These have been a classic favorite of mine since I started baking and learned how to make Italian meringue. Graham cracker crust, chocolate cake, and Italian meringue, torched in the broiler of your oven, super simple, super fun. For this rendition, I doctored up my meringue a little by introducing gelatin into the simple syrup,…
Tag: Chocolate
Seal tart 2.0
I wanted to improve the previous seal tart I created, mostly by giving the seals snouts, flippers, and a tail, and finessing the shape of the chocolate eyes. For this particular seal tart, I also used butterfly pea tea to color the ganache blue, to resemble water, and paired that with lime curd, and guava…
Ring seal s’mores tartlet
Baby ring seals are honestly some of the most adorable creatures I have ever seen. They remind of me Asian babies in that they start out super cute, but somewhere down the line, they just let their cuteness go as time goes on. That disturbingly true sentiment aside, I wanted to capture the cuteness of…
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….
Matcha jade layer cake
The idea of this dessert came from wanting to create a layer cake that was visually reminiscent of a garden. I wound up with a dessert that had the gradient of a jade stone, which is still not bad, so pleasant surprises, you know? When it comes to using matcha, getting it to the right…
Chocolate bombolini cake
This dessert came about because I had a shit ton of ricotta cheese leftover, and I needed to use it. I wound up making cannoli cream, which is made with heavily whipped ricotta and chocolate chips. I figured that it would be the easiest way to use the ricotta, since I was not about to…
Seeds of heaven and earth: mini chocolate-mint pate choux tower
I thought of this dessert one late Thursday night when I was in a slump; I was starting to get bored with baking, just because I keep doing the same shit. Naked layer cakes, doughnut creams, the occasional ice cream and plated dessert. Bottom line, with this dessert, I was trying to do something different…
Chocolate-bourbon-coffee cake
I dub this cake my “adulting” cake because it consists of two things I often need or want in my life: coffee and booze. I also made the cake look really drab and compact, to symbolize how being an adult is not as wonderful and exciting as people would expect. It’s honestly boring. Is that…
Goodnight Meteor: a plated dessert
I have been listening to an artist group called HarmonicBlend for a while now, and I just love their music. They have songs that really tell stories and follow themes, and their most recent album, Dreaming Children, features quite a few songs that I’m inspired to create desserts from. One of those desserts is named…
Cookies and Milk Jam Tart
I wanted to create a dessert inspired by my childhood favorite, cookies and cream. However, I didn’t want to just serve that. I have done cookies and cream inspired desserts in the past, but this time around, I wanted to play around with milk jam. For my milk jam recipe, I love using cornstarch, xantham…
Salted Caramel Devil’s Food Cake
The first time I ever had a cake presented to me in such a fashion was at Hinoki and the Bird. I wanted to recreate that same Devil’s Food Cake for years, and now I’ve finally done…. after they had already removed it from their menu. Oh well, at least it’s mine, and only mine….
Chocolate-Tangerine Creamsicle Cake
I love chocolate cake. I cannot stress or repeat it enough. But one of my favorite chocolate cake recipes is my fluffy fudge cake, which is made using bloomed cocoa powder, melted chocolate, and meringue, just to give the cake a dense, fudge-y start and a light, airy finish. Because yes, some cakes can have…
Salted caramel pets de nonne with honey-chocolate milkshake
A huge proponent of this dessert’s inspiration came from milkshake and fries; I just love something crispy and fried and something reminiscent of ice cream. I wanted to do a play on that, but using something that is traditionally a dessert, so in this case, pets de nonne. Now for the 90% of the world…
Multilayered Chocolate-Raspberry Tart
This dessert was everything that the chocolate-raspberry meringue tart was supposed to be. Chocolate on raspberry on chocolate with no other interference. While the recipe would have conceptually remained the same, I changed it up, using nama chocolate as the base, raspberry gelee as a disk instead, fresh raspberries, a chocolate cremeaux, a tempered chocolate…
Christmas is dawning: a plated dessert
The concept for this dessert originally came from watching The Next Iron Chef: Superchefs, all the way back in 2011. Chef Elizabeth Falkner created this really cool chocolate devil’s food cake with peppermint snow, inspired by Christmas, and I wanted to do something that was a nod to that, since I finally have the tapioca…
Black bottom cheesecake doughnut creams
I constantly crave black bottom cheesecake: a rich, chocolate cake that enrobes a creamy cheesecake. For this recipe, I wanted to do that, but in a doughnut shaped entremet, or mousse cake. When it comes to chocolate cakes, there are just too many different kinds to make, ranging from the Viennese sacher torte to the…
Nama-Choco Pops
These came about from one drive home from work when I was thinking about innovative or new dessert ideas. One that came to mind was the idea of lollipops, thanks to a song of the same name by Koda Kumi. A lollipop-up dessert concept, where I would serve different flavored treats on sticks. Back when…
Samoa Cupcakes
Samoa, coconut dreams, whatever the hell they’re called, they’re arguably one of the most delicious Girl’s Scout Cookies of all time, unless you’re an evil bitch and hate coconut, chocolate, or caramel, in which case, go step in front of a bus. Since I had already prepared one dessert inspired by Girl’s Scout Cookies before,…
Thick Mint Bars
These were obviously inspired by the popular Girls Scout Cookie, the Thin Mint. A thin, dark chocolate cookie with a minty chocolate glaze. They’re delicious, to say the least. Since Girl Scout Cookies are not available year-round (while they do have knock-offs available, it’s just not the same), I figured I would try to recreate…
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…
Freddy's Harajuku 