I really love baking with pate choux. But I tend not to make it as often due to mirror glaze cakes and naked layer cakes and doughnut creams all looking a lot prettier, so unfortunately, cream puffs do tend to take the back burner to my list of go-to desserts. That being said, when I…
Tag: dessert
Blackberry-almond Arnold Palmer cake
This was a cake I made with my dad in mind, for his birthday. He loves to golf, so the Arnold Palmer is a caddy shack reference. He loves my lemon curd cakes, to the point where he has actually eaten a cake I made before I even finished decorating or photographing it before, so…
Blossom cake: elderflower, lemon, and bee pollen
The flavors for this dessert are inspired by two things: my current boss, as it was her birthday when I made this, and the British royal wedding cake for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. My boss, who I shall leave anonymous, just out of respect for her privacy, is a very kind, loving person, who…
Gateau Opera
So Gateau Opera is one of those desserts that I have read a lot about, but never really bothered to try making on my own. I have made the sponge, jaconde, before, and obviously, I have made ganache before. But the other filling, which is a coffee infused French buttercream, not so much. For those…
Starry Wish: black sesame-coconut-tangerine petit gateaus
I was thinking of a way to utilize the many tangerines we had at home (fun fact, when you are family friends with citrus farmers in Southern California, you have a fuck-ton of citrus that you get to cook with). From that, I thought, why not go with an Asian inspired dessert? And not because…
Pistachio-lemon-blueberry layer cake
This cake sort of was the result of utilizing leftover/surplus ingredients in our house. It was made for a family gathering, and because we had a TON of lemons in our house that we needed to get rid of, this cake kind of was a huge no-brainer. I love making olive oil and lemon cakes,…
Super simple strawberry-phyllo mille feuille
Not everything I make has to be super complex or difficult. With this dessert, I tried my best to edit it down to just three things: crispy caramelized phyllo dough, Bismarck cream, and balsamic macerated strawberries. What? It’s simple by my standards. I mean, look at it! No mirror glaze, tempered chocolate, none of those bells…
Matcha cheese tea doughnut creams
I love making matcha desserts. And I have recently fallen in love with cheese tea, which is where a whipped cream cheese mixture is added on top of your bubble tea, creating a really pleasant sweet and savory drinking experience. So I wanted to utilize that as the inspiration for this dessert. I have made…
Red velvet with white chocolate mousse
I actually made this cake to celebrate the birthday of my co-worker, Alex. She said she likes red velvet, so whomp, there it is. Traditionally, red velvet is served with a cream cheese frosting. However, I did not have cream cheese in my pantry, nor was I in the position to go out and buy…
Mint-chocolate mousse cake
I am always in the mood for chocolate cake. Souffles, lava cake, Hostess cakes, etc., I just love fluffiness with chocolate. I also love the pairing of chocolate with dairy, as well as chocolate with yogurt, so I wanted to use Yakult, which reminds me now and forever onwards of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys…
Matcha-sesame checkerboard cookies
I love making cookies, but one of the coolest kinds (and most common to find an any Asian bakery) are the checkerboard cookies. Typically, they’re chocolate and vanilla, but I wanted to do a different spin on them. So I went with the two most mainstream Asian dessert flavors I know matcha and black sesame,…
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…
Perfectly blue macarons
So it turns out that the majority of the time I have been making macarons, I have been measuring out my ingredients incorrectly. Whenever it was supposed to be 3/4 cups almond flour and icing sugar, I would do 1 cup. Which definitely would explain why mine would come out so overtly browned, lumpy, dry,…
Semolina knafeh with glazed figs
I really wanted to make knafeh when I saw it in My Kitchen Rules, where Sonya and Hadil, two Jordanian women who were kicked off the show because they got into a fight with another team, prepared it for their instant restaurant. Knafeh is a Middle Eastern cheesecake essentially, soaked with a beautiful rose flavored…
Amoroso pink: raspberry pate choux
The first thing I did when I received my pitaya powder was create these naturally pink cream puffs. I named the dessert Amoroso pink because it means “love pink” in Italian. Super straightforward and simple, because if you want to eat this dessert just based on its appearance, chances are, you love the color pink….
Orange-chocolate poundcake
I keep watching these Korean baking videos, and even though I am not Korean nor do I understand the language, I can still figure out what the ingredients they use are and what techniques were because yes, it really can be that simple. I wanted to do a dessert that just embraced the orange-chocolate combination,…
Miso butterscotch tarte tatin-financier
This was a hodgepodge of different French desserts, tied together with Japanese miso and Chinese ginger. Honestly, the inspiration came about from having a shit-ton of apples and pears in my fridge that I needed to get rid of, so I got creative with how I wanted to do that. I remember seeing a Korean…
Cookies and cream tres leches cake
The inspiration for this dessert actually came from Housekeeping Appreciation Week. Since our team was only 22 people, it was actually a doable task to make something for them. I wanted to make something amazing for the housekeeping team that works hard to make sure that our guests don’t realize that our hotels rooms have…
Jump Up, Super Star!: a galaxy cake
I really just was inspired to make this dessert from when I was watching an episode of Sugar Rush on Netflix, which is this reality baking competition aka the things I used to learn how to cook from. Two somewhat snooty and bitchy, but funny contestants prepared this galaxy cake, where it was white on…
Let it grow: mint-chocolate succulent cake
I’ve seen a ton of succulent cakes on the Internet lately, and I wanted to give it a whack myself. However, my policy on buttercream, which seems to be the thing that everyone is making them out of, is a huge no-no. If I am given that much butter, that much sugar, and that much…
Freddy's Harajuku 