Whenever I would go to Handel’s Ice Cream, one of their flavors that I would get was Graham Central Station. Graham cracker ice cream with graham cracker bits and chocolate chunks. So like a reconfigured S’more, without the marshmallow. And trust me when I say this, I love S’mores. Back in high school, one way…
Tag: mousse
French Vanilla Entremet
I came up with this recipe because I was drinking coffee on day, and added French vanilla creamer to it. And then it dawned on me, what exactly made this creamer French vanilla-flavored as opposed to just vanilla? After looking at several articles online, the general idea was that French vanilla refers to the French…
Pear-Honey-Gingerbread Entremet
One of my favorite things my mom would make for me when I was sick is pears steamed with ginger and honey. The juicy steamed pears would be fork-tender, while being aromatic with both the fragrant honey and the warming slices of ginger. I still remember when I had COVID(not fun times at all), and…
Stracciatella Layer Cake
Unless you’ve been to a place that sells Italian ice cream, you might be wondering what stracciatella is. In Italian, it translates to “little rags”. And in Lombardy, stracciatella is a kind of gelato, that is creamy vanilla with shards of chocolate running through it. In other regions of Italy, it could refer to a…
Pumpkaboo Mousse Cake
Pumpkaboo is one of those Pokemon that made me fall in love with the otherwise incomplete games that were Pokemon X and Y. It is a cute little critter that resembles a Jack-o-Lantern, a bat, and a black cat, all in one, and it can come in 4 different sizes, with the super-sized one being…
Kir Royale Mousse Cake
Whenever I think of a fancy flavoring for a cake, I immediately go to kir royale. Mostly because of Patisserie Chantilly in Lomita, where they do a kir royale mousse. With this classic French cocktail, you have the rich fruity notes of black currant against the light, tart notes of the champagne. It is a…
Ube-Passionfruit Mousse Cake
I had the initial inspiration for this cake when I was visiting my friend, Ann, who lives in Oahu. There was a shrub with these gorgeous purple flowers, and I had the idea to make a cake with that kind of visual inspiration. In light of everything going on in Maui, I felt like it…
Lemon-Basil Mousse Cake
This recipe was made specifically for my dad. One of my dad’s favorite cakes of mine is a lemon cake. A while ago, I was in the middle of making a lemon-blueberry roll cake, and he wound up eating the cake before I even had time to finish decorating or photographing it. It did cause…
Lemon-Elderflower Cake
With this mousse cake recipe, I was really aiming for something light, using flavors that I knew meshed well together. Lemon and elderflower is a combination I have grown quite fond of, just because you have the tart sharpness of the lemon against the floral, sweetness of the elderflower. The two play off of each…
Lucuma Alfajores Stack
So the initial idea for this recipe came about because I had purchased lucuma pulp for the first time, and I was trying to figure out the best way to utilize it. Lucuma is a fruit that allegedly tastes like caramel, and is the number 1 most popular ice cream flavor in Peru. Personally, after…
The Bamboo Cutter: a petit gateau
This was inspired by the Japanese story called “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”. The story itself featured a bamboo cutter who uncovered a little girl, named Kaguya, one day when he was cutting open stalks of bamboo. She was specifically found inside of a glowing bamboo stalk. As the story progresses, Kaguya is revealed…
Sesame Checkerboard Bunnies
I felt major FOMO when I saw so many of my fellow Asian bakers posting bunny-themed desserts during Lunar New Years(I was unfortunately in Texas during the week leading up to it with limited access to a kitchen, so I could not join in on the bunny dessert festivities nor did I have the foresight…
Matcha Kokedama(Moss Balls)
Kokedama are these decorative moss ball plants that are super popular in Japan. They are used as planters for other plants more often than not, and they give any room a pleasant, earthy aesthetic that I just adore. My first time seeing a kokedama was when I was playing Animal Crossing New Horizons, where they…
Ruby Forest Petit Gateau
This is an homage to the black forest cake, which was my birthday cake for the first 14 years of my life. The reason why we would eat black forest cake was because we would celebrate my birthday in Taiwan, and the bakery in the Shida district where we would stay/live only made one kind…
Raspberry-Champagne Linzertorte “Hearts”
Linzertorte is a classic Austrian dessert that consists of a tart shell, an almond cake-like layer, and raspberry jam. I wanted to reinterpret that by embracing the almond and raspberry, while also introducing champagne to the mix! The end result were the little hearts that you see here. Special shout out to Shari or Spiced…
“Present Box” Petit Gateau
Before you ask, these little egg nog-cranberry present boxes are my modern, gluten-free interpretation of a Christmas cake. Christmas Cake, at least in Japanese culture, are soft spongecakes with cream and usually strawberries, just to capture this red and white aesthetic. I wanted to take the red and white aesthetic, along with some more traditionally…
Passionfruit Mousse Cake
I was fortunate enough to be gifted fresh passionfruits from a family friend, and it was actually around that time that I wanted to make a mousse cake with them. Not necessarily a mirror glaze cake, but just a mousse with layers of chiffon cake embedded inside of it. A while ago, I made a…
Apple Mont Blanc
So my fellow AAPI pastry friends (Dara Yu and Jess Wang) and I wanted to challenge ourselves to make a fun holiday dessert using apples, just in time for Thanksgiving. While I have also done a pie collab with my dear friend Sam, in case you are not a pie lover, this recipe is here…
Nutella-Cold Brew Cake
I made this cake mostly because I wanted to create a chocolate-forward cake. That and I wanted it to be a little playful and sophisticated, using black(Dutch-processed) cacao to add a fruitier cocoa flavor, as well as cold brew to intensify the chocolate flavor, and Nutella, because why not? Nutella makes everything better, unless you…
Kir Royale Cakes
One of my favorite hobbies back when I was first learning about pastry was visiting bakeries and patisseries and buying their most intriguing or unique items. At Patisserie Chantilly in Lomita, CA, that item for me was their Kir Royale. Being 15 at the time, I had no clue what that was. But the cake…
Freddy's Harajuku 