I just had to make some fun pink peach desserts whenever white peach season rolls around. It’s so fun to take the peach peels, turn those into a simple syrup, and then simmering white peaches in those until they take on the pink color from the syrup itself. They are such a pretty garnish, and…
Tag: creme fraiche
Honey Butter Buns with Creme Fraiche
These honey butter buns are inspired by Japanese honey butter toast, but in sticky bun form. Honey butter toast is made by spreading a paste of honey, brown sugar, and butter around a piece of bread, and toasting that until the sugars caramelize, and you get this almost creme brulee-like exterior to the toast itself….
Mini Honey Cakes
Honey cakes are something I fell in love with when my sister brought one back from her student exchange in Europe. They are cakes made from these thin, honey cookie-like layers sandwiching a tangy cream-type of filling. For those who have never had a honey cake before, they are very similar to an icebox cake,…
“A Heart as Pure as Snow”: a plated dessert
When I was thinking of Valentine’s Day desserts, I realized that I somehow have not made a raspberry dessert in over two years. Which means that it was long overdue. So right away, I knew I was going to use raspberries, I wanted this white and red aesthetic, and I wanted it to be a…
Seaweed Ice Cream Sundae
Before anyone thinks that adding seaweed to desserts is weird, I actually grew up eating this Chinese coconut tapioca dessert that had pieces of rehydrated kombu in it. The kombu, which is a type of dried Japanese seaweed that is used in broths, absorbed the sweet coconut flavor and added a nice textural contrast to…
Crab and Chili Crisp Bagels
These bagels were a complete and utter brain child. I heard about Montreal style bagels – bagels that are boiled with a little bit of honey and have a soft, chewy crust – and wanted to make my own! However, a bagel on its own, while tasty, can be a little one-note, and I wanted…
Acorn Sticky Toffee Puddings
This recipe came up because my friend and talented chef, Kesha Taro, and I were talking about acorn flour. Kesha worked for Gordon Ramsay doing culinary production for decades. She worked briefly on season 10, but I didn’t meet her until season 11 open casting calls, and she was super kind. Flash forward years later,…
Caviar Egg Tarts
Somewhat inspired by my trip to Oahu, where we ate at a restaurant called Senia. One of the dishes we were served were these egg tarts, which were savory, filled with an egg salad mixture, and topped with caviar. Now eggs and caviar are a classic combination. Eggs are custardy and rich, and caviar adds…
Pork and Miso Cream Stew
This stew is me throwing almost every umami-developing technique I have in the book(minus dried mushrooms, tomatoes, or cheese rinds) into a pot of Japanese-styled cream stew. I have made pork cream stews in the past, but I was always disappointed by the color of the cream. I had envisioned this light, pale color, but…
Pumpkin Butter Mochi Pie
So I had a lot of leftover pumpkin lying around after doing R&D on my calabaza en tacha clafoutis, so I had to figure out how to get rid of it. After blending it up into a puree, I found that the only thing I could feasibly do with pureed pumpkin(that was already sweetened) was…
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…
Uni custard with yuzu buttermilk
I have done chawanmushi before, and this is quite similar to that as well. The idea was to do this baked or steamed uni custard(in an egg shell) with a light buttermilk foam-type of thing, and on top of that, some fresh uni, just to tie it all in together. In the past, I have…
Winter Glow: a plated dessert
I literally came up with this dish because a family friend gifted us Osetra caviar, and I did not want to squander it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Osetra caviar is harvested from an Osetra sturgeon fish, and it is one of the most prized and expensive kinds of caviar, second to only…
Bee who I want 2 bee: a plated dessert
I came up with this dessert because I was craving medovik, or Russian honey cake. That is essentially just an icebox cake with honey wafers. I love to infuse mine with bee pollen, just to give it a unique flavor. Since it would be kind of boring to just do the medovik, I went with…
Endless: a chocoholic’s chocolate tart
So continuing with my inspiration drawn from Carole and Tuesday, I wanted to do a dessert inspired by the rather depressing song, Endless, which addresses a lifetime of abuse, only to be followed with the abrupt death of the abuser. While that theme was dark, I decided to go literal with some of the lyrics here, going…
Let this feeling go: a plated dessert
So continuing with my Valentine’s/Singles Awareness Day desserts, I wanted to make something with berries, cream, champagne, and chocolate. But I didn’t want to do just the obvious strawberries with champagne and white chocolate combination. I wanted to be a little different, so I opted for ruby chocolate and raspberries, and for my cream component,…
Mixed berry cheesecake and black sesame macarons
For the second half of MasterChef’s Sweet Week, we had 60 minutes to make a box of twelve macarons in two flavors, and they actually had to all fit inside the box. In the past, I have royally messed up my macarons because they got too runny and melted into each other at the piping…
“Welcome to the lantern festival!”: a plated dish
This dish was definitely my favorite to make when I was in the competition. Not only did I get to impress the judges(and finally claim some much needed emotional redemption!), but also Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto as well! And with a freaking $500 Alaskan King Crab! Like what the hell?! Even to this day, I…
Heartless: Queen of Hearts inspired mirror glaze cake
I really just came up with this dessert when I was thinking about Tim Burton-inspired cakes. The Queen of Hearts is such an iconic image and has that really dramatic black-red aesthetic that I just knew I could work with. I wanted to do something that really captured that sinister look, so I went with…
Freddy's Harajuku 