I feel like almost any American can recall a time in their lives when they go to a birthday party and are presented with plain vanilla cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles, either baked into the cake, or speckled on top of a vanilla or chocolate frosting. It is honestly such a basic thing, cake, frosting, sprinkles,…
Tag: buttercream
Biscoff-Hazelnut-Brown Butter Cake
Back when I went to Berlin last December, one tasty little morsel we bought as a souvenir were these German hazelnut praline candies called “Toffiffee”. They were fun to stay out loud, a nightmare to type out, and were these caramel-nougat candies that contain chocolate and hazelnut. So in other words, delicious. However, we bought…
Yuzu Langue de Chat(Shiroi Koibito Cookies)
I love langue de chat. They’re probably better known as the shiroi koibito cookies(think like a square shaped Milano with a large chunk of white chocolate filling in them), since those are probably the most popularly served iteration of them. Think thin, buttery cookies with a melt in the mouth texture. They are surprisingly easy…
Basil-Meyer Lemon Cake
I love pairing basil with lemon. There is something about how aromatic, perfume-y, and floral basil is, and that against something acidic and tart like citrus that is super refreshing. I was watching the most recent season of Masterchef(which by the way, is a lot easier to watch when you yourself are not a contestant),…
Cereal Milk Dreamsicle Funfetti Cake
This cake was the result of me craving Fruity Pebbles, and trying to figure out a more technical, gourmet way to consume them. There is just something about Fruity Pebbles, probably the artificial citric acid taste and the crunchy texture, that I just crave from time to time. And no, this is not a sponsored…
Gluten-Free Chocolate Milkbar Birthday Cake
So back when I worked at Milkbar, my least favorite cake to assemble was the chocolate birthday cake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love eating chocolate cake. However, when it came to assembling this one, it was tricky. At Milkbar, at least for their actual bakery operation, each layer of buttercream needs to be…
Chocolate-stuffed Yellow Cupcakes with Cookie Butter Frosting
The thing about yellow cake with chocolate frosting is that it is a really nostalgic, Americana type of dessert. I personally don’t eat yellow cake that frequently, but it has been requested a lot from me, and I enjoy the challenge of making it! The thing about yellow cake is that it contains a lot…
London Fog Layer Cake
This was actually a cake order from a couple that I met at my friend Sylvie’s birthday party. They were incredibly sweet and fun to talk to, and we hit it off almost right away. So when I was contacted to make a cake for one of their birthdays, I immediately had to say yes!…
Cereal Milk Compost Birthday Cake
During my time at Milkbar, we would always try to find creative ways to lower our food costs. One major method included reserving our cake scraps for future cake assembly. However, one thing that we could never figure out was how to use up the leftover soggy cereal that we would end up with after…
Assam Tea Buttercream Cake
Growing up in a Taiwanese/Chinese-American household, almost all of our plateware was white and blue porcelain. To this day, I still don’t fully get why it was that color, but the pattern has really grown on me over the years. To the point where I really wanted to make a cake as an homage to…
Maple Langue de Chat
Langue de chat are a thin French cookie, similar to like a tuile, or a Milano cookie. The translation to English is rather unappetizing, meaning “cat tongues”, but I can assure you that these cookies are quite addictive. In Japan, a popular method of preparing them includes baking them into ornate squares, and sandwiching them…
Tayde’s Cake
This recipe is in dedication for Tayde, who was a former patient at St. Jude’s Children Hospital, a childhood cancer(acute lymphoblastic leukemia) survivor, and now a healthy mother of two. Her floral-themed art pieces were featured at the Creator’s Summit at St. Jude, which I was lucky enough to attend(thank you, Shari from my first…
Yellow Chiffon Layer Cake with Blonde Chocolate
Truthfully, I never really understood yellow cake. I just assumed it was a vanilla cake with a lot of yellow food coloring in it. But turns out, yellow cake is not yellow from food coloring, but from the usage of butter in place of oil, and egg yolks. An abundance of egg yolks results in…
Chocolate-Cajeta Cupcakes
These cupcakes are meant to represent decadence and indulgence. One of my personal favorite combinations is dark chocolate with salted caramel, and these cupcakes take that combination, and really drive it home. In place of using just a regular caramel, I went with Cajeta. Cajeta is a Oaxacan goat milk caramel, very similar to dulce…
Uber Fluffy Chocolate Layer Cake
This chocolate cake is the intersection of everything I could possibly want from a chocolate cake. The sponge is somehow both fudgy and rich, but light and springy with this almost honeycomb-like crumb structure that could only be achieved by whipping the living hell out of egg whites, and adding in just the right amount…
Cafe de Olla Naked Cake
This cake is an homage to my friend, Frances. When we used to work together, our morning ritual was going to our workplace cafeteria, getting coffee and toast, and dicking around instead of doing actual work enjoying a mini breakfast together at our desks. In honor of her graduating college, I had to make a…
Funfetti Chiffon Cake with Milk Candy French Buttercream
I have already made a funfetti cake or two before, but I wanted to do an entirely different take on them with a more subtle and minimalistic approach. I wanted this almost completely buttercream-covered cake with just a slight sprinkle(all puns intended) of color on top, and then when you cut into it, there are…
Creamsicle Dusk Cake
I came up with the concept for this cake when I was watching the sunset on the beach. Seeing the different colors in the sky got me thinking, how cool would it be to replicate that with buttercream? The blues, oranges, purples, and dark green-ish tints, it would be a really pretty visual effect that…
Chocolate-Coffee Layer cake
This cake is basically a chocolate and coffee lover’s dream. Layers of dark chocolate cake with an Ovaltine latte soak, whipped chocolate ganache, a chocolate cookie crumb, cocoa-coffee French buttercream, and coffee tuiles. With each layer, I wanted to make sure they all brought different forms or textures of chocolate or coffee. We have the…
Chocolate chip-cookie butter cupcakes
This recipe primarily came about because I was craving cookie dough ice cream, and I happened to still have a jar of Speculoos cookie butter lying around. So I figured, why not make a cupcake that was chocolate chip cookie-flavored? I would make a cake with brown sugar, brown butter, and chocolate chips, just to…
Freddy's Harajuku 