So I actually made this recipe back in November for Friendsgiving, but I somehow managed to forget to actually write out the recipe, so here we are, writing it out in December. I was inspired half by the tarte tatin that will FIVE-EVER haunt my nightmares, and half by this pear and apple crisp I…
Tag: dessert
Penguin coconut macaroons
So a couple years ago, I made a penguin-themed haupia pie using yuzu, coconut, and these coconut macaroons I shaped to resemble little penguins. I was somehow able to get the actual body of the macaroon to resemble a penguin, dying half of it black with activated charcoal, and using almonds to resemble the beaks….
Hazelnut baumkuchen with whipped nama chocolate
Whenever Christmas rolls around, I feel like the typical cakes you would see are the yule logs or roll cakes with the meringue mushrooms on top. Or some kind of cake with lots of powdered sugar on it, and some sort of Santa-themed decoration. Not trying to rag on those kinds of cakes, as I…
Cranberry-yuzu layer cake
When I did the Masterchef recipe swap with my friends, I wound up with a lot of leftover cranberry sauce and dried cranberries. So this recipe was sort of my solution to that. Actually, it was my solution to that, as I was able to get rid of the entire can of jellied cranberry sauce…
Basic Betch Birthday Cake
I will be honest. I never grew up on funfetti cake. My Buddhist health nut mother would not let anything artificially colored into our household, so we would not even have certain kinds of cereal. Because of that, funfetti was definitely not a thing in my childhood. I would see other children eating cakes with…
Persimmon and fresh cream cake
Every time it’s the fall, I HAVE to use persimmons in something. They are such an autumnal fruit, and take me back to childhood memories of eating them off the tree in our backyard. What I love about persimmon is that they come in such different forms, depending on the ripeness. With the unripe ones,…
Hidden rose apple tarts with ruby chocolate
I just love it when fruits come in unusual or different colors. Purple kale, watermelon radishes, rainbow carrots, blood oranges, all things that I came to love when I first got into cooking over 10 years ago. Then about 3 years ago, I learned about naturally pink apples. Mountain or hidden rose apples, depending on…
Matcha purin dorayaki
I have done dorayaki in the past, and I have even done purin-stuffed dorayaki as well, but this is a slightly different take on the usual. Typically, Japanese purin(also called pudding), is made of a baked custard topped with a layer of caramel, similar if not exactly the same as Mexican flan. However, my take…
Giant hot milk crumb cake
So a while ago, I made a take on the LAUSD coffee cake in the form of doughnut creams. I wanted to revisit that inspiration, but this time, making a giant crumb cake! For the cake batter itself, I went with a take on hot milk cake, which is a soft, springy cake made with…
Pistachio-matcha cake
I literally came up with this cake because I wanted to see how much pistachio powder I could incorporate into a chiffon cake without compromising the integrity of the cake – as pistachios do not have gluten, that would obviously affect the texture of a cake when subbing out ground pistachios with flour. The end…
Vegan and Gluten-free Devil’s Food Cake
I came up with the idea to make this cake because I wanted to make my vegan chocolate-tofu mousse again, but also wanted to pair it with something that would compliment it perfectly, so I figured, why not chocolate mousse on chocolate cake? For the cake itself, I went with my gluten-free and vegan devil’s…
“Fever Dream”: a plated dessert
I literally named this dessert after my favorite mxmtoon song, “Fever Dream”. For me, that term represents memories and milestones of your life, past, present, and future, just melting together into one moment. So I wanted to do that in this dessert! For starters, I wanted to use cherries, since my birthday cake growing up…
Forêt de cauchemars: a petit gateau
This dessert literally only happened because I purchased a ton of cherries to make another recipe with, and I had to figure out what to do with them before they went moldy. Which is always a great motivator when you purchase way too much of an ingredient! So I went ahead and pureed my remaining…
Gluten free pumpkin cake roll
I literally came up with this recipe for my coworker, Holly. It was her last day at work, and she has a gluten allergy, so I wanted to make something that embraced the seasonality of it being fall, but also made 100% without gluten. I have never quite made a gluten-free chiffon cake before, so…
Sakura financier
With cherries being in season, I had to make something fun with them! I had done cherry tarts in the past, but I wanted to change it up a little. While I love the combination of almond and cherry, I wanted to also use the salted cherry blossoms I still had, and that’s when I…
Pumpkin Cream Puffs
This recipe only came about because my friend Naama gave me a squash that was grown by her friend. Squash could refer to a lot of things, but in this case, think like a butternut or kabocha squash, so basically a pumpkin. I figured since the flavor of it was so sweet, it would work…
Ruby chocolate-berry cake
When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I actually had a ton of leftover components and ingredients in my fridge. I had a ruby chocolate-sakura mousse from a plated dessert, leftover pate brisee pie crust from a pie I made, leftover ruby chocolate snow the same aforementioned plated dessert, and a bag of berries that turned…
Injeolmi and barley tea mirror glaze cake
This was a last-minute cake order for my sister’s high school best friend, Jane. Jane is currently expecting, and in commemoration of that, I wanted to make a dessert that was very much to her liking – Jane herself is Korean, and she loves Asian desserts and flavors. So naturally, I went with injeolmi powder,…
Matcha-yuzu macarons
I was in the mood to make some macarons the other day, and these were what I came up with! I wanted to definitely do matcha, since it’s been a while since I made matcha-flavored anything, and I figured, just to make them a little unique, why not add some yuzu to them? The shells…
Halva, almond, and apricot tart
So I made this tart because of two reasons: I had a ton of halva in my freezer that I wanted to use in a dessert, and I was seeing my former-pastry chef friend, Janae, and I wanted to make something for her(which ended up being these tarts!). For those unfamiliar with halva, it is…