I personally love the combination of strawberry and pistachio. Strawberries are tart, sweet, and are just such a beautiful red color. Pistachios can be crunchy, creamy, smoky, and salty. The two really balance each other nicely, especially when sugar enhances both ingredients separately. Strawberries with sugar is such a simple combination, but the sugar really…
Tag: Honey
Kinako Mochi Chiffon Sandwiches
Kinako is one of my favorite ingredients, I feel like it is highly underrated. Translating to “gold powder”, kinako is a Japanese toasted soy bean powder. It is very nutty, similar in flavor to Korean injeolmi or even just peanut butter, and it quite frequently used in Japanese desserts. For me, I grew up eating…
Teddiursa Custard Buns
Teddiursa is a perfect demonstration for a cute Johto Pokemon….that turns into something less cute(I’m looking at you, Ursaring). These adorable little teddy bears with a crescent moon pattern have a simple enough shaped head for me to replicate it in pastry form! Truthfully,I had been putting off this recipe for a minute, just because…
Milkbar Buddy Honey Butter-Pear Crack Pie
Since Sam and I enjoyed doing our cake collab together so much, we figured we would venture into another Milkbar classic, this time being pies! Milkbar/crack pie is such a staple, and we wanted to do our own interpretation of it using some ingredients to bring in a more festive feel. Fun fact, the original…
Pumpkin Toast
Back when I was a college student, one thing I would make to feed myself was pumpkin toast. A thick cut piece of bread that is toasted, and topped with sweetened miso paste, roasted kabocha squash/pumpkin, and goat cheese. You got toasty, crunchy, a little sweet, tangy, it was just a pleasant bite all around…
Honeybee Doughnuts
My initial idea when I came up with these doughnuts were to do these little puffy fritters and garnish them with a honey drizzle and bee pollen. But then I really got thinking about them, and wanted to do a more literal translation of what these could be. I thought first about striping the doughnut…
Koji-fried chicken with chili honey
Over the past year, koji became one of my favorite ingredients. For those unfamiliar with it, koji is a type of bacteria or fungus that grows on rice or grains. It is used as a culture in Japanese cooking to ferment soybeans into miso paste. Because it is a fungus, koji contains natural umami in…
Misugaru S’mores Checkerboard Cake
This cake was the result of a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a strong desire to make a s’mores checkboard cake. This recipe is not for the faint of heart. It was complex, difficult, and honestly on a scale of 1-10, 1 being microwave fudge, and 10 being you’re screwed if you…
Amethyst: lavender-honey gemstone cookies
It has been a minute since I made any of my gemstone cookies, so I felt like I needed to bring out a new flavor! I still have a lot of lavender from the last time I used it(yes, that was over a year ago), so I wanted to use some of it in this…
Cutie Honey Scoop Cakes
Originally, these were going to be honey tiramisu, but I felt like the term “scoop cake” just sounded a lot more cute and fun. So we’re going with that description instead. With these little cakes, we have layers of bee pollen infused castella(Portuguese/Japanese honey cake), chamomile tea and gelee, honey-bee pollen infused quark(German cheese yogurt),…
Blackberry-semolina cake with olive oil and Meyer lemons
I literally came up with this recipe because I went to the grocery store, and saw 99-cent cartons of blackberries on sale! I knew it was a sign from whatever powers that be that I had to make something with these, so I bought about three 6oz containers of them! I had a couple of…
Apple butter daifuku
I made these a while ago when I went apple picking and cider pressing with some friends! I wanted to use the apples and cider in a fun or creative way, and that’s when the idea to make daifuku, or stuffed mochi came from. Typically, daifuku is stuffed with red bean paste, but in my…
Yaki Imo Basque Cheesecakes
These cheesecakes were the brainchild of me having purchased far too many yams and trying to figure out how to get rid of them. I remember fondly eating yaki imo as a child, which are just yams that are roasted on coals, and then served to you, wrapped up in parchment and piping hot. They…
Skyward bound: a plated dessert
I really only came up with this dessert because I wanted to do something with a burnt honey cremeaux. I don’t know WHY I wanted to do something with a burnt honey cremeaux, it just sounded like a cool component, and that was really it. Something about a silky, creamy texture of a set custard-like…
Black tea, honey, and bee pollen macarons
These macarons were just something I was making because I was craving some tea. So I did a honey, bee pollen, and black tea French buttercream to fill them! Surprisingly, these ones actually came out quite nicely, and I was happy with almost every single shell, which is very rare for me! I really just…
Bee who I want 2 bee: a plated dessert
I came up with this dessert because I was craving medovik, or Russian honey cake. That is essentially just an icebox cake with honey wafers. I love to infuse mine with bee pollen, just to give it a unique flavor. Since it would be kind of boring to just do the medovik, I went with…
Knafeh flavored lotus pastries
I have been meaning to make lotus pastries for a long time now. They’re a hugely popular snack in China, consisting of flaky layers of fried dough, wrapped around a filling. As the name suggests, they are assembled and cut in a way that when deep fried, the dough blossoms and resembles a lotus. It’s…
Imqaret with orange curd and honey mascarpone
So I have been studying a bunch of different Mediterranean desserts, mostly to help me broaden my range. Looking through Malta specifically, I came across a really curious dessert called imqaret(pronounced without the “q”). They’re basically these pastries stuffed with an orange blossom-date filling. Some use walnuts, others don’t. Most people fry them, but some…
Nectarine-orange blossom pie
So while I was in quarantine, I had been doing a lot of cookbook reading. And by that, I mean I was flipping through cookbooks and looking at the photos. I haven’t properly read a book since college and I don’t intend to start, even if coronavirus is going around. One of my favorite cookbooks is Everything…
Breathe again: a plated dish
So this dish was obviously inspired by the song “Breathe again” from season 2 of Carole and Tuesday. The song itself talks about reaching new heights, and being able to take a sigh of relief now that you have succeeded in making something of yourself. For me, a component that perfectly embodies all of that is…
Freddy's Harajuku 