Calabaza en Tacha Clafoutis with Cajeta

I came up with this dessert when I was conceptualizing a dish for a gala for a nonprofit called Loveworks, based in Oklahoma City(shoutout to Gabriel Lewis for inviting me to help out with this event!). The dinner took place in November, so because of that, I wanted to focus on whatever was seasonal to…

Red velvet and white rose mirror glaze cake

So I have a weird relationship with red velvet cake. In that I do not like it, but I actually order it from bakeries as my way of gauging how good of a bakery they are – if they can make me enjoy a cake I inherently dislike, then they are definitely doing something right….

Chrysalis: a plated dessert

During my senior year of college, I made a plated dessert called “Sanagi” – sanagi is the Japanese word for chrysalis, or cocoon. The dessert itself was matcha pate choux with spun sugar, made to resemble a little caterpillar crawling into a cocoon, hence the name of the dessert. I wanted to do a more…

Cajeta Pecan Pie

I really only came up with this because I fell hardcore in love with cajeta, which is a caramelized goat’s milk. If you have never had it before, it is like a syrupy cousin to dulce de leche, made with slowly cooking down and stirring goat’s milk until it completely caramelizes, and there’s hints of…

L’Espoir: a plated dessert

So this was actually a concept that had been sitting around in my culinary to-do list for months. I wanted to do a dessert that featured matcha, olive oil, and goat milk, but I kept holding off on it for one reason or another. But now that I have finally caught up on a lot…

digging deep: a carrot cake

I actually quite like carrot cake. Ever since I started as a baker, carrot cake was one of those desserts that I came to appreciate, because it takes a lot of ingredients to transform a vegetable into a dessert, in my opinion. I really love the idea of making a carrot cake that resembles digging…

sweet escape: a plated dessert

This is a bit of a throwback, since this dessert I made when my friends, Bri and David, were visiting during the 4th of July! I dubbed the dessert “sweet escape” as a reference to that! We were preparing dishes for Bri and I’s first pop-up, and while we had already decided on what dessert…

Vanille: a plated dessert

When I first started learning how to bake, I actually kept a sketchbook where I’d draw out my dessert ideas. One of them was a vanilla cake with apple that I dubbed “Vanille” after an over the top bubbly, bordering on annoying character from Final Fantasy XIII. Let’s not forget I’m as much a weeb…

Chocolate Arc-En-Ciel Cake

Arc-En-Ciel is just French for rainbow. This cake, it literally is a chocolate rainbow, split by different shades of chocolate brown. I wanted to make this cake because I love ripping off of Lady M’s menu, since their cakes, while gorgeous and delicious, are too damn expensive. I am NOT going to pay $65-90 for…

Honey Flash: a plated dessert

I really wanted to do a dessert that used brown butter and honey, since it’s a delicious combination, but something I could elevate easily. For this dessert, it was originally going to be a flan, but I dun goof’d and used whole eggs instead of just yolks, causing the dessert to souffle. However, for this…

La fraise au trois lait: strawberry in three milks

This dessert came about when my friend Aria requested an interestingly flavored strawberry ice cream. So I decided on strawberry-goat milk sorbet. And from there, I wanted to come up with an entire concept that circled around this ice cream. The result: la fraise au trois lait, or the strawberry in three milks. I wanted…

Goat’s milk feta

1/4 rennet tablet 1 cup goat milk a pinch of salt 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar Heat together and stir until everything is dissolved. Allow the mixture to sit for 1 hour until it firms up, and then pour through a strainer. Allow it to sit in the strainer for another 30 minutes before pressing…

Matchamisu naked layer cake

When I open Harajuku Cream Handle (a cheap, Taiwanese knock-off of Momofuku Milk Bar that shall actually never come into fruition for many potential lawsuit-related reasons), the matchamisu naked layer cake is going to be displayed to the world in all of its gorgeous, bare glory. Ew, that sounded horrible and I regret saying that…