This dessert comes from a combination of various friendships, childhood memories, and a growing appreciation for my Taiwanese-Chinese-American upbringing. So I’m sure a good amount of people out there have zero clue what almond tofu is. Also called almond pudding, almond tofu is a Chinese dessert that consists of a sweet almond-flavored, milk-based jelly, similar…
Tag: agar
Snom Wagashi
Ever since I saw Snom when Sword and Shield came out, I was a fan. They are these cute little worm-caterpillar-larvae bugs-things with a layer of ice spikes around their bodies. And they are hilariously adorable, namely because of their super simplistic design! For those unfamiliar with what wagashi are, it is an umbrella term…
Strawberry tea time: an entremet
With this dessert, I really was aiming to utilize some leftover goat cheese and strawberry puree I had lying around. While I initially thought about doing a cheesecake with those two components, I figured that I could make it into something more fun, and go with an entremet, or a mousse cake! Since strawberries and…
Milky Way Yokan
I love Tanabata. For those unfamiliar with it, Tanabata is a Japanese holiday where they have a star festival, celebrating all things wishes! It is held to commemorate the one day in the year(July 7th) where two lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who were separated by the Milky Way can see each other. Tags with wishes…
Lemon-Thyme “Rainbow” Tart
For Pride this year, I waned to go with a bit more of a whimsical take on rainbows. When I think of rainbows, immediately I think of light and water. Since you know, the two work together to create a rainbow! So for the light side of things, I went with a lemon-thyme curd tart,…
POG Jelly with Passionfruit
I was inspired by Taiwanese grass jelly when making this dessert. Grass jelly is an Asian dessert that consists of these dark brown cubes of jelly that are flavored with mesona chinensis leaves(the jelly basically tastes like a pleasant black tea with grassier notes). Usually grass jelly is topped with sweet braised peanuts and tang…
Pistachio and EVOO Mimosa Cake
Mimosa cakes have steadily become one of my favorite kinds of cakes to bake over the past 4 years. Mostly because I love cutting up cake into cubes, in case you haven’t already figure that out. For this specific recipe, I wanted to utilize yuzu as well, just to add something tart and bright to…
Coconut Sago with Yuzu and Milk Jellies
One of my earliest childhood memories was eating at this Chinese restaurant with my parents and being served a bowl of sago pudding for dessert. The tapioca pearls were swimming in this sweet coconut milk-based dessert soup-type of thing, which had bits of seaweed in there as well! That was the baseline inspiration for this…
Yuzu-Castella Strawberry Shortcake
One of my favorite childhood memories growing up was coming back from a long day at school, and being greeted by my mom with some sort of baked good from the local Taiwanese bakery. Sometimes it was cheesecake, other times, mont blanc, but one particular favorite of mine is castella. Castella is a fluffy sponge…
Shaymin Nerikiri
I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Namely because it took me 4 hours from start to finish. A lot of it, not going to lie, is just the amount of time it took perfecting the color and shape of these little nuggets. That and I tried to make a half-batch…
Bamboo dreams: a flower cake
I created this cake as an homage to my own childhood of Asian rice-based desserts, while also doing a nod to the greenery I would see growing up in Southern California by the coast. I wanted this cake to capture both the aforementioned flavors of Asian desserts, and the aforementioned scenery of flowers by the…
Princess (Mirror Glaze) Cake
This is my petit gateau(mini cake) take on the Swedish Prinsesstarta(Princess Cake). The Princess Cake usually consists of layers of vanilla cake with a vanilla custard/pastry cream and a raspberry jam, finished with fondant and/or marizpan. Now I could do fondant or marzipan, but those just don’t really taste good to me, nor do I…
“Butterfly Skies”(blueberry-yuzu) entremet
Now I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Or very doable. Or simple. I would not be lying if I said this recipe takes multiple days to execute without a blast chiller or liquid nitrogen. This is the kind of cake you would only make for special occasions. Between the techniques,…
Cranberry-yuzu layer cake
When I did the Masterchef recipe swap with my friends, I wound up with a lot of leftover cranberry sauce and dried cranberries. So this recipe was sort of my solution to that. Actually, it was my solution to that, as I was able to get rid of the entire can of jellied cranberry sauce…
Tahini panna cotta with soy sauce caramel
So I made a riff on this dessert about a year ago for a digital cook-along event for the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester, Minnesota(thank you, Shari for inviting me to do this!). For them, I did a demo on a dessert, which would be delivered to those who participated. For the dessert that…
“Fever Dream”: a plated dessert
I literally named this dessert after my favorite mxmtoon song, “Fever Dream”. For me, that term represents memories and milestones of your life, past, present, and future, just melting together into one moment. So I wanted to do that in this dessert! For starters, I wanted to use cherries, since my birthday cake growing up…
Sakura financier
With cherries being in season, I had to make something fun with them! I had done cherry tarts in the past, but I wanted to change it up a little. While I love the combination of almond and cherry, I wanted to also use the salted cherry blossoms I still had, and that’s when I…
Yogurt panna cotta with instant ramen “crunch”, yuzu chia seeds, and macerated peaches
So before somebody assumes that I was smoking something, I came up with this dish in response to a friend giving me a “Mystery Box” challenge. She wanted to see what I could do with spicy Korean instant ramen and chia seeds. Hilariously enough, my mind did not want to go in the savory direction,…
Head in the clouds: a plated dessert
The inspiration for this dessert came from me testing out a couple new techniques – using sago, which are little tapioca pearls, to make a strawberry flavored “caviar”, and using lychee juice to make a foam. I wanted to create this sort of ethereal, sea-meets-sky, summery sort of dessert, embracing fresh lychees, and pairing them…
Dango with black rice pudding and salted rice milk
I love mango sticky rice. The stewed down rice with salty coconut milk and juicy mango, it’s a fun combination to play around with. For this particular recipe, I wanted to accentuate that classic Asian dessert by doing rice three ways, and mango two ways. For the rice, I used black rice and did a…
Freddy's Harajuku 