Tonka Bean Black Forest Cake

Black forest cake was my birthday cake growing up for the first 13 years of my life. Not because I particularly liked it, but because we would always go back to Taiwan for my birthday/winter break, and celebrate it at my grandma’s apartment in Taipei. And the only cake that the bakery underneath her apartment…

Ruby Forest Petit Gateau

This is an homage to the black forest cake, which was my birthday cake for the first 14 years of my life. The reason why we would eat black forest cake was because we would celebrate my birthday in Taiwan, and the bakery in the Shida district where we would stay/live only made one kind…

ForĂȘt de cauchemars: a petit gateau

This dessert literally only happened because I purchased a ton of cherries to make another recipe with, and I had to figure out what to do with them before they went moldy. Which is always a great motivator when you purchase way too much of an ingredient! So I went ahead and pureed my remaining…

Black forest swan puffs

Whenever I think of pate choux, I always think about pate choux swans, since they are the most obvious go-to in terms of what you can do with that kind of dough. I wanted to do a take on a pate choux swan, but instead of making the neck and wings out of the pastry,…

Black forest izba cake

Izba cake (Izba is Russian for “cottage”) is a Russian cake made of rolls of pastry stuffed with fruit, typically cherries, that are then layered with cream and allowed to set into a triangular prism shape. The cross section when you cut into it resembles a mini house, which is why it gets that name….