Gluten-free coconut-lime cheesecakes

I have been craving Magnolia Bakery’s lime and coconut cheesecake since I had it years ago when I visited New York. While one can make the argument that I could just drive to Downtown L.A. to get it, I’m lazy. Lazy enough to try making my own version of it, anyways. So for the cake,…

Dulcey-piƱa colada cake

So I made this cake for my friend, Carolyn, specifically on her birthday. She was hardcore craving a “toasty, tropically flavored” cake, and she literally gave me a list of what she wanted. She wanted a coconut cake with crunchy macadamia nuts, something with pineapple, but it had to be cooked, toasted coconut, and something…

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…

Sea salt ice cream with coconut cream

I really love doing different renditions on the iconic sea salt ice cream from Kingdom Hearts 2. There is just something about it that reminds me of summers at the beach…oh wait, that’s just the summer for me, because I’m from Los Angeles, and I happen to work nearby the beach. But anyways, it just…

Passion fruit-coconut-caramel naked layer cake

I literally only made this cake because we had about 15 passion fruits lying around and I needed to start getting rid of them before they went bad. The cake itself has five different layers to it, being coconut-brown sugar cake, salted coconut caramel soaking liquid, coconut cream, passionfruit curd, and coconut crumble. I think…

Ube souffle pancakes

I love ube. Ube is a purple yam indigenous to Asia and it’s great for making many desserts with. Souffle pancakes, also called shiawase pancakes, are a very popular breakfast item or snack in Japan, known for their fluffy texture. Combine them together and theoretically, it should be a social media phenomenon. For my recipe,…