One of the first plated desserts I ever made was this S’mores Panna Cotta, literally 10 years ago. Summer of 2015, I was taking summer courses at Boston University, and during my free time, I was practicing a lot with desserts and baking. That was the summer when Reynold Poernomo’s Masterchef Australia season aired, and…
Tag: panna cotta
Peanut Milk Panna Cotta and Madeleines
This plated dessert was actually inspired by sweet peanut milk soup(花生仁汤), a popular canned beverage from my native Taiwan. I still remember the first time I had it, it was in my grandma’s apartment in the Shida district on a hot summer night. It was a milky beverage with these tender, braised peanuts. I was…
Tofu-Miso Panna Cotta with Textures of Soy
I will not lie, this recipe is similar to an old dessert I did a while ago featuring a tahini panna cotta. but I wanted to feature Meiji tofu instead. Meiji tofu is a type of tofu made with double the amount of soy beans, resulting in a silkier texture and a more intense soy…
“Edamame”: a plated dessert
This dessert came about because I had a bag of frozen edamame, and another bag of mugwort powder, and I wanted to use them both. That and with St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, I wanted to do a green dessert that was not just lime, matcha, or pandan. Mugwort, also called yomogi in Japanese,…
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…
Blue Tonka Bean Panna Cottas
I love how simplistic a panna cotta is. Cream, sugar, gelatin, that’s all you need and you can make a rather fancy Italian dessert. My first panna cotta memory was in college, when I was inspired by a lot of the delicious Italian desserts in the North End in Boston. Thanks to the internet(and chef…
Yakult and Muscat Panna Cotta
Muscat grapes remind me of my first time in Japan, when I was served green muscat grape jelly. In Japanese, muscat is pronounced “masukaato”, and since I was only 16 at the time, I was not sure if that meant musket, as in the gun, since I was still too young to know what moscato…
Thai”-mato soup” Tea Panna Cotta
Back in college, I made a Thai tea panna cotta and served it in a bowl. And everyone thought it was tomato soup. That was literally how this recipe came about, was people thinking I made tomato soup instead of a dessert. I personally love the flavor and color of Thai tea, and since this…
Persimmon mousse tart
I am very fortunate to have a coworker who grows his own tropical fruits and vegetables! Earlier this year, I got fresh passion fruits, while right now, I got fresh fuyu persimmons. Truthfully, I never really had a ton of persimmon desserts growing up. I usually would either eat them fresh from the tree in…
late nights are for lonely people: a plated dessert
If there is a flavor combination that I have ever fallen in love with, it would be cherries, pistachios, and earl grey tea. I have done another dessert with those flavors plus chocolate in the past, and I just adore the balance! We have tartness from cherries, bitter floral notes from the tea, and smoky,…
Tahini panna cotta with soy sauce caramel
So I made a riff on this dessert about a year ago for a digital cook-along event for the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester, Minnesota(thank you, Shari for inviting me to do this!). For them, I did a demo on a dessert, which would be delivered to those who participated. For the dessert that…
Yogurt panna cotta with instant ramen “crunch”, yuzu chia seeds, and macerated peaches
So before somebody assumes that I was smoking something, I came up with this dish in response to a friend giving me a “Mystery Box” challenge. She wanted to see what I could do with spicy Korean instant ramen and chia seeds. Hilariously enough, my mind did not want to go in the savory direction,…
Sweet tofu panna cotta with chrysanthemum poached pear
I was mostly inspired by douhua, or sweet tofu soup, when I was conceptualizing this dessert. The idea of this silky sweet tofu that is swimming in a ginger-palm sugar-type of syrup just takes me back to Sundays at my local dim sum restaurant in Lomita(which sadly has since closed and been replaced by a…
Strawberry Jewel Box Cake
I came up with this recipe for a friend of mine’s birthday. She happened to be a designer, so I knew this cake needed to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible. When it come to preferences, she specified liking lighter cakes with lots of cream and fresh fruit, so I knew I could do something…
Find my heaven: a plated dessert
I really wanted to try branching out and doing new things this year, be it with techniques or plating. The dessert itself is inspired by me just trying to find my happy place in the kitchen, and obviously, that’s through baking and cooking with Asian-fusion influences. So I went with a hojicha panna cotta with…
Making my way: a plated dessert
As I do have a habit of naming my desserts after songs and lyrics, it is very easy to assume I named this one after “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. And I don’t blame you if you think that, because that is a touching song and it reminds me of White Chicks, a movie that…
Waking up from the dream: a plated dessert
Now I am a really big fan of the music group, harmonicblend. Their music tends to be on the fantastical side of things, and it really helps inspire me to do all sorts of desserts that I would otherwise not even think about making. Waking up from the dream is a reference to the ending…
Peanut milk panna cotta
The concept of this dessert came about when I was thinking about childhood favorites. Growing up in an immigrant family, we had this milk peanut soup dessert from a can that we would often enjoy during the summer. It was almost like a sweetened milk with these peeled and poached peanuts inside of it, which…
It’s my life: a plated dessert concept
The name for the dessert was inspired by the Koda Kumi song of the same name. The dessert itself came from me wanting to do something unique, indigenous to almost every American’s life, and most importantly, to show that I don’t give any fucks about what others think about my cooking/baking style. I live my…
S’mores panna cotta: a plated dessert
This dessert came about two summers ago when I was really bored. And I mean REALLY bored. Although that summer, I learned how to do a lot of things, specifically in terms of plating beautiful desserts and tackling ingredients I have never used before. The inspiration for the dessert came from a couple different things….
Freddy's Harajuku 