Olive oil cake is one of those kinds of cakes that you are starting to see more and more of recently. Almost every cafe in Los Angeles sells an olive oil cake, or some variation on one. However, I don’t really see chocolate-olive oil cakes often – funnily enough, olive oil gelato with chocolate and…
Tag: dessert
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…
Mt. Pav-lava with Dinosaur Shortbreads
My friend Samantha(from season 9 and Back to Win) gifted me with these dinosaur cookie cutters back in January, but truthfully, I had zero ideas on what to do with these. I am not a major dinosaur enthusiast(I never even watched Jurassic Park, though I DID grow up on The Land Before Time rip Little…
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…
Biscoff-Hazelnut-Brown Butter Cake
Back when I went to Berlin last December, one tasty little morsel we bought as a souvenir were these German hazelnut praline candies called “Toffiffee”. They were fun to stay out loud, a nightmare to type out, and were these caramel-nougat candies that contain chocolate and hazelnut. So in other words, delicious. However, we bought…
Blueberry-Lemon Cheesecake Entremet
So I have already made a blueberry cheesecake or two in the past for this blog, but I wanted to do a cheesecake mousse cake-entremet kind of thing using a blueberry-lemon cheesecake as the body of the dessert, with a blueberry gelee and a lemon curd interior, as well as a blueberry chiffon cake base….
Hummingbird Cake with Miso Caramel and Ginger Cream Cheese Ganache
I first remember hearing about hummingbird cake when I was watching an episode of Cupcake Wars, where it was mentioned as a Southern wedding cake that featured bananas, pecans, sometimes coconut or pineapple, and a cream cheese frosting. It sounded like a banana-nut muffin, but with frosting, if we are being honest here. Not that…
Lemon Marshmallow Rainbow Tart
I will admit, I procrastinated with my Pride dessert this year. Namely because I was almost not going to do one at all for 2024. I have made many a Pride dessert in the past, and while they were all tons of fun to conceptualize and admire after making them, the actual assembly of each…
Lemon-Haupia Chiffon Cake
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, lemon curd, lemon cake, and a lot of other lemon things, especially when life(your parents) gift you with 20 larger than life lemons to work with. This recipe was my way to use up a decent portion of them(I want to say about 4 lemons were used…
Assam-Chocolate Layer Cake
This cake is kind of a callback to another chocolate-Assam recipe I made years ago. Unlike the other version, this one features a whipped Assam tea ganache buttercream coupled with a fudgier, denser chocolate cake. I was inspired by the salted caramel chocolate cake I had at Republique, which was rich and almost brownie-like in…
Almond Tofu-Apricot Phyllo Pie
There are those moments where I have a culinary brain child that just hits on every single level of deliciousness and nostalgia, and this pie is 1000% that kind of recipe. Almond tofu is a popular Chinese dessert, made from Chinese almond powder(made from apricot kernels – it tastes exactly like almond extract, which does…
P.O.G. “Pearl”: a Petit Gateau
These little pearls were inspired by a recent trip to Hawaii(yes, I have been to Oahu 4 times in the past 3 years, I am addicted. Well, that and I have a bunch of friends who live there – shout out to Ann and Lauren – so Waikiki along with Austin have been two places…
Mini Osmanthus and Peach Pies
This recipe came about because I saw peaches in the grocery store, remembered that peaches were in season, grabbed a bunch, and then realized that I actually needed to do something with said purchased peaches. The first thing that came to mind was doing this large peach pie with a pretty lattice on top, and…
S’mores Pie
This was on my to-make list for a long, long time. And what tipped the scales and caused me to finally bake a S’mores pie was that I had a surplus of Biscoff cookies and graham crackers. And I figured, if this is not a sign from the universe that I needed to make a…
Matcha Latte Cheesecake
I had an abundance of leftover matcha shortbread from a previous recipe, and while snacking on those is nice, I wanted to challenge myself to make another recipe entirely using the shortbread crumbs as a crust! I figured, why not blitz the shortbread into a fine crumb, then fold melted matcha white chocolate through that,…
Cajeta-Duvalin Layer Cake
This recipe was meant to be a celebration of my friend, Frances. Frances, or as I lovingly call her, Francois, is a longtime friend of mine, dating back to when we worked together at the Portofino Hotel and Marina in Redondo Beach in 2018. We were in the same department, and we were basically partners…
Burnt Honey Bee Sting Cake
Bee sting cake, or bienenstichkuchen as it is referred to in Germany, is a dessert consisting of a yeast leavened dough, similar to a brioche, topped with a caramelized almond topping, and filled with pastry cream. I wanted to do a take on it, as a nod to my winters spent in the German Christmas…
Peach-Osmanthus-Ginger Entremet
Hilariously enough, the three main ingredients in this entremet(French set mousse cake) form the acronym P.O.G., which is also used in Hawaiian cuisine to reference passionfruit-orange-guava juice. In this case, this P.O.G. refers to peach, osmanthus, and ginger, which happen to be three of my mom’s favorite ingredients. Growing up, we had a white peach…
Cajeta Banoffee Pie
Banoffee pie is a British dessert consisting of a buttery shortbread crust that is smeared with dulce de leche, slices of fresh banana, cream, and chocolate. It kind of reminds me of Million Dollar Shortbread, if you have ever had that before, but with bananas. Which is to say that it is delicious. For my…
Plated Yogurt-Semolina Olive Oil Cakes
I always have this craving for semolina-olive oil cake. Olive oil cake has this rich, dense crumb, while semolina gives it an almost corn-like flavor that is mild and pleasant. I came up with this dessert because I bought a gigantic 3 pound tub of yogurt, and while I love yogurt(nowhere as much as Terry…
Freddy's Harajuku 