Freddy's Harajuku

Munti with tomato broth

I was inspired to make these last summer from a couple different things. Lamb munti, a Turkish dumpling, I learned how to make these from reading Prune by Gabrielle Hamilton. For the broth, I was inspired by a restaurant in Cerritos, California, called Omar’s Halal Chinese, where they do these hand pulled noodles with a smoky…

Beignets with ovaltine-mascarpone affogato and dark chocolate custard

I had this craving for beignets one night when I saw a video of my friend who went to the infamous Cafe du Monde in New Orleans and got to record them making these beautiful, cloud-like beignets and serving them with a nice cup of coffee. So, because I went to school in Boston at…

Wind chime in dirt: a plated dessert

I was inspired to make this dessert when I saw a Japanese wind chime, also called 江戸風鈴 (edo fuurin), just laying on my desk, and thought “maybe that would be fun to create a dessert from.” After deciding that I could replicate the entire wind chime using sugar for the glass dome and either white…

Lotus + pond cake

This cake concept came about after my friend, Christina, was so kind as to share with me drawings of cakes she likes to create. One that caught my eye was the lotus cake that she drew. It was beautiful, and being raised in a Buddhist household, I just had to create a cake inspired by…

Dreaming Sea Angel: a tropical dessert

The inspiration for this dessert came from a game I saw on YouTube, called Dreaming Mary. It’s a side scrolling indie horror game about an innocent little girl named Mary who was heavily implied to be raped by her pervert uncle, and it focuses on how she manages to escape from being imprisoned by finding a…

Bee pollen baklava

I can’t believe it took me this long to finally post a recipe that features homemade phyllo. Fun fact: I learned how to make phyllo from scratch the Montenegrin way from watching the Australian cooking competition, My Kitchen Rules, when a contestant, Zana, this snarky, germaphobic, perfectionist Montenegrin-Albanian lawyer made her own phyllo from scratch quite…

Egg and cheese sandwich with apple salad: a brunch dish

Now I normally like to do dessert posts only, but fun fact about myself: I have more savory experiences professionally than sweet. When I used to intern in kitchens, that’s when I’d practice making bread the most, just because I could proof the dough while I was working, then bake it off when I got…

Coconut cream chiffon cake

Now this cake is one of my favorites. I love making coconut cream chiffon cake because not only is it delicious, fluffy, creamy goodness, but if you don’t like it, you can go shove a coconut up your ass like half of the ignorant little shits I went to high school with then you don’t have…

Banana (milk) pudding with misugaru wafers

This recipe is inspired by my dear friend, Ellie. She is one of the smartest, wisest, and funniest Korean Americans I have ever met, and she also makes a mean banana pudding. Seriously, she could put Magnolia Bakery out of business. However, Ellie recently moved to New York, aka the home of Magnolia Bakery, so…

Blueberry-olive oil friand, lemon curd, mascarpone sorbet

This recipe is a tweak on a dish I have been making for years. Blueberry, olive oil, and lemon have found themselves in several of my cakes ever since I found out that olive oil cake is a thing. This particular rendition came about when I was cooking with my friend Carolyn, and we wanted…

Prickly pear-blackberry sorbet

I love using cactus pear (also called prickly pear or xoconostle) in sorbets. One of the first ice creams I have ever made was actually a prickly pear-orange sorbet back in my sophomore year of college (where I didn’t even have an ice cream machine, just an immersion blender). For this recipe, I added in…

Strawberry mirror glaze shortcake

This recipe came about because I wanted to do some sort of take on strawberry shortcake, but I didn’t exactly know what kind of dessert I wanted to do. Then I started to remember this dessert I had at Melisse in Santa Monica a few years back, and it was this pain per du (French…

Matcha sugar doughnuts

For my Advanced Food and Beverage concept, BA- (a 2 1/2 in one Japanese dining experience), we featured a morning bakery called Panya, which would turn into an izakaya (Japanese gastropub) at night. Panya boasted a lot of cute and simple baked goods and doubled as a cafe in the morning. One of our signatures…

Toasted soy chiffon cake with lemon curd cream and blackberries

So I first came up with this concept because my parents needed me to prepare a dessert for their friend’s 4th of July party (that I wasn’t even invited to)….bastards. Since they were all old anyways, my parents told me specifically to use less sugar….I’m starting to feel less salty about not being invited. No…

Chocolate-raspberry meringue pie

The first time I ever made a chocolate-meringue pie was for a Thanksgiving Potluck in the School of Hospitality Administration. Fun fact: the school called it a potluck, but it was actually just me and three other culinary learning assistants who slave labored catered the entire thing. I had to prepare five desserts with enough…

Matcha hokkaido cupcakes

I’ve been craving Hokkaido styled cupcakes ever since I saw them in the display of a bakery in Nagoya last summer. These cute little cupcakes with a tiny dollop of cream. Simple and cute is the easiest way to describe them. These kinds of cupcakes are often described as cloud-like, which is why I opted…

Peach and white chocolate upsidedown pound cakes

I literally made this recipe out of boredom. Now I could give you guys a long-winded story about how I went every summer eating white peaches grown from our backyard and how it made me look forward to the summer every year (this is a true story btw), but that’s not what I’m in the…

Ube souffle pancakes

I love ube. Ube is a purple yam indigenous to Asia and it’s great for making many desserts with. Souffle pancakes, also called shiawase pancakes, are a very popular breakfast item or snack in Japan, known for their fluffy texture. Combine them together and theoretically, it should be a social media phenomenon. For my recipe,…

Honey pie with a Mediterranean twist

Honey pies. Yeah, being raised by immigrants, I had no fucking clue what that was growing up. But after hearing about it when I visited Greece, I figured, why not do some research on how to make this unusual dessert? The texture of the filling is almost like a rich pumpkin pie while the flavors…

Seashell macaron with key lime kaya

I was actually inspired to do these macarons by two different things. First, my visit to Montage Resort in Laguna Beach. Secondly, a video on Instagram, where I saw people making these. I wanted to keep these macaron on the tropical side, so I filled with with kaya, which is a Malaysian coconut-egg jam, though…