to five different grocery stores to procure it, so thank you Wholefoods…

Heartless: Queen of Hearts inspired mirror glaze cake

I really just came up with this dessert when I was thinking about Tim Burton-inspired cakes. The Queen of Hearts is such an iconic image and has that really dramatic black-red aesthetic that I just knew I could work with. I wanted to do something that really captured that sinister look, so I went with…

Waiting for the rain: a plated concept

The inspiration for this dessert came from Maaya Sakamoto’s song, “Waiting for the Rain”. It was a song I first listened to my senior year when I was going through some serious shit. Maybe not the best thing to listen to, because it was a beautiful, but sad song. The lyrics really stood out to…

Maple-chocolate banana bread

This recipe was inspired by and for my friend, and ex-coworker/supervisor, Ms. Sitha Ith. She was one of the few sane people in my department in a sea of crazies, so I immediately warmed up to her because of that. Since it was recently her birthday, and because I knew she loved banana bread, I…

Perfectly blue macarons

So it turns out that the majority of the time I have been making macarons, I have been measuring out my ingredients incorrectly. Whenever it was supposed to be 3/4 cups almond flour and icing sugar, I would do 1 cup. Which definitely would explain why mine would come out so overtly browned, lumpy, dry,…

Yogurt-peach-Turkish delight cake

This dessert came about because we had a fuck-ton of peaches in my fridge that we needed to get rid of. I love yogurt-semolina cake and I knew that it would have the perfect dryness in the crumb to hold up to the moisture in the peaches, so I went that route with baking them…

Semolina knafeh with glazed figs

I really wanted to make knafeh when I saw it in My Kitchen Rules, where Sonya and Hadil, two Jordanian women who were kicked off the show because they got into a fight with another team, prepared it for their instant restaurant. Knafeh is a Middle Eastern cheesecake essentially, soaked with a beautiful rose flavored…

Amoroso pink: raspberry pate choux

The first thing I did when I received my pitaya powder was create these naturally pink cream puffs. I named the dessert Amoroso pink because it means “love pink” in Italian. Super straightforward and simple, because if you want to eat this dessert just based on its appearance, chances are, you love the color pink….

Orange-chocolate poundcake

I keep watching these Korean baking videos, and even though I am not Korean nor do I understand the language, I can still figure out what the ingredients they use are and what techniques were because yes, it really can be that simple. I wanted to do a dessert that just embraced the orange-chocolate combination,…

Honey-peach pie

I literally only made this dessert because my mother decided to buy about 12 white peaches, and I had to use them all up somehow. A word of advise, if you’re making this dessert, serve it immediately, because white peaches oxidize and within a day, it’ll turn gross and brown. Or just use the yellow…

Miso butterscotch tarte tatin-financier

This was a hodgepodge of different French desserts, tied together with Japanese miso and Chinese ginger. Honestly, the inspiration came about from having a shit-ton of apples and pears in my fridge that I needed to get rid of, so I got creative with how I wanted to do that. I remember seeing a Korean…

Cookies and cream tres leches cake

The inspiration for this dessert actually came from Housekeeping Appreciation Week. Since our team was only 22 people, it was actually a doable task to make something for them. I wanted to make something amazing for the housekeeping team that works hard to make sure that our guests don’t realize that our hotels rooms have…

Ube Buko Pie

The idea for this dessert came about because I wanted to create something similar to a Chess Pie, a Southern pie that is baked with a buttermilk custard, but I did not want to do something too predictable. So I looked into different kinds of pies that were similar to Chess Pie, and came across…

Jump Up, Super Star!: a galaxy cake

I really just was inspired to make this dessert from when I was watching an episode of Sugar Rush on Netflix, which is this reality baking competition aka the things I used to learn how to cook from. Two somewhat snooty and bitchy, but funny contestants prepared this galaxy cake, where it was white on…

Let it grow: mint-chocolate succulent cake

I’ve seen a ton of succulent cakes on the Internet lately, and I wanted to give it a whack myself. However, my policy on buttercream, which seems to be the thing that everyone is making them out of, is a huge no-no. If I am given that much butter, that much sugar, and that much…