When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I actually had a ton of leftover components and ingredients in my fridge. I had a ruby chocolate-sakura mousse from a plated dessert, leftover pate brisee pie crust from a pie I made, leftover ruby chocolate snow the same aforementioned plated dessert, and a bag of berries that turned…
Tag: baking
Butterscotch and purple yam wool bread
These have been a brainchild of mine for a while – I wanted to make a fluffy, Chinese-style pastry with a baked yam filling since 2018 actually. But I was lazy. The idea of peeling and steaming yam and then mashing it sounded tedious. But then I realized, why not just microwave the yam? It’s…
Injeolmi and barley tea mirror glaze cake
This was a last-minute cake order for my sister’s high school best friend, Jane. Jane is currently expecting, and in commemoration of that, I wanted to make a dessert that was very much to her liking – Jane herself is Korean, and she loves Asian desserts and flavors. So naturally, I went with injeolmi powder,…
Baked lapseng buns
These are the baked version of my childhood favorite lapseng buns that we would get at dim sum when I was a kid. I guess growing up in America, and being more familiar with hotdogs than I was har gow at that point in my life, lapseng buns, being so similar to a hotdog, were…
Matcha-yuzu macarons
I was in the mood to make some macarons the other day, and these were what I came up with! I wanted to definitely do matcha, since it’s been a while since I made matcha-flavored anything, and I figured, just to make them a little unique, why not add some yuzu to them? The shells…
“Chonky” peach pie
One of my favorite memories growing up was when summer would come around, and the peach tree in our backyard would provide us with white peaches to last an entire summer. I love eating peaches, and while I don’t often bake with them, whenever I do, I love to use them for making pies specifically….
Halva, almond, and apricot tart
So I made this tart because of two reasons: I had a ton of halva in my freezer that I wanted to use in a dessert, and I was seeing my former-pastry chef friend, Janae, and I wanted to make something for her(which ended up being these tarts!). For those unfamiliar with halva, it is…
Giant ass (toasted milk and brown butter) cookies
I made these cookies to test primarily one thing, and that was how toasted milk powder would taste in a cookie dough. I stumbled upon the concept of toasted milk powder when I was watching a video about a chocolatier in Miami who incorporated that into her milk chocolate. She claimed that it gave her…
Pink pineapple hummingbird cake
So when I was shopping at HMart the other day, I stumbled upon these pink pineapples. On the outside, they looked like a normal pineapple, but the flesh was 100% pink on the inside! I did a little more research on them, and it turns out that they were genetically modified so that instead of…
Fortress: a plated dessert
This is sort of my take on a PB&J, with a Jordanian/Albanian spin, using summer produce! I wanted to feature the peaches since we are in peak peach season in the summer, while using white sesame just felt like a great pairing, because more light and delicate than the more robust and hearty black sesame….
Babka sticky buns with chocolate cake ganache and miso butterscotch
I literally only came up with this recipe because I had a lot of leftover sweet potato paste from making the hiyoko manju. I also had a cake order for a chocolate cake, and whenever I make my layer cakes, I always end up with a decent amount of cake scraps. So with leftover sweet…
Baked S’mores
This dessert was partially inspired from my childhood. Specifically, we would always go to the local Souplantation(whihc my mom would affectionally call “Soupie”) for dinner on the weekends, and they would serve this molten chocolate cake, which was basically just a scoop of chocolate cake with fudge sauce over it. I wanted to take that…
Red bean doughnuts(an-doughnut) with roasted miso sugar
These doughnuts were inspired by an-doughnuts(red bean doughnuts) that I found in my local Japanese grocery store. The doughnuts that I purchased were a cake doughnut base with a chunkier red bean paste(called tsubu-an) in the middle, finished with granulated sugar around it. While I liked the concept of it, I felt like there was…
Sweet potato and salted duck egg Hiyoko manju
I have actually wanted to make Hiyoko manju since I was a high schooler. These little buns that are shaped like birdies(manju being a type of bun and hiyoko being the Japanese word for ‘chick’ or baby bird), they just looked so cute yet difficult to make. However, after getting as much wagashi and bun…
Fluffy buttermilk biscuits
I’m not going to lie and claim that I grew up making biscuits with my mother from scratch, or even talk about the first time I remember eating a biscuit, because I would be lying on both counts – we probably used the Pillsbury dough if we ever made them, and I really can’t remember…
Squash blossom and ricotta pizza
This pizza is my love letter to Pizzeria Mozza in West Hollywood. Namely because I love that restaurant, but driving all the way over there from the South Bay area in Southern California is a giant pain. They have this wonderful pizza with Nancy Silverton’s perfected O.G. La Brea Bakery bread that has a blanket…
Maritozzo buns with cream and Earl Grey tea
I have been wanting to make these buns for what feels like a century(in actuality, closer to 2 months). The idea of these fluffy buns with a perfect line of cream, it just sounds like eating a cloud! For those unfamiliar with what maritozzo are, they are Roman(Italian) bread buns that are stuffed with cream….
Chocolate covered banana roll cake
Whenever I think of quintessential beach treats, chocolate-covered bananas always come to mind. Mostly because of Arrested Development. I love the idea of taking nostalgic things like that, and recreating them in something more in my style. In this case, that would be a roll cake. Using a fluffy chocolate chiffon, blonde chocolate, and Korean…
Blood orange upside down cake
I have made this recipe before, but I think it was on TikTok, back when I actually had/used that app. This cake consists of a layer of caramel-laden blood orange slices that are sitting on top of a dense but delicious olive oil cake. It’s fairly straightforward in flavor profile, and pretty fun to make,…
Double decker buttermilk Fraisier cake
I do love myself a good fraisier cake, or a fraisier dessert of any kind, honestly! For those unfamiliar with the term, a fraisier cake is just a strawberry cake, usually featuring two layers of vanilla sponge with strawberries surrounding it and a vanilla cream between the layers. I have made a couple in the…
Freddy's Harajuku 