Whenever I think of persimmons, I remember my earlier childhood – our backyard had white guava, white peach, and fuyu persimmon trees, so depending on the time of year, we had fresh fruit to eat! Persimmon in particular are an interesting fruit, because depending on their ripeness, their flavor and texture can completely change. With…
Tag: dango
Rayquaza-themed Mugwort-Kinako Parfait
So this recipe was the result of me being asked by The Pokemon Company to make a Rayquaza-themed dessert! The very first English Pokemon game I ever played was Pokemon Sapphire, and I loved beating the Elite Four, climbing the Sky Pillar, and catching Rayquaza. Rayquaza is a green serpentine Dragon/Flying-Pokemon that is meant to…
Sakura Mochi Anmitsu Sundae
Anmitsu is one of my dad’s favorite desserts. It is a Japanese dessert, translating to “sweet bean paste with syrup”, essentially. Amnitsu is usually eaten with red bean paste, which is a very common component/ingredient in Japanese desserts, and either a dark or light sugar syrup. There is also typically fruit, mochi/dango, clear cubes of…
“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…
Spheal Dango
Originally, these were just going to be ring seal dango(round mochi-type rice dumplings). However, that idea kind of shifted towards doing Spheals instead thanks to my dear friend, Justina, who straight up to me to do that. And I am (mostly) glad I listened to her, especially after seeing the end product! I say mostly…
Pretty in Pink Anmitsu
For this recipe, I wanted to do anmitsu, but make it pink, as I was inspired by the new Barbie movie. My sister had Barbie dolls growing up, and we totally Kate Mckinnon/Weird Barbie’d her dolls a lot. That and my only other real Barbie-related memory was that my sister owned that Barbie car toy,…
Hanami Chiffon Sandwich
I’ve made it a point to make hanami desserts every single year, so I definitely did not want to stop that trend this year. Hana-mi refers to flower viewing, specifically the viewing of cherry blossoms blooming every spring. As a whole, this is meant to symbolize the beginning of a new year, or at least…
Snow Bunny Dango
Inspiration was from Paper Mario, and Super Paper Mario, where there was an item called the Snow Bunny. From how they looked, a Snow Bunny resembled an usagi manju, which is a Japanese bun shaped like a rabbit. These manju are quite cute, usually being made with mochi, although I have seen baked varieties as…
Polar Bear Shaved Ice
During my most recent trip to Oahu, I had the fortune of being able to go to Matsumoto Shaved Ice! I’ve been wanting to go since I was about 8 years old, so it was create to finally go and experience it! What makes Matsumoto so special is that they use a lot of Japanese…
Pearl in Hiding: a plated dish
So this was one of the five dishes I made for my “Namie” pop-up dinner during the summer for my friends from 4Foodie(special shoutout to Kate and Victoria for the amazing photos from this!). Originally, it was just going to be three dishes, but I extended it to five, and this was a super last-minute(two…
Purple passionfruit mochi truffles
I’ve done mochi truffles in the past, and these were some that I wanted to do, featuring passionfruit! The interior is passionfruit liquid core with a passionfruit mousse, while the exterior is a super soft mochi made with shiratamako, dyed purple naturally using acai powder, just to mimic the color and appearance of a passionfruit….
Calpico Kakigoori(shaved ice)
This is literally the simplest recipe I have put up in a while. Mostly because it was inspired by several aspects of my earlier childhood, better known as a time before I got into cooking(I literally only started to cook/bake when I was 15 onwards). I have a lot of fond memories drinking Calpico water…
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…
Dango with black rice pudding and salted rice milk
I love mango sticky rice. The stewed down rice with salty coconut milk and juicy mango, it’s a fun combination to play around with. For this particular recipe, I wanted to accentuate that classic Asian dessert by doing rice three ways, and mango two ways. For the rice, I used black rice and did a…
Kabosu dango
So I had no idea what kabosu was until the end of 2020, when I was at a Japanese grocery store, and I found a bottle of kabosu juice. Looking at it, I thought it was like the Filipino citrus calamansi, based on the green exterior and bright yellow interior. But researching into it more,…
Fireflies in the night: a plated dessert
So when I first acquired pandan-buko extract, I had to play around with it a ton, since I had very little familiarity with it. Upon testing it with dango, I found out that it turns things green because of how strong of a green coloring that extract had. So I wanted to capitalize on that,…
Feelings of make-pretend: a plated dessert
I came up with this dessert half out of needing to get rid of my leftover vegan macaron components, and half because I just wanted to do something playful and elegant. With what I already had made, being the ice cream and the gelee, I was able to come up with a couple different ideas,…
koi no tsubomi: elderflower-citrus anmitsu
This was a dessert inspired by Koda Kumi’s song of the same name; the meaning of it in Japanese literally translates to blossoms of love. When I first heard the song, it was from the Driving Hits 7 soundtrack, so it was remixed and sounded really foreboding and intense. I didn’t quite like it. But…
Freddy's Harajuku 