Kinako is one of my favorite ingredients, I feel like it is highly underrated. Translating to “gold powder”, kinako is a Japanese toasted soy bean powder. It is very nutty, similar in flavor to Korean injeolmi or even just peanut butter, and it quite frequently used in Japanese desserts. For me, I grew up eating…
Tag: recipe
Molten Nutella Chip Cookies
While I was practicing intermittent fasting/crash dieting prior to my Hawaii trip, I was craving a lot of different things, which was both good in that I was able to really drill down on the foods I was craving to eat, and bad because I was craving food that actually tasted good, and was not…
Matzoh Crack Rusks
This recipe was the biproduct of me making Japanese-style sando’s and cutting the crusts off the homemade milk bread I used to assemble those with. After making all of my sando’s, I literally had a fish tub-sized container of bread crusts leftover. It felt like a shame to just throw the crusts away after all…
Tokyo Banana Chiffon Sandwiches
Tokyo Banana will always take me back to trips to Japan, where I would eat the soft fluffy snack cakes, stuffed with a banana cream often. When I was conceptualizing a fun chiffon cake sandwich recipe, one of my immediate go-to’s was none other than Tokyo Banana. When it comes to banana-flavored desserts, I learned…
Matcha Cream Chiffon Sandwiches
Perfect in time for St. Patrick’s Day, my next chiffon sandwich recipe is for matcha green tea-flavored! I feel like everyone has at least had matcha in the form of green tea ice cream before, and what I love about pairing matcha with dessert is that sugar and dairy are great vehicles to balance out…
Thin Mint Lunchbox Cake
So in the rare instances where Bri and I get to hang out, cooking is always one of the things we do together. We wanted to bake a cake together, and it just made sense to do mini lunchbox cakes, since then we could have more cakes that way. One particular trend I have been…
Matcha Namelaka Mille Feuille
Whenever I think of mille feuille, I actually think of my friend from college, Sena. We took some boring math general-education class together, and one day while we were bored, we were talking about our favorite desserts, mine being financier, and hers being mille feuille. A mille feuille, translated from French to mean “a million…
Chocolate Silk Pie
Now a lot of people might have fond memories of Southern chocolate silk pie. For me, it’s another way to consume more chocolate. That’s really it. I might have had it growing up and going to Marie Calendar’s, but honestly all I can remember from Marie Calendar’s was getting the Banana Meringue Pie, which was…
Matcha-Red Bean Financiers
Whenever I bake a financier, I like to make a joke that I am financier(which I am, as a person who technically works in a financial role/has had prior finance/accounting experience) making a financier. Unless you’re super familiar with French cuisine, you might not even know what a financier is! And no worries, you’re not…
Banana Cream Puffs
These cute little puffs were my homage to banana cream pie, being comprised of a ripened banana custard, a mascarpone cream, and pate choux(cream puffs) with craquelin(thin sugar cookie). If anyone were to say that they love banana, these puffs are a great option, because that banana custard is natural banana flavor on steroids! What…
Raspberry Tea-ramisu Chiffon Sandwiches
Tiramisu is classically made with either ladyfingers or Savoiardi biscuits, soaked with coffee, layered with mascarpone cheese, and dusted with cocoa powder. It is such a classic Italian dessert, but I wanted to turn it on its head, and do a raspberry tea-ramisu. The logic here was two-fold: raspberries and coffee do not really go…
Strawberry Shortcake Chiffon Sandwiches
I can’t tell if I am late to the whole chiffon cake sandwich craze or not, but I can tell you that I am pretty obsessed with the concept! Aa chiffon cake is traditionally baked in a round cake pan with a little chimney running through it – the chimney allows for even air and…
Tofu Fraisier Rare Cheesecake
I have made rare cheesecake with tofu in the past, and fraisier cake in the past, so I figured, why not combine the two? The end result was quite straightforward, being a rare tofu cheesecake that was rippled with strawberry coulis, enrobed with slices of strawberries, and all on top of a crunchy-salty-sweet Triscuit crust….
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…
Strawberry Madeleines
A while ago, my friend from Masterchef season 5, Ahran, and I decided to do a Facetime and Bake session, where we made madeleines. For my recipe, I went ahead with a strawberry madeleine, using strawberry puree in the batter, and then pressing the baked madeleines into tempered Strawberry Inspiration, in the madeleine pan, and…
Chinese Bakery Strawberry Cake
My friend Ann would tell me time and time again about her favorite cake being a Chinese Bakery Strawberry Cake. Personally, I grew up on Taiwanese Bakery Black Forest Cake, but that’s an entire recipe for another time! I wanted to try my hand at a super soft and light spongecake with whipped cream and…
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…
Almond Tofu with Persimmon and Chrysanthemum
This dessert comes from a combination of various friendships, childhood memories, and a growing appreciation for my Taiwanese-Chinese-American upbringing. So I’m sure a good amount of people out there have zero clue what almond tofu is. Also called almond pudding, almond tofu is a Chinese dessert that consists of a sweet almond-flavored, milk-based jelly, similar…
Ube-Passionfruit-Coconut Cake
This recipe came about because I had ube paste, coconut milk, and fresh passionfruit, all of which I wanted to use, and preferably together. Ube(pronounced oo-beh) is a Filipino purple yam that is sweet and nutty in flavor. Almost like if you took a purple yam and toasted it with brown butter. Ube is a…
Mango Sticky Rice with coconut and pandan
Whenever I think of Southeast Asian desserts, mango sticky rice is probably at the top of my list for things that come to mind. Glutinous rice with ripe, fresh mango, and this salty coconut milk, the contrast and flavors are very different than what most people would associate with desserts. Some variations have toasted sesame…
Freddy's Harajuku 