So I came up with this concept after a quick chat with my friend Sam (you might remember him as the lawyer from my season of Masterchef). His son Jude’s 2nd birthday was coming up (it will actually be when I post this, so go and wish his son a happy birthday if you’re reading this!)…
Tag: baking
Thin mint-Oreo Doughnut Creams
I really love making Doughnut Creams. I don’t make them as often as I used to, but I do still like their aesthetic. A seemingly perfectly glazed doughnut with cute toppings, but when you bite into it, it’s not fried dough. It’s a set mousse with fluffy cake on the bottom. Sometimes, two mousses. Sometimes,…
Basque cheesecake with chocolate chip sable crust
Now I have been dying to make Basque cheesecake for quite a while now. For those of you who do not know what these are, they’re basically a Spanish-styled cheesecake which is airy and light at the edges, with a almost blackened, if not burnt top, and a gooey, creamy, and oozy center. They’re basically…
Pineapple upside down layer cake
So with all of the recipe-testing I have been doing, not going to lie, there’s been a LOT of leftover components here and there accumulating. One of such leftover items were the tea-smoked cherries from my earl grey-spumoni dessert. So I wanted to get rid of them bring them back in another dessert! Rummaging through…
Love like you: a mirror glaze cake
When I was thinking of my quintessential Valentine’s Dessert, I had to go this route. A mousse cake would be perfect, since they are gorgeous, and almost resemble a box of chocolates in a way. I decided to go with a classic and simple combination of raspberry and vanilla, just because the contrast is sharp,…
うつろい(utsuroi): a plated dessert
I really wanted this dessert to be the sister counterpart to “kakawari”, as it is based on yet another song by TrySail, and almost a given here, another theme song from Magia Record. The name roughly translates from Japanese to English as “waning” or “fading”, or an unfortunate kind of change. Since my other dessert…
After the fire: a petit gateau
So I really wanted to make a dessert using these new wooden sake cups I bought, since I don’t exactly drink, and I really have been enjoying seeing these wooden box tiramisus on my Instagram feed lately. I did want to do a take on a tiramisu, but I didn’t exactly want to do a…
“Day by Day”: a layer cake
So Carole and Tuesday season 2 just came out on Netflix, and with that, the soundtrack also dropped, so I was able to start listening to and get inspired by all of the new tracks on that album. One in particular that I liked was “Day by Day”, which was this quaint song that reminded…
Heirloom apple, almond, and rose tarts
I really wanted to make a delicate little tart using these heirloom apples I found at WholeFoods one day, and that’s where these tarts came about. Well, that, and I was loosely inspired by Momo from Shokugeki no Soma. What? I’m allowed to take inspiration from anime and videos. I’m a weeb at my core….
Good as Hell: a carrot cake
When it comes to carrot cake, I really love making them with a TON of grated carrots in them. While the concept of putting a root vegetable into a cake sounds a bit weird, that’s what the sugar and spices are for. It hides any savory notes of the vegetable and results in a cake…
Small steps: a plated dessert
I wanted to create a dessert that represented my collective growth in dessert. Chocolate cake was obviously something that has huge sentimental value to me, so I had to feature that, and with it, two of my other favorite dessert go-to’s, being ice cream and macaron. For this particular dessert, I went with chocolate friands,…
Jump: grasshopper pie entremet
Ever since my senior year of college when I made several of them for a Thanksgiving party, I have fallen in love with grasshopper pie. And no, it’s not actual grasshoppers in a pie, if that’s what you’re thinking (because my god, the Internet can be stupid sometimes). Grasshopper pie is an old school dessert…
Round and Round: a roll cake
As Christmas approaches, I just love to bake more and more festive desserts. Croquembouche, bouche de noel, roll cakes, Mont Blanc, I just love making festive things. So I figured, why not combine Mont Blanc and bouche de noel, and do a roll cake? I’ve been seeing a ton of chestnuts in the grocery store,…
Plated pineapple upside down cake
This entire dessert stemmed from me making togarashi-honey “dole whip”, and needing to create an entire plate around that ice cream. Since I have leftover pineapple, it just made sense to make something with it, and I opted for a pineapple upside down cake, and to make it almost like a pina colada, I went…
Curious little penguins: a haupia pie
I really was inspired by all of the cute baby penguin videos I’ve been seeing on Instagram lately, and I just felt like they were a perfect inspiration for a cute dessert. I knew that using butterfly pea tea would work to effect the color of the ocean, while I could use kohakutou(Japanese rock candy)…
Here comes a thought: a plated dessert
When I came up with the concept for this dessert, it really was to be something that would tackle the themes of anxiety and depression, two things I had to deal with a ton when I had come out. Having an entire student organization essentially outcast and passive aggressively bully you, as anyone can imagine,…
Mixed berry cheesecake and black sesame macarons
For the second half of MasterChef’s Sweet Week, we had 60 minutes to make a box of twelve macarons in two flavors, and they actually had to all fit inside the box. In the past, I have royally messed up my macarons because they got too runny and melted into each other at the piping…
My matcha dreamscape: a green tea-coconut layer cake
So before the cake replication challenge during MasterChef’s Sweet Week, we actually did get hints that we would be making a layer cake! So thinking we could make our own, I went ahead and thought up of a matcha and coconut layer cake. For the inspiration, I just imagined my trips to Taiwan and Japan,…
Honey-yuzu Paris Brest
This recipe really just came about because I wanted to make a Paris Brest, aka a ring shaped éclair. When I thought about my fillings, I decided to go with three in total. A yuzu Bavarian cream, homemade honeycomb candy, and honey mascarpone cream. I also made a honey-yuzu-bee pollen glaze, and infused the actual…
Making my way: a plated dessert
As I do have a habit of naming my desserts after songs and lyrics, it is very easy to assume I named this one after “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. And I don’t blame you if you think that, because that is a touching song and it reminds me of White Chicks, a movie that…
Freddy's Harajuku 