Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ripple Cake

If you are looking for pure decadence, look no further than this cake(assuming you don’t have a nut allergy; if you do, sub the peanut butter and peanuts in this recipe with Biscoff and cookie butter?). I grew up loving Butterfingers and Reeses, both of which are peanut-based candy bars. Chocolate and peanut butter is…

Pistachio-Blackberry Namelaka Cake

This recipe came about because I was craving a cake that had a light sponge and a rich frosting. There is just something so satisfying about a light as air cake and a silky, creamy sweet frosting that just melts in the mouth and makes you want to go back for another bite. I already…

Ms. Jan’s White Coconut Cake

This coconut cake was actually in dedication to someone I worked with named Jan. While we only worked together for a little over a year, it was like work love at first sight – we both worked with a lot of the same people and even in some of the same hotels(at different points in…

Strawberry Custard Cream Cake

While I was at my friend Hannah’s wedding, I happened to befriend a couple sitting next to us, who also lived near the South Bay area(of Los Angeles, not San Francisco). It’s not every day that you meet people who live in that part of LA county, especially because it is a much more residential…

Chocolate-Milky Oolong Cake

Milk or milky oolong has been one of my obsessions ever since I got some from a cute tea shop in Munich. I’m partially ashamed to admit that I never heard of the tea prior to that trip, especially since it is a Taiwanese tea, and I am Taiwan-born after all, but better late than…

Cereal Milk and Berries Cake

Ever since working at Milkbar, I feel like my love and appreciation for cereal milk(cornflake-steeped milk) has been at an all-time high. That being said, I always find myself with leftover soggy cornflake mush whenever I make it. At Milkbar lab, I was always trying to find ways to use it up. But the issue…

Milky Oolong Strawberry Cream Cake

One of my favorite finds while I was exploring a tea shop in Munich was a curious little tea called milky oolong tea. Milky oolong, also called jin xuan tea, has the toasty, nuttiness of oolong tea, but it also has these buttery, caramel-y notes, similar to Chinese milk candies. This flavor is the end…

Ginger-Pear Shortcake

Shortcake can have a lot of meanings. In America, a shortcake is a sweetened biscuit with cream and fruit, typically strawberries. In Asia, namely Japan, a shortcake is a light spongecake, but with the same accompaniments of cream and fruit. I wanted to make a pear shortcake with this gorgeous snow-white aesthetic just to capture…

Chocolate Decadence Layer Cake

I am a firm believer that there is a chocolate cake for every occasion. The best occasion for this kind of recipe is if you want a chocolate cake that tastes like baked fudge. Now I have been mentioning the Ms. Trunchbull Chocolate cake a bunch of times on this blog, but this is very,…

Boston Cream Pie Lamingtons

Lamingtons are a popular Australian dessert/snack. Traditional lamingtons do not have a filling, and are usually just cubes of cake, glazed with chocolate, and rolled in coconut. In my case, I wanted to combine them with another favorite dessert of mine, being the Boston cream pie. Boston cream pie features a vanilla cake, a custard…

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…

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…

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…

Lilikoi Chantilly Cake

Contrary to what you may think, “chantilly” is a term for two different pastry components. The classic French version is just a sweetened whipped cream. However, in Hawaii, it means something a bit different. I was surprised a few years ago when I was in Oahu with my friend Lauren that she introduced me to…

Basil-Meyer Lemon Cake

I love pairing basil with lemon. There is something about how aromatic, perfume-y, and floral basil is, and that against something acidic and tart like citrus that is super refreshing. I was watching the most recent season of Masterchef(which by the way, is a lot easier to watch when you yourself are not a contestant),…

Strawberry Christmas Cake

I feel like a lot of countries have their version of a Christmas cake. The Germans have baumkuchen, the French have bouche de noel. In Japan(and by a larger extension, a lot of east Asian countries), Christmas cake takes the form of a vanilla cake with vanilla cream and strawberries. The red and white color…

Gluten-Free Chocolate Milkbar Birthday Cake

So back when I worked at Milkbar, my least favorite cake to assemble was the chocolate birthday cake. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love eating chocolate cake. However, when it came to assembling this one, it was tricky. At Milkbar, at least for their actual bakery operation, each layer of buttercream needs to be…

Purple Taro Dream Cake

This recipe was actually a cake order for my childhood friend, Lily! More specifically, Lily ordered it for her older sister, Weili, for her birthday. Lily and I technically go all the way back to 4th grade, when she first moved to the states from Taiwan. We weren’t super close though, mostly because back in…

London Fog Layer Cake

This was actually a cake order from a couple that I met at my friend Sylvie’s birthday party. They were incredibly sweet and fun to talk to, and we hit it off almost right away. So when I was contacted to make a cake for one of their birthdays, I immediately had to say yes!…

Cereal Milk Compost Birthday Cake

During my time at Milkbar, we would always try to find creative ways to lower our food costs. One major method included reserving our cake scraps for future cake assembly. However, one thing that we could never figure out was how to use up the leftover soggy cereal that we would end up with after…