Tteok are Korean rice cakes that are eaten in both savory and sweet applications. They are quite similar to mochi, and have a delicious chewy texture to them. One of the more common savory applications of tteok is tteokbokki, which literally translates to stewed rice cakes. The cakes are usually stewed in a spicy, kimchi-gochujang…
Tag: butterfly pea
Blackberry Blood Orange Sunset Cake
Back in high school, my “signature” cupcake was a blue velvet cake with orange curd, blackberry Italian meringue buttercream, and white chocolate “stems”, with the entire cupcake designed to resemble a flower with the shades of an oceanside sunset. It was inspired specifically by the oceanside sunsets that I would see growing up in a…
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…
Milky Way Yokan
I love Tanabata. For those unfamiliar with it, Tanabata is a Japanese holiday where they have a star festival, celebrating all things wishes! It is held to commemorate the one day in the year(July 7th) where two lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi, who were separated by the Milky Way can see each other. Tags with wishes…
“Butterfly Skies”(blueberry-yuzu) entremet
Now I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Or very doable. Or simple. I would not be lying if I said this recipe takes multiple days to execute without a blast chiller or liquid nitrogen. This is the kind of cake you would only make for special occasions. Between the techniques,…
Ocean Lily: a plated dish
Out of the five dishes I served at my “Namie” pop-up for 4Foodie, I would say that this one was the one I was most excited about. I never actually tried to do a sashimi dish before, at least without the help of somebody else slicing the fish for me. However, in this case, I…
Rainbow dango(suama)
So I was brainstorming different rainbow desserts for Pride this year, and I literally came up with the idea to do these when I was walking through my local Japanese grocery store(which I frequent a lot these days), and stumbled upon Fugetsu-Do‘s rainbow dango, also called suama. For those unfamiliar, Fugetsu-Do is a highly popular…
Tsuki no Hikari wagashi
I really came up with this dessert because I was inspired by snow globes initially. I wanted to make this pretty snow globe wagashi situation, and that was what this would have been originally. But on the night I was making it, I looked up and saw a full moon peeking out of the clouds,…
Diamond dust: a petit gateau
When I was thinking of different, winter-themed desserts, I knew I had to do something with a reference to diamond dust. What diamond dust is, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, is very light snowflakes that form and fall during clear skies. It’s very beautiful, and something I remember seeing on occasion…
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)…
Milky way: a plated dessert
This concept came about from when I was watching a singing anime on Netflix, called “Carole & Tuesday”. Some of the sounds really stuck out to me as good inspirations or launching points for dishes, including one called “Milky Way”. For obvious reasons, I had to include milk in this dessert as a pivotal focus….
Prince of the Sea Angels: a plated dish
So even though I was eliminated in top 10, I actually did have dishes in mind for the finale. The amount of thought you saw put into the crab lantern dish, trust me, a lot more were put into these. So while it is a shame I could not make these dishes for the judges,…
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,…
“Moon Crying”: a plated dish
Back when I was thinking of signature dishes for MasterChef, I wanted to make sure I covered my bases, so I had this dish in my back pocket in the event I had to make a fish dish. I named it Moon Crying, again after a Koda Kumi song, because she’s by far my favorite…
Moonlight dust: a mirror glaze cheesecake
The name of this dessert came about from a song by harmonicblend of the same name. I adore harmonicblend and their aesthetic and fantasy-driven soundtracks, and Moonlight dust was no exception. For the dessert itself, obviously, I needed to incorporate the moon into it somehow. So I went ahead and went with the most iconic…
Waiting for the rain: a plated concept
The inspiration for this dessert came from Maaya Sakamoto’s song, “Waiting for the Rain”. It was a song I first listened to my senior year when I was going through some serious shit. Maybe not the best thing to listen to, because it was a beautiful, but sad song. The lyrics really stood out to…
Perfectly blue macarons
So it turns out that the majority of the time I have been making macarons, I have been measuring out my ingredients incorrectly. Whenever it was supposed to be 3/4 cups almond flour and icing sugar, I would do 1 cup. Which definitely would explain why mine would come out so overtly browned, lumpy, dry,…
Blue skies, blue water mirror glaze cake
The inspiration for this cake was from a song by the same name. Go figure, that’s like half the shit I post here, and I love it because my music is so “out there” and not mainstream that you all would not know that unless I told you in the first place. Bitches. As you…
Blue dreams doughnut cream
When I was thinking about a summery dessert, I was inspired by both sea salt ice cream from Kingdom Hearts and salted coconut-butterfly tea lattes. There is just something about that blue-white contrast that really reminds me of sunny skies and blue seas. The name “blue dreams” came from a song of the same name….
L’eclipse: the blue cheesecake
While I was sick with bronchitis, all I could think about was what I would bake the moment I stopped coughing my throat out. I thought back to my old cupcake-making days from high school, where I remembered one of the very first desserts that I have ever thought of: a blue velvet cupcake with…
Freddy's Harajuku 