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…
Tag: petit gateau
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…
Dijonnaise de Chocolat
So this is probably the most random thing to admit to, but I grew up on shoujou anime(aka CardCaptor Sakura, a pinch of Sailor Moon, and Mirumo De Pon to name the main ones I watched), and there was an anime I was exposed to called “Yumeiro Patissiere”, which was a baking anime. I had…
Rhubarb-Elderflower Petit Gateaus
About 5 years ago(which is such a weird preface to say out loud because man, time FLIES), I made a dessert that featured rhubarb and elderflower. Ironically, it featured strawberries as well, so I opted to not even include rhubarb or elderflower in the name of the dessert. The cake itself featured elderflower mousse, and…
Lil Peep Egg Tarts
While I do not celebrate Easter in the religious sense, I can still appreciate the fact that the holiday is closely associated with rabbits and eggs. Those are cute things to make desserts from, and the latter if what inspired this dessert! Well, that and marshmallow peeps. Fun fact: I was originally going to do…
Passion Pearl: a petit gateau
These little pearls only came about because I had an abundance of passionfruit(what a problem to have), and I wanted to find some interesting or fun ways to utilize them! For the dessert itself, we have a coconut mousse that is surrounding a passionfruit gelee, on top of a blue spirulina cookie. I wanted to…
Clione: a petit gateau
As an awkward middle schooler who was just diving into Japanese pop culture, I was stunned to find out how popular clione(also called sea angels) were. Pronounced “klee-oh-neh”, they are a relative to the sea slug, and are these little, translucent creatures that float through the ocean. If you have ever played Pokemon games before,…
Forêt de cauchemars: a petit gateau
This dessert literally only happened because I purchased a ton of cherries to make another recipe with, and I had to figure out what to do with them before they went moldy. Which is always a great motivator when you purchase way too much of an ingredient! So I went ahead and pureed my remaining…
Get your wish: a chocolate-lucuma tart
I would be lying if I said that this recipe did not take forever to make. A huge reason why I don’t do tarts(besides my sexuality) is that there is a lot of temperature and waiting involved. If the dough gets too warm, it won’t hold its form. If it’s too cold, it could be…
Odessa: a plated dessert
So this dessert was my take on an almost-entirely black and white dish. I went with a sesame chocolate cake with tahini mousse, white chocolate mirror glaze, white chocolate-sesame bark, chocolate-sesame crumble, and white sesame ice cream. I was really happy with how this dessert came out visually, and I was also stunned when the…
Yo-Yo- Tsuri: a plated dessert
When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I was mostly just focusing on what things come to mind when I think of the summer. In this case, I remembered Omasturi(お祭) which is a festival in Japan where they celebrate the village gods(御神輿) with games and other celebrations. One such game was where you fish for water…
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…
Signal: a petit gateau
I was feeling a bit inspired the other day to try a new flavor of petit gateau. I saw so many geode cakes before, and this is my very loose take on that. I used kohakutou to garnish petit gateaus, but used a little bit of gold leaf as well to give them a more…
Mackles’mores petit gateau
Mackles’mores(spelling might be inconsistent because truthfully, I have no clue what the correct spelling for them is), are chocolate chip cookies baked on top of graham crackers, with melted chocolate and marshmallow on top. They sell them at a bakery in Seattle, and happen to be one of my sister’s absolute favorite desserts. And I…
Prince of the Growing Land: A plated dessert
This would be the third of my three princes who would have led me to my MasterChef Crown, had I been in the finale(cue sad violin music I guess?). Continuing with the sea, sky, and earth motif, this would be my earth-inspired dish and dessert! It is a buckwheat financier with brown butter bavarian cream,…
Dandelion: a petit gateau
When I hear the word “dandelion”, the first thing I think about, being the weebu hipster baker that I am, is Kingdom Hearts Union Cross. I’m not even going to bother talking more about what the term means in that context because I’m a lazy betch, and also, because this is a food blog, not…
Starry Wish: black sesame-coconut-tangerine petit gateaus
I was thinking of a way to utilize the many tangerines we had at home (fun fact, when you are family friends with citrus farmers in Southern California, you have a fuck-ton of citrus that you get to cook with). From that, I thought, why not go with an Asian inspired dessert? And not because…
Freddy's Harajuku 