Mont Blanc is a French chestnut dessert, usually consisting of chestnut cream, piped in a string-like matter to resemble the peaks of a mountain, and finished with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar to effect snow tops. Mont Blanc is literally French for “white mountain” for that reason. While the dessert is French in origin, it…
Tag: clove
Kimchi’s Cajeta Pumpkin Pie
Before anyone asks, no this recipe does not have kimchi in it. Kimchi is the name of my friend Brenda’s maltese. He is an adorable little pupper and is generally well behaved. Except when I brought this cajeta pumpkin pie for our annual Friendsgiving, and Kimchi decided to help himself to 40% of the pie….
Miso Caramel Apple Dumplings
First time I had apple dumplings was living in Boston; my friend Tina made them for us when we were having a baking night together back in freshman year of college. I literally had no idea what an apple dumpling was, come to find out, they were these parcels of baked dough, stuffed with caramelized…
Pumpkin Pie Taiyaki
Ever since I bought a taiyaki pan, I only ever used it once. And not even to make traditional taiyaki batter! Hilariously, back in college, I did make taiyaki a few times when I borrowed a classmate’s pan. However, I did not own a pan of my own until 2023, and even then, I totally…
“Scarecrow Cake”
This is my autumnal version of my dreamy hummingbird cake. For this variation, I replaced bananas and coconut with pumpkin, pineapple with raisin, and pecans with pepitas. Initially when I was testing this recipe, I tried to just use my carrot cake recipe, but subbing out the grated carrot with canned pumpkin puree. But that…
“Chicken and Dumplings”: a plated dish
This dish is a revisited version of a recipe I made a few years ago, but as a more composed plated dish. The dish itself was what I made for a collaboration dinner at Mader Lao in Oklahoma, with my friends Gabriel and Dara(from season 12 of Masterchef!). I offered to do the entree, which…
Om Ali with Pistachio-Cardamom Cream
I came up with this recipe because I had a lot of leftover brioche and phyllo, and I needed to use it up someway, somehow. Luckily for me, there is a dessert that literally can use up both, which meant that I did not have to sacrifice space in my freezer for either of those…
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…
Calabaza en Tacha Clafoutis with Cajeta
I came up with this dessert when I was conceptualizing a dish for a gala for a nonprofit called Loveworks, based in Oklahoma City(shoutout to Gabriel Lewis for inviting me to help out with this event!). The dinner took place in November, so because of that, I wanted to focus on whatever was seasonal to…
“Gansito” Petit Gateau
My friend Frances once described gansito to me as “a Mexican Twinkie”. So that is what a gansito is, in broader terms. But more specifically, gansito is a vanilla snack cake with a layer of strawberry jam, a cream filling, and it is covered in chocolate. So it is like a Twinkie, but with strawberry…
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…
Cafe de olla cake
When I was doing research on Latin cuisine, I came across an interesting beverage called cafe de olla. It is an earthy coffee drink with spices, namely cinnamon, anise, and clove, sometimes orange, in it that is normally served in a clay cup. It sounded like a lot of beautiful flavors, to be honest, and…
Good as Hell: a carrot cake
When it comes to carrot cake, I really love making them with a TON of grated carrots in them. While the concept of putting a root vegetable into a cake sounds a bit weird, that’s what the sugar and spices are for. It hides any savory notes of the vegetable and results in a cake…
Snowball fight in the icebox: gingerbread icebox cake
Now I don’t really eat or make gingerbread men that often. Mostly because I was only raised with 50% of American traditions, being an immigrant, so gingerbread baking was not really something we did in our family. Highly ironic, given how much ginger we had at home, from fresh ginger root to powdered ginger to…
Bee pollen baklava
I can’t believe it took me this long to finally post a recipe that features homemade phyllo. Fun fact: I learned how to make phyllo from scratch the Montenegrin way from watching the Australian cooking competition, My Kitchen Rules, when a contestant, Zana, this snarky, germaphobic, perfectionist Montenegrin-Albanian lawyer made her own phyllo from scratch quite…
Freddy's Harajuku 