Freddy's Harajuku

(Bibble & Sip-inspired) matcha cream puffs

I miss New York. Specifically, I miss taking a weekend out of my college student life to ride a six hour bus and spend two to three days pigging out and hitting up anywhere from 6-12 restaurants, cafes, and bakeries a day. Yeah, if you don’t believe me, please look at the below picture: That’s…

Sweet potato mont blanc

Mont blanc is traditionally a French dessert, featuring a puree of chestnut piped over whipped cream and topped with powdered sugar to resemble a snow-capped mountain; fun fact, mont blanc is French for white mountain. This dessert is popular in both France and Japan, and other varieties use sweet potatoes, shiro an or azuki beans…

Multilayered Chocolate-Raspberry Tart

This dessert was everything that the chocolate-raspberry meringue tart was supposed to be. Chocolate on raspberry on chocolate with no other interference. While the recipe would have conceptually remained the same, I changed it up, using nama chocolate as the base, raspberry gelee as a disk instead, fresh raspberries, a chocolate cremeaux, a tempered chocolate…

Banana-salted caramel doughnut creams

I’ve finally settled on calling the doughnut entremet-things doughnut creams, mostly because it’s a lot easier to say. For this recipe, I opted for banana and salted caramel, nuanced with brown butter and walnuts. The layers for this cake are a brown butter-banana-nut cake, salted caramel bavarian cream, caramelized mirror glaze, salted caramel, and bruleed…

Christmas is dawning: a plated dessert

The concept for this dessert originally came from watching The Next Iron Chef: Superchefs, all the way back in 2011. Chef Elizabeth Falkner created this really cool chocolate devil’s food cake with peppermint snow, inspired by Christmas, and I wanted to do something that was a nod to that, since I finally have the tapioca…

Eternal memories: a plated concept

I was inspired to create this concept from a song by Crystal Kay of the same name. The chorus talks about finding yourself, despite how difficult that may be to do so. The song just reminded me of my own culinary journey so to speak, coming up from being a vegan cupcake baker to a…

Butter-bourbon-pecan cake

This is a cake inspired by my co-worker, who is from Texas. Like this cake, she can be intense-looking and rough around the edges, but she’s genuinely a kindhearted person who wants you to do your best and live a happy life The cake itself takes her favorite ice cream flavor, butter-bourbon-pecan, and translates it…

Raspberry and Frangipane Tart

Challenging yourself is fun…from time to time. For me, a challenge is doing something that practices technique, and hinges on perfect execution so that you cannot hide behind the bells and whistles that you should all know that I am capable and comfortable with doing. Granted, a tart is not hard. They just take a…

Black bottom cheesecake doughnut creams

I constantly crave black bottom cheesecake: a rich, chocolate cake that enrobes a creamy cheesecake. For this recipe, I wanted to do that, but in a doughnut shaped entremet, or mousse cake. When it comes to chocolate cakes, there are just too many different kinds to make, ranging from the Viennese sacher torte to the…

Blueberry dreams: a plated concept

This dessert came about when I was watching a shoujo anime, “Kobato” and I was inspired by a character named Ioryogi, being this outwardly cute blue dog creature, and his love of baumkuchen, a circular German layered cake that resembles the rings or layers of a tree. Normally, baumkuchen is made on a spit roast…

Black sesame oreos

Eating Oreos reminds me of whenever we would go to Taiwan; we would touch in the airport, typically in the middle of the night, and we would be hungry. The only places open nearby our apartment was a 7-11, so junk food was often what we ate to stave off our jet-lagged hunger. One memory…

Tarte Tatin Mirror Glaze Cake

This really just came about when I was thinking about a dessert for a family friend. I saw a very specific mirror glaze cake, that used a disk of passionfruit gelee or jam, and I thought about what other fruits I can do the same technique with. Since it was during the holidays, I wanted…

Honey-craisin cotton cheesecake

The idea of doing a cotton cheesecake came from when I visited my friend, Lauren, and we were trying to make these for her menu at LimeRed, in Boston. I tried to make a cream cheese chiffon cake, hoping that it would work instead of a cotton cheesecake, something she struggled greatly with making, but…

Black sesame-matcha cheesecake doughnut cream

I came across the inspiration for this concept on Instagram, where I saw a chef make a double decker cake doughnut that was pressed into a mousse then glazed in a mirror glaze. I believe it was called a tiger doughnut, because of the pattern on it. For my own version of it, I decided…

Nama-Choco Pops

These came about from one drive home from work when I was thinking about innovative or new dessert ideas. One that came to mind was the idea of lollipops, thanks to a song of the same name by Koda Kumi. A lollipop-up dessert concept, where I would serve different flavored treats on sticks. Back when…

Poached apple tart

I have been seeing a ton of pie-art types of posts on Instagram lately, so I wanted to give it a try as well. For my pie, I did a bee pollen pate sucre with brown butter-cinnamon poached apple slices, and instead of a lattice, I did more of a ribbon type of crust with…

Tale of two princes: a plated concept

This dessert is a literal translation of who I am. It features two princes in the form of desserts, being the Prince of the Sky, and the Prince of the Snow. The Prince of the Sky represents my hometown of Palos Verdes, where wild fennel and peacocks foam; fennel is featured in four applications in…

La fraise au trois lait: strawberry in three milks

This dessert came about when my friend Aria requested an interestingly flavored strawberry ice cream. So I decided on strawberry-goat milk sorbet. And from there, I wanted to come up with an entire concept that circled around this ice cream. The result: la fraise au trois lait, or the strawberry in three milks. I wanted…

Tomato-basil flatbreads

I love making pizzas or flatbreads. Kneading the dough is definitely one of my favorite parts in making bread dough, just because it takes a lot of effort, love, and attention. Plus, it’s a great arm workout, so there’s that too. For my dough, I kept it really simple and went with my very straightforward…

Matcha-vanilla checkerboard cake

I love making checkerboard cakes. For TasteBUds, I actually prepared a chocolate-vanilla one inspired by Lady M. Since I love making them, I figured I would share a different recipe from that one, this one featuring matcha, and using chiffon cakes instead of genoise. While genoise are sturdier and can hold up to being cut…