It had been a minute since I made an ube dessert, so I wanted to try another rendition, this time with a chiffon cake! Ube, for those unfamiliar, is a Filipino purple yam that is commonly used in desserts there. It does not grow naturally in America, so the best options you have for it…
Tag: pastry
Vegan and gluten-free pecan praline brownie sundae
I came up with this recipe because I wanted to see how challenging it would be to make a dessert that is both gluten-free and vegan. I wanted to take the most decadent, self-indulgent dessert, being a brownie sundae, and make it 100% free of animal products and gluten. Truthfully, making a vegan and gluten-free…
Chocolate-Whiskey-Tangerine Mousse Cake
My family friend was kind enough to gift me with their homegrown tangerines, something that I look forward to every spring. For this year, I wanted to go back to a project I did years back, which is recreating Lady M desserts in my own way. This time, I went with their Whisky Dark Chocolate…
White Bunny Carrot Cakes
So when it comes to Easter, I don’t really celebrate it. Growing up in a Buddhist household, Easter as a holiday just meant that time of year when there’s lots of rabbits, ducks, marshmallows, polka dots, colorful eggs, and randomly, jellybeans. That’s literally all Easter means to me to be honest. With that in mind,…
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…
Chocolate chip-cookie butter cupcakes
This recipe primarily came about because I was craving cookie dough ice cream, and I happened to still have a jar of Speculoos cookie butter lying around. So I figured, why not make a cupcake that was chocolate chip cookie-flavored? I would make a cake with brown sugar, brown butter, and chocolate chips, just to…
Shaymin Nerikiri
I would be lying if I said this recipe was easy. Namely because it took me 4 hours from start to finish. A lot of it, not going to lie, is just the amount of time it took perfecting the color and shape of these little nuggets. That and I tried to make a half-batch…
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…
Chocolate-sesame-cardamom cake
How this cake came about was hilarious. It was 6:35AM, and I had just finished my workout. It was also my friend’s birthday, and I was debating if I wanted to make a cake for her or not. But I did not want to be a crap friend, and I decided, screw it, 50 minute…
Hedgehog “Cinnabon” Mont Blancs
I initially was inspired to make these cakes from seeing all of the cute animal-themed crepes in Japan! One that seemed doable-enough were the hedgehogs, which they made by piping things onto a scoop of whipped cream to create the animal. I knew that I could do something similar using the half-sphere molds I normally…
Chocolate-peanut butter pie
For Pi Day this year, I was truthfully struggling with what I wanted to make. I could not figure out if I wanted to go with a fruitier pie, a green pie(again), or just something completely different. Eventually, I settled on this recipe, inspired by a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. It features a chocolate short…
Matcha checkerboard ombre cookies
I love checkerboard cookies. I feel like in almost any Asian bakery you go to, checkerboard cookies are always on display. I appreciate the fact that you’re getting more than one flavor in them, since the color contrast usually comes from differently flavored doughs. I won’t lie, they can be finnicky to make, since you…
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…
Red velvet and white rose mirror glaze cake
So I have a weird relationship with red velvet cake. In that I do not like it, but I actually order it from bakeries as my way of gauging how good of a bakery they are – if they can make me enjoy a cake I inherently dislike, then they are definitely doing something right….
“The Fourth Flavor”: a plated dessert
If you have ever watched Codename: Kids Next Door, you would totally get the reference here. If not, let me explain. According to that cartoon’s lore, there are three main flavors of ice cream, being vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. But there was also a legendary fourth flavor that was said to taste even better than…
Princess (Mirror Glaze) Cake
This is my petit gateau(mini cake) take on the Swedish Prinsesstarta(Princess Cake). The Princess Cake usually consists of layers of vanilla cake with a vanilla custard/pastry cream and a raspberry jam, finished with fondant and/or marizpan. Now I could do fondant or marzipan, but those just don’t really taste good to me, nor do I…
Red and gold(en syrup) tang yuan
If you are Chinese or Taiwanese and do not know what tang yuan are, then I truly have seen it all., Tang yuan(literally translates to soup balls or rounds) are a super popular Asian dessert, consisting of small poached mochi balls floating in usually a sweet syrup. They are often eaten during the holidays, and…
Gluten-free sesame-buckwheat mousse cake
I had yet to make a true vegan chiffon cake prior to writing and testing out this recipe. Last year, I did make a pumpkin roll cake, but it was not a true chiffon batter, just a cake roll. When I say chiffon, I’m talking whipped whites folded into an egg yolk mixture. Doing so…
Pandan-almond “butterfly” cake
Ever since I got my Pavoni butterfly molds, I had been itching to use them in something. This cake was a last-minute cake order, so it got to be the lucky recipient to some butterfly shaped tuile garnishes! When it came to the cake and the flavors, I knew I wanted to do pandan, but…
Vegan Devil’s food cake with Biscoff and sesame
This cake was loosely inspired by the EatDomi chocolate, salted caramel, and sesame cake. I wanted to make it vegan, as it was a birthday cake order for a friend of a friend, and that person’s boyfriend was vegan. Yeah, I know, that was a really long string of words there. Anyways, while I could…
Freddy's Harajuku 