I haven’t made a Pokemon-themed dessert in a hot minute, but I wanted to try my hand with one after I made this really tasty olive oil cake, and wanted to find a way to showcase it! So I figured, why not make a cake inspired by the adorable Pokemon, Smoliv? Smoliv is a Normal/Grass-type…
Tag: baking
Sourdough Shio Pan Taiyaki
So a while back, I made these anko shio pan, but what I did not talk about was how I frozen some of the leftover shio pan, and eventually tried making taiyaki out of them! Taiyaki are a Japanese fish(sea bream)-shaped waffle, usually stuffed with either red bean paste or custard most commonly. In the…
Chocolate-Salted Date Thumbprints
This recipe was inspired by the combination of chocolate and dates. Both are a bit earthy, but one provides sweetness, while the other more bitterness. Combine that with a little bit of salt from the usage of soy sauce, and you have essentially a chocolate-salted caramel-esque cookie! In this case, we have a salted date…
Stuffed Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies
Stuffed cream cheese cookies had quickly become an addiction of mine when I made those cranberry bliss cookies a while ago. The tender, soft, buttery cookie just melts in your mouth, while it is contrasted with the creamy, tangy filling. So it got me thinking, what other flavors could I go for with this cream…
Sourdough Bolognese Pizza
While I was experimenting with sourdough pizza crust, I happened to also have meal-prepped a giant vat of bolognese(meat sauce), just to have throughout the week for potential dinners. Originally, this was going to be a bolognese pasta post, but I forgot to photograph that, and decided instead, let’s use the bolognese on the pizza…
Sourdough Red Bean Shio Pan
About a year-ish ago, I made sourdough shio pan using my sourdough starter Horacio. Shio pan is a Japanese pastry, literally translating to mean “salt bread”. I like making it from time to time, and I have made sourdough variations of it in the past with my starter! The funniest thing was that I did…
Egg-Free Hummingbird Cake
Hummingbird cake is my obsession. I love banana desserts(get your minds out of the gutter), and the concept of hummingbird cake, being this Southern hummingbird cake with Caribbean roots, is just so fascinating to me. Plus the name is just so pleasant and cute. My version of hummingbird cake usually is made with this brown…
Hojicha-Miso Alfajores
These cookies came about because I decided to test out making dulce de leche in my pressure cooker, and I ended needing to use said dulce de leche in a couple different recipes. So you can expect to see a few dulce de leche-based recipes in the horizon, with this being one of them! Alfajores(basically…
Bruleed Cheesecake with Sata Andagi
I came up with this by happy coincidence. I love when a lot of different factors or scenarios line up and I end up making a really cool dish. In this case, I was recipe testing a baked cheesecake filling, and happened to have more cheesecake filling compared to the crust I prepped. Rather than…
Peanut Milk Panna Cotta and Madeleines
This plated dessert was actually inspired by sweet peanut milk soup(花生仁汤), a popular canned beverage from my native Taiwan. I still remember the first time I had it, it was in my grandma’s apartment in the Shida district on a hot summer night. It was a milky beverage with these tender, braised peanuts. I was…
Semolina-Tahini Cake with Biko and Coconut
While I was going through my sugar fast, I was craving basically everything with sugar. This dessert specifically was one of those sugar-deprived fantasies I conceptualized around two desserts that are notoriously sugar-laden. One of the inspirations was basbousa, an Egyptian semolina cake that is baked with tahini for a nutty texture, and is normally…
White Rabbit and Salted Egg Mimosa Cake
Easter is one of those holidays I literally never understood. I never grew up in a household that celebrated it beyond Easter Egg hunts and getting sick from eating chocolate rabbits and jellybeans, so whenever people talk about how it is this whole commitment that they had to spend with their families, I did not…
Baked Berry Ripple Cheesecake
Growing up, my mom only ever made two different kinds of Western desserts for us: white cake or baked cheesecake. I still remember as a really young kid, seeing her use our electric hand mixer to whip the cream cheese mixture(the literal only time she would ever use that thing), she would crush the graham…
Brown Butter Cereal Milk Egg Tarts
There are many interpretations on an egg tart. The most popular is probably the pasteis de nata, which are the Portuegese ones, featuring a thick, rich custard that is broiled on top for a creme brulee-like topping. I personally grew up on Hong Kong style egg tarts, which were a favorite of mine whenever we…
Baked Chocolate Dulce de Leche Doughnuts
I wanted to make these doughnuts for a couple of different reasons. The first was that eggs are getting really expensive/hard to find about now, I wanted to do some R&D with egg-free desserts, this being one of them. The second was that I was fondly reminiscing about my time at Boston University, and recalling…
Olive Oil-Tangerine-Sesame Cake
It’s funny to see the rise in popularity with olive oil cakes, especially here in Los Angeles, over the past 4 years. It’s almost as if post-pandemic, that became the “it” cake in the city. You would be amazed to see how many bakeries and cafes sell a variation of it, and almost all are…
Chocolate-Milky Oolong Cake
Milk or milky oolong has been one of my obsessions ever since I got some from a cute tea shop in Munich. I’m partially ashamed to admit that I never heard of the tea prior to that trip, especially since it is a Taiwanese tea, and I am Taiwan-born after all, but better late than…
Cheesy Broccolini Focaccia
This is one of those recipes that came about because I had a lot of leftover broccolini and was trying to figure out what to do with it. I still remember during the pandemic how people would make aesthetically pleasing focaccia landscapes, and figured, why not take a whack at it? Truthfully, I used to…
Seaweed-Tonka Bean Shortbreads
I made these shortbreads specifically with my plating bestie, Bri, in mind! She was visiting Los Angeles, and I wanted to greet her with a dessert that she never had before. Seaweed desserts are already rare to come by, but adding in tonka bean to that, and I guarantee you that is a flavor combination…
Tonka Bean Tiramisu “Clouds”
Ever since I got these cute silicone cloud molds, I wanted to make some aesthetically pleasing mousse cakes with them! One idea is taking a classic Italian tiramisu, and literally setting it into cloud-like shapes just for a cozier feel. Italian tiramisu consists of a sponge, usually ladyfingers or savoiardi biscuits, dunking them in a…
Freddy's Harajuku 