Caviar Egg Tarts

Somewhat inspired by my trip to Oahu, where we ate at a restaurant called Senia. One of the dishes we were served were these egg tarts, which were savory, filled with an egg salad mixture, and topped with caviar. Now eggs and caviar are a classic combination. Eggs are custardy and rich, and caviar adds…

Lemon-White Chocolate “Snowballs”

Back in my earlier days as a baker, I remember watching an episode of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network, and there was an episode in season 1 where a baker named Kara made these vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd, Italian meringue buttercream, and rolled in white chocolate sprinkles. The idea of super soft cake…

Lemon-Thyme “Rainbow” Tart

For Pride this year, I waned to go with a bit more of a whimsical take on rainbows. When I think of rainbows, immediately I think of light and water. Since you know, the two work together to create a rainbow! So for the light side of things, I went with a lemon-thyme curd tart,…

Marge and in Charge: a petit gateau

When coming up with this recipe, I had a random epiphany that piping something like a mont blanc could cause it to resemble Marge Simpson’s hair. That and this idea came to me about two weeks prior to Mother’s Day, so I felt like that was a weird coincidence, and that I should just run…

Lemon-Blueberry Gateau Breton Tart

So this dessert was initially meant to be like a 2.0 version of a lapis lazuli tart I made YEARS ago. But I knew I had to do a few things differently this time around. The first is the tart shell. Instead of just doing a pastry in a tart tin, I went with a…

Gooey lemon curd-stuffed olive oil cakes

So it might be a surprise to anyone reading this, but I am actually dieting right now. Mostly because I have to go to a wedding in Hawaii, and I am not trying to look photogenic for that. That being said, dieting sucks. Majorly. Many, many meals spent on weight-loss smoothies and near-bland chicken breast…

Hidden rose apple tarts with ruby chocolate

I just love it when fruits come in unusual or different colors. Purple kale, watermelon radishes, rainbow carrots, blood oranges, all things that I came to love when I first got into cooking over 10 years ago. Then about 3 years ago, I learned about naturally pink apples. Mountain or hidden rose apples, depending on…

Deep Dive: a plated dish

Of the five dishes from the “Namie” pop-up, I would say this was probably the one with the least amount of true Asian influence. While I took more inspiration from Halal/Middle Eastern flavors, it would be a stretch to say that it took influence from Halal-Chinese food, when it was more Jordanian with sprinkles of…

Double decker buttermilk Fraisier cake

I do love myself a good fraisier cake, or a fraisier dessert of any kind, honestly! For those unfamiliar with the term, a fraisier cake is just a strawberry cake, usually featuring two layers of vanilla sponge with strawberries surrounding it and a vanilla cream between the layers. I have made a couple in the…

Meyer lemon basque cheesecake with Meyer lemon cream

Basque cheesecake will forever be that quintessential ugly delicious dessert for me. Well, that and worms and dirt. You can’t make worms and dirt look pretty, and that’s perfectly fine with me. With this particular basque cheesecake, I had a ton of Meyer lemons lying around, to the point where you’d think that they just…

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…

“Beautiful World”: a plated dessert

So I conceptualized this dessert around initially two flavors, being pistachio and olive oil. From there, I sort of expanded it to include rosemary and lemon, since I have fresh rosemary in my backyard, which has been blooming these beautiful flowers, and the lemon adds a nice acidity to counterbalance all of the other ingredients….

Winter Glow: a plated dessert

I literally came up with this dish because a family friend gifted us Osetra caviar, and I did not want to squander it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Osetra caviar is harvested from an Osetra sturgeon fish, and it is one of the most prized and expensive kinds of caviar, second to only…

Lemon hot milk cake loaves

I came up with this recipe because I had about 6 lemons in my pantry that were on the verge of going bad, and I had to use all of them up as quickly as possible. So I figured, why not make a cake, syrup, lemon curd, and candy some lemons with them? That’ll be…

Soulmate: a petite gateau

I’ve been meaning to make this dessert for months now. Ever since I heard about candied rhubarb ribbons, I knew that I was going to use them in a cute, pink little cake. I really wanted to make these for Valentine’s, but sadly in California, rhubarb isn’t in season until May. So I had to…

Citron mille crepe

I made this dessert as a result of having way too many lemons lying around. I have a family friend who always gives us free lemons and passionfruit straight from their trees (amazing quality and I love them for it every year!), so I knew right away that I could use a good amount of…

Lemon meringue cookies

For my cooking mini-series with Lemonade(my friend Roshni’s social platform company), my co-host Marcin and I were actually tasked with making three different classes with three different themes. So we decided to go with ingredients, and to fit with the name of the company, we went with lemon dishes for the first class! For my…

High tea on high teas: a plated dish

I really wanted to just dabble more with savory cooking, just because I do so much with dessert, and not nearly enough with actual cooking. When I was conceptualizing this dish, I was actually running. Some of the best (or most original) ideas come to me when I’m experiencing an adrenaline high, and everything is…

Pistachio-lemon tart

In honor of Pi Day, I knew I had to do a pie or a tart of some kind. So I went with the tart route, and made some mini pistachio-lemon tarts. The flavor combination was inspired by the lemon-pistachio brioche we sell at Milk Bar, but also my need to get rid of an…

Rainbow of illusion: a mirror glaze cake

So the name of this dessert stemmed from the lyrics of a harmonicblend song, “Auf Wiedersehen”. When I was trying to conceptualize this dessert, I wanted to make something that can be made into a rainbow, and I wouldn’t necessarily say deconstruct it, but rather, emphasize aspects of the rainbow that I wanted to. When…