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: sesame
White Sesame Tropezienne
Tropezienne has always been one of my sister’s favorites. Fluffy brioche that is brushed with a simple syrup, finished with pastry cream/lemon curd and fresh berries. Basically a shortcake using brioche instead of a biscuit or cake is the simplest way of explaining it. Ever since she had it in France and told me about…
Pumpkin-Persimmon Mirror Glaze Cake
This recipe came about because I had a buttload of pumpkin-dulcey(blonde chocolate or roasted white chocolate) ganache that I left in my freezer for when fall rolled around. And the moment that it did, I went ahead and busted out my pumpkin-blonde chocolate ganache and made this cake with it and randomly a persimmon that…
Trio of Onigiri
This recipe in a lot of ways is my play on a charcuterie board, but featuring onigiri. I wanted to make three different kinds of rice balls, featuring pork belly, salmon, and mushrooms, two sauces, one that was creamy and garlicky and another that is sweet-sour-smoky, and some Japanese-style pickles to garnish with. When I…
Milk tea-white sesame cake
I was asked to make a super last-minute cake for an order, and that’s how this recipe came out. Literally just because I was told “any flavor but it needs to be done by tomorrow”. So with that in mind, I somehow came up with this recipe. I had a lot of black tea leaves…
Levain-Black Sesame Kouign Amann
Back in 2015, I watched a video on Youtube on how to make these pastries called Kouign Amann. They greatly resembled croissants, but baked with a lot of sugar, and in the shape of a muffin instead. The pastry was buttery, flaky, and looked like a giant pain to make – all puns intended. The…
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…
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…
Furikake(seaweed-sesame) cookies
I feel like this recipe would raise a lot of eyebrows. For those unfamiliar with it, furikake is a Japanese seasoning mix, usually made of seaweed and sesame seeds. It is sprinkled on rice to give the it more flavor and a little bit of texture. Furikake is also popular with Hawaiian poke as well!…
Turkish Simit
I first heard about simit years ago when I was binging The Chef’s Line on Netflix. The show is a cooking competition between home cooks and the team from a restaurant, and each week centers around a different restaurant and their style of cuisine. There was a Turkish week where I just learned a lot…
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…
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…
Tahini panna cotta with soy sauce caramel
So I made a riff on this dessert about a year ago for a digital cook-along event for the Boys and Girls Club of Rochester, Minnesota(thank you, Shari for inviting me to do this!). For them, I did a demo on a dessert, which would be delivered to those who participated. For the dessert that…
Halva, almond, and apricot tart
So I made this tart because of two reasons: I had a ton of halva in my freezer that I wanted to use in a dessert, and I was seeing my former-pastry chef friend, Janae, and I wanted to make something for her(which ended up being these tarts!). For those unfamiliar with halva, it is…
Tangzhong noodles with miso-sesame dressing and Thai chilies
After I made boba from scratch, I had a bizarre epiphany – if I were to cook flour with water into a gelatinous paste, and use that to make noodles, would they come out super chewy? When you are making boba, you do that process with water and tapioca flour to gelatinize the starch, resulting…
Fortress: a plated dessert
This is sort of my take on a PB&J, with a Jordanian/Albanian spin, using summer produce! I wanted to feature the peaches since we are in peak peach season in the summer, while using white sesame just felt like a great pairing, because more light and delicate than the more robust and hearty black sesame….
Rough puff galette de rois
Galette de rois is a French pastry that consists of two circles of puff pastry surrounding an almond/frangipane-type of filling. Usually, there is a bead, bean, or some kind of trinket baked into the cake, and whoever finds it is crowned the king (or queen) for the day! Because of that, this cake is usually…
Sunburst: a plated dessert
I named this dessert ‘Sunburst’ after a Tobu and Itro song that came out a while ago of the same name. And also for my Chinese namesake, which translates to Winter Morning Sun. I had to use sesame since it is a favorite ingredient of mine, and I paired it with sea buckthorn to add…
Black sesame purin dorayaki
Dorayaki were one of the first wagashi I ever really came to adore. Mostly because being raised in America, I love pancakes, and dorayaki just being a pancake sandwich, was super appealing to me! I wanted to make a special dorayaki and I actually had this idea for over a year, but never was able…
“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,…
Freddy's Harajuku 