“Fever Dream”: a plated dessert

I literally named this dessert after my favorite mxmtoon song, “Fever Dream”. For me, that term represents memories and milestones of your life, past, present, and future, just melting together into one moment. So I wanted to do that in this dessert! For starters, I wanted to use cherries, since my birthday cake growing up…

Ruby chocolate-blood orange “Poosh” cake

So my sister had purchased a “Poosh” cake and I literally had no idea what is was until she did that. Apparently, it is a pink olive oil cake that the Kardashians endorsed, with the proceeds going to the Armenia relief fund, and it is extremely hard to come by. The completely pink cake itself…

Peach “mille feuille”

I came up with this dessert because I wanted to try something new, and also in honor of two restaurants in L.A., Vespertine and Auburn(R.I.P. Auburn, you will be missed dearly). In Vespertine, we had this gorgeous parsnip and pear dessert where they garnished the edges of the bowl with circles of shaved pear. In…

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…

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…

Sakura blooming: vegan macaron ice cream sandwiches

So the idea to make a vegan macaron sandwich came up a long while back, I think in December 2019. But I never really got a chance to make them, mostly because I was too lazy to buy a can of chickpeas to make aquafaba. But recently, a bunch of stars sort of aligned, and…

“Princess cakes”: a petit gateau

Honestly, this dessert was inspired by me seeing a TON of these cute pink petit gateaus that were floating around on Instagram, made by pastry chefs at a Mandarin Oriental. This dessert in particular was on my to-do list for a hot second, but I had the pleasure of making it with my friend Ann…

dreaming of springtime: an icebox cake

Icebox cakes are fun to make, mostly because they’re just giant cookies with fun fillings sandwiched between each layer. In this particular rendition, I wanted to use ruby chocolate, since I have a whole bag of it and I never really use it. I wanted the dessert to be pink, since Pinktober is coming up,…

move mountains: a plated dessert

I have been watching a lot of new shows on Netflix lately. One of them in particular that I adore is a singing anime called “Carole and Tuesday” which features a ton of catchy tracks of varying genres. One song that stood out to me in particular was “Move Mountains”, mostly because of the message…

My matcha dreamscape: a green tea-coconut layer cake

So before the cake replication challenge during MasterChef’s Sweet Week, we actually did get hints that we would be making a layer cake! So thinking we could make our own, I went ahead and thought up of a matcha and coconut layer cake. For the inspiration, I just imagined my trips to Taiwan and Japan,…

Blood orange-mascarpone cake doughnuts

These literally just came from an experiment where I wanted to make doughnuts, but I didn’t have any yeast, and I was too lazy to buy any/I had no patience to wait for yeast to proof anyways. I knew that you could make cake doughnuts, which would not require yeast, and I decided to go…

Dianthus: a plated dessert

I really love baking with pate choux. But I tend not to make it as often due to mirror glaze cakes and naked layer cakes and doughnut creams all looking a lot prettier, so unfortunately, cream puffs do tend to take the back burner to my list of go-to desserts. That being said, when I…

Andante: a chocolate and rose plated dessert

The word andante refers to a slow tempo, while the inspiration for the dessert came from the concept of falling in love. It should not be something to rush into, but rather, something you can take your time enjoying. For the dessert itself, we have a chocolate-coffee panna cotta, a rose-goat milk fluid gel, black…

Cherry blossom orgel: a sakura tart

This was my first time working with salted sakura blossoms. And let me tell you, they are saltier than me when I am told that I have to work overtime when I was an accountant. I wanted to cook with these to celebrate the cherry blossom viewing season, but I did not realize that they…

Yogurt-peach-Turkish delight cake

This dessert came about because we had a fuck-ton of peaches in my fridge that we needed to get rid of. I love yogurt-semolina cake and I knew that it would have the perfect dryness in the crumb to hold up to the moisture in the peaches, so I went that route with baking them…

Amoroso pink: raspberry pate choux

The first thing I did when I received my pitaya powder was create these naturally pink cream puffs. I named the dessert Amoroso pink because it means “love pink” in Italian. Super straightforward and simple, because if you want to eat this dessert just based on its appearance, chances are, you love the color pink….