Elderflower Eton Mess Fruit Tart

I made this mostly for Pi Day, but also because I wanted to try making a rectangular fruit tart that does not look like an ass sandwich; the first time I purchased a rectangular fluted tart pan, it was back when I was still an accounting intern in DC. As my going away gift to…

Sweet potato mont blanc

Mont blanc is traditionally a French dessert, featuring a puree of chestnut piped over whipped cream and topped with powdered sugar to resemble a snow-capped mountain; fun fact, mont blanc is French for white mountain. This dessert is popular in both France and Japan, and other varieties use sweet potatoes, shiro an or azuki beans…

Blueberry dreams: a plated concept

This dessert came about when I was watching a shoujo anime, “Kobato” and I was inspired by a character named Ioryogi, being this outwardly cute blue dog creature, and his love of baumkuchen, a circular German layered cake that resembles the rings or layers of a tree. Normally, baumkuchen is made on a spit roast…

Passionfruit Souffle

Passionfruit is easily one of my favorite ingredients of all time. My dad has fond memories of eating a ton of them in Taiwan, mostly because they grow quite frequently there. For me, it is a reminder of my heritage and I just love the sweet-tart flavor of the pulp coupled with the crunch of…

Banoffee Sticky Buns

I love banoffee pie. For those of you who do not know what that is, it’s a British dessert consisting of shortcrust pastry, fresh bananas, dulce de leche (caramelized condensed milk), grated dark chocolate, and whipped cream. It’s pretty decadent, like a lot of British desserts (trust me, that’s not a bad thing. I personally…

Lapis Lazuli fruit tart

The inspiration behind this fruit tart came from the lapis lazuli gemstone. It is a naturally blue mineral studded with gold and white streaks. I wanted to also make this dessert an homage to my hometown of Palos Verdes, where wild fennel grows, and that’s where the inspiration to use fennel pollen came from. I…

Matchamisu naked layer cake

When I open Harajuku Cream Handle (a cheap, Taiwanese knock-off of Momofuku Milk Bar that shall actually never come into fruition for many potential lawsuit-related reasons), the matchamisu naked layer cake is going to be displayed to the world in all of its gorgeous, bare glory. Ew, that sounded horrible and I regret saying that…

Chocolate-raspberry meringue pie

  The first time I ever made a chocolate-meringue pie was for a Thanksgiving Potluck in the School of Hospitality Administration. Fun fact: the school called it a potluck, but it was actually just me and three other culinary learning assistants who slave labored catered the entire thing. I had to prepare five desserts with enough…

Mochiko milk rolls

This recipe came a multitude of reasons. The first being me accidentally buying 8 sticks of salted butter and needing to use them somehow, the second being that I was craving homemade bread with oxtail stew, and the third being I miss Japanese-styled bakeries, and those fluffy milk rolls they’d always sell. So after doing…

Homemade Na’an Bread

Na’an bread is one of those breads I never paid a lot of attention to initially. It was probably because I just thought it would taste like pita and be flat, dry, and bland. But I was so very wrong. Na’an, while still being a flatbread, has a rich, wholesome mouthfeel to it, a buttery…