Way back when I first started as a baker, one dessert concept I had was a baked chocolate-pumpkin cheesecake cupcake, inspired by the Halloween colors of black and orange. While Halloween obviously is over(how we’re already in November, I really don’t know), I still wanted to make a pretty little pumpkin-chocolate cheesecake number, just in…
Tag: Dark Chocolate
Chocolate-Milky Oolong Cake
Milk or milky oolong has been one of my obsessions ever since I got some from a cute tea shop in Munich. I’m partially ashamed to admit that I never heard of the tea prior to that trip, especially since it is a Taiwanese tea, and I am Taiwan-born after all, but better late than…
Peanut Butter Blossom Choux
I will be honest in that I never fully got why a peanut butter blossom cookie was referred to as a blossom. It’s a round cookie with a little Hershey’s Kiss sticking out of it – to me, that looks more like a weird hat or a part of human anatomy more than anything else….
Oreo Tofu-Chocolate Pie
This chocolate pie was essentially my attempt at doing a chocolate pie, but completely featuring a chocolate crust. I used Oreos(which are surprisingly completely vegan) to make a very straightforward no-bake Oreo crust, and then used my favorite tofu-chocolate mousse recipe to make the filling. For those who aren’t aware, if you blend silken tofu…
“Box of Chocolates” Tartlets
When I think of Valentine’s, the first three things that I associate the holidays with are pink-colored things, red-colored things, and chocolate. While let’s be real here, chocolate on Valentine’s Day is just a marketing ploy for candy companies to sell more chocolate, it is still fun to see all of the heart shaped chocolates,…
Chocolate-Tonka Shortbreads
These shortbreads are meant to be decadence incarnate. I really wanted to celebrate chocolate in its darkest and richest flavors, and what pairs better with cocoa than butter and sugar? So with that logic in mind, I decided to make these buttery shortbread cookies, flavored with black cacao, and studded with chocolate throughout. One of…
Mini Levain-style Cookies
On and off for the past year, I have been trying to perfect a mini version of those gigantic Levain cookies. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Levain(which is a French culinary term for sourdough starter) is a bakery originally from New York that specializes in these tall, chunky cookies that are crispy…
Cherry Garcia Shortbreads
Whenever I had baker’s block and am struggling to think of new dessert ideas, one thing I can always fall back on is ice cream flavors! I find that focusing on specific flavors or ingredients, and what I enjoy about those in the ice cream itself, is a great starting point for a new dessert…
Salted Caramel “Black Thunder” Bars
I don’t know how I went as long as I have without ever eating a Black Thunder cookie bar. These popular Japanese candy bars consist of a black cacao cookie with crunchy rice and a chocolate coating. They are texturally addictive, and I can only assume that the name “Black Thunder” refers to both the…
Dubai Chocolate Muffins
I have been toying around with Dubai chocolate-flavored things, because chocolate-pistachio is one of my favorite flavor combinations. The chocolate bar is stuffed with a mixture of pistachio cream and toasted kataifi(shredded phyllo dough), which is a loose homage to knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert that uses those ingredients. Smoky, salty, crunchy, creamy, bitter, and…
Dark Chocolate-Dried Cherry Sourdough Scones
Now that I am officially a sourdough parent, I am always finding fun and new ways to use up my sourdough starter. One of those ways was by making scones. I was really just thinking about items that could be served in an afternoon tea, since a lot of those things are dough-based pastries or…
Chocolate Decadence Layer Cake
I am a firm believer that there is a chocolate cake for every occasion. The best occasion for this kind of recipe is if you want a chocolate cake that tastes like baked fudge. Now I have been mentioning the Ms. Trunchbull Chocolate cake a bunch of times on this blog, but this is very,…
Dubai Chocolate Eggs
About a year ago, I had on my to-make list to do a knafeh-themed dessert, but where there was going to be an egg motif going on, with the kataifi(also called shredded phyllo) being used as like a nest around this knafeh-egg-thing. I never got around to doing it because life happened(i.e. my now ex-workplace…
Mint Chip Gelato Sundae
Mint chip ice cream is hilariously enough, my earliest memory. My mom, when we first immigrated to America, would take me and my sister to the Baskin Robbins nearby where we lived in Torrance(hilariously, that Baskin Robbins is STILL in business to this day, I now as an adult live walking distance from there, and…
Miso-Milk Tea Chip Cookies
These cookies are on the verge of being an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink scenario – there is assam tea powder, miso paste, brown butter, and about four kinds of chocolate. As I was making these cookies, I started out with making a giant vat of brown butter, threw some miso into that, and as I was whipping that…
Souffled Nutella Crostata
Back when I was in high school, one of the recipes I made that was surprisingly well-received by my classmates was a Nutella crostata. I say surprisingly because when I came up with this recipe, it was mostly out of boredom. I still remember this because a classmate who really went out of his way…
Chocolate and Cacao Chip Shortbreads
Back in college, I wanted to do a fun take on cookies and cream, and so I made a panna cotta with chocolate chip shortbreads. The shortbreads themselves were buttery and light, but the chocolate actually had this very enjoyable crunch to it after a batch of them had to sit through the cold Boston…
Pumpkaboo Mousse Cake
Pumpkaboo is one of those Pokemon that made me fall in love with the otherwise incomplete games that were Pokemon X and Y. It is a cute little critter that resembles a Jack-o-Lantern, a bat, and a black cat, all in one, and it can come in 4 different sizes, with the super-sized one being…
Chocolate-Rose Quartz-Pistachio Cookies
So I have made a version of these rose quartz cookies in the past, but I wanted to revisit the original recipe I made during my time at Milkbar, which featured a chocolate cookie embedded with Turkish delight(also called loukoumi, and they are like these sugary, pink rose-flavored jellies). The Turkish delight, which are primarily…
Chocolate-Peanut Butter Muffins
I am actually surprised by how few times in my life I have made muffins. Back before I even started learning how to bake, my sister would make these banana-Nutella muffins all the time, so you would think that I would have taken my hand at something similar, but I guess I just haven’t felt…
Freddy's Harajuku 