Pink Lemon-Olive Oil-Rose Cake

This cake is dedicated to my friend, Na’ama, specifically for her birthday. Fun facts, she was one of my friends that attended my apron battle for season 12(she was in the podium instead of the balcony), and we went to college together, but did not actually know each other back then. Since Boston University was…

Citrus Sfogliatelle

I love sfogliatelle. They are as crunchy, creamy, and delicious as they are tricky to make. These Italian pastries are made with a copious amount of dough that is quite similar to phyllo in composition, and filled with a mixture of semolina, ricotta, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and candied orange peel. The filling MIGHT sound a…

Blackberry-semolina cake with olive oil and Meyer lemons

I literally came up with this recipe because I went to the grocery store, and saw 99-cent cartons of blackberries on sale! I knew it was a sign from whatever powers that be that I had to make something with these, so I bought about three 6oz containers of them! I had a couple of…

“Wishing star”: a plated dessert

I really only came up with this dessert because I wanted to test my new chocolate  sphere molds. So I knew chocolate was going to be a central part of the dessert, but then I thought about what I could pair that with. Luckily, there was a large bin of pistachios in front of me,…

Blood orange-rhubarb mimosa cake

I wanted to do a summery, Italian take on mimosa cake with this recipe. I have made mimosa cakes before, but I wanted to do a different take on it. For this cake, I went with a blood orange-olive oil cake, whipped skyr, which is this Icelandic yogurt, a blood orange-amoretti crunch, and macerated blood…

Something comforting: a plated dish

I really love stewed chickpeas. Actually I just love chickpeas in general. And luckily, I got to cook with them more often these days because I need them for their aquafaba. However, with all of the vegan meringue I have been making, I still need to get rid of the actual chickpeas themselves. So this…

One Day Afternoon: a plated dish

For the first Mystery Box of my MasterChef 10 experience, the people who were not saved during the mise en place challenge had to cook with British ingredients and make a dish inspired by Gordon himself! It was a really interesting challenge, and I was actually kind of bummed that I didn’t get to cook…

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…

Semolina knafeh with glazed figs

I really wanted to make knafeh when I saw it in My Kitchen Rules, where Sonya and Hadil, two Jordanian women who were kicked off the show because they got into a fight with another team, prepared it for their instant restaurant. Knafeh is a Middle Eastern cheesecake essentially, soaked with a beautiful rose flavored…

Semolina cake with chocolate-Turkish delight ice cream

Truth be told, this recipe was directly inspired by controversial MKR contestants, Sonya and Hadil, and a dish that they prepared during the Cole’s ice cream challenge, where they made chocolate-Turkish delight ice cream with semolina cake and pistachio biscuit. I know that several people hate them because they got ejected from the show for…

Sfogliatelle or lobster tail pastries

I first heard about these when I moved to Boston for school. The North End, also called Little Italy, had several bakeries that served lobster tail pastries. They were these crunchy bundles that were stuffed with a sweetened ricotta filling. Traditionally, the filling is a mixture of semolina, ricotta, citrus, and sugar, but I decided…