Pistachio-Cherry Shortbreads

These shortbreads were made with a love for Italian spumoni in mind. Spumoni is usually pistachio and cherry ice cream, so the combination of the two is something I absolutely adore. Pistachios are nutty, smoky, and salty, while cherries are sweet and tart. In the case of this recipe, I used pistachio flour, made by…

Matcha-Kinako Daisy Crown Shortbreads

I saw someone on Instagram making these cute ring-shaped shortbreads, comprised of smaller shapes that were arranged in essentially a crown/wreath shape. Aesthetically, I found that to be extremely pleasing, and also since it is a shortbread made of other shortbreads, that invited a lot of possibilities in terms of fun or different flavor combinations!…

Snowmen Coconut Cookies

These coconut snowmen cookies were loosely inspired by a cute box of white chocolate snowmen cookies I purchased while in Niigata, Japan. The cookies themselves were simple designed, being two round disks with little circular bits to represent the arms, and they were dunked in white chocolate to finish. I wanted to replicate that, but…

Yujacha-Blueberry Crostata

I love a good crostata. An open-faced tart made from buttery pastry, stuffed with baked fruit is always a good time in my book. Since blueberries are still in season, I figured, why not use those, and pair them with my good friend, yujacha. Yujacha is a Korean citron(or yuzu) marmalade, made with the citrus…

Blackberry-Yuzu Drifloon Pies

Drifloon is one of the cutest Pokemon out there, being a ghostly purple balloon with a yellow cross shape(I’m assuming that the balloon was popped and patched up), and a little wispy cloud on top of its head. I still have memories of playing Pokemon Pearl and finding them in the Valley Windworks on a…

PB&J Shortbread Sandos

After making the buttered and toast financiers using my bread slice muffin tins, I definitely wanted to do another recipe with them, but this time, shortbread sandos! I have been seeing shortbread sandwich cookies all over the internet, and I figured it would be a cute nod to do something like that, but with bread…

White Nectarine-Blackberry Pie Top

This pie top was directly inspired from when I saw Christina Tosi post this shortbread disk that was topped with jam and crumble on Instagram, and it looked delicious. So to do something similar to that, because once a Milkbar member, always a Milkbar member I made a variation on that, but with a shortbread…

Tofu-Nutella Silk Pie

One of my absolute favorite components to make is my chocolate tofu mousse. I’ve been making for it years, since it’s so simple – literally just equal parts melted chocolate mixed with pureed silken tofu, and salt just to bring out the chocolate flavor a bit more. And yes, it is the same chocolate-tofu mousse…

Hojicha-Miso Alfajores

These cookies came about because I decided to test out making dulce de leche in my pressure cooker, and I ended needing to use said dulce de leche in a couple different recipes. So you can expect to see a few dulce de leche-based recipes in the horizon, with this being one of them! Alfajores(basically…

Seaweed-Tonka Bean Shortbreads

I made these shortbreads specifically with my plating bestie, Bri, in mind! She was visiting Los Angeles, and I wanted to greet her with a dessert that she never had before. Seaweed desserts are already rare to come by, but adding in tonka bean to that, and I guarantee you that is a flavor combination…

“Box of Chocolates” Tartlets

When I think of Valentine’s, the first three things that I associate the holidays with are pink-colored things, red-colored things, and chocolate. While let’s be real here, chocolate on Valentine’s Day is just a marketing ploy for candy companies to sell more chocolate, it is still fun to see all of the heart shaped chocolates,…

Chocolate-Tonka Shortbreads

These shortbreads are meant to be decadence incarnate. I really wanted to celebrate chocolate in its darkest and richest flavors, and what pairs better with cocoa than butter and sugar? So with that logic in mind, I decided to make these buttery shortbread cookies, flavored with black cacao, and studded with chocolate throughout. One of…

Injeolmi Shortbreads

Whenever I think of my friend, Ellie, I think about how wonderful of a person she is. We have known each other since elementary school, became friends in middle school, sort of grew into different cliques in high school, but when we both went to college in Boston(her Boston College, me Boston University), our friendship…

Cherry Garcia Shortbreads

Whenever I had baker’s block and am struggling to think of new dessert ideas, one thing I can always fall back on is ice cream flavors! I find that focusing on specific flavors or ingredients, and what I enjoy about those in the ice cream itself, is a great starting point for a new dessert…

Salted Caramel “Black Thunder” Bars

I don’t know how I went as long as I have without ever eating a Black Thunder cookie bar. These popular Japanese candy bars consist of a black cacao cookie with crunchy rice and a chocolate coating. They are texturally addictive, and I can only assume that the name “Black Thunder” refers to both the…

Shiny Cottonee (Hojicha) Tea-ramisu

So I had already made a regular Cottonee tea-ramisu(tiramisu but using tea instead of coffee) before, but I figured, why not invert the matcha and hojicha in the recipe, and somehow we wound up with shiny Cottonee. Unlike normal Cottonee, which features a white body, orange eyes, and green leaves, a shiny Cottonee features a…

Cottonee Matcha Tea-ramisu

These tea-ramisu were the end result of me wanting to use these silicone cloud molds I purchased, and wanting to do something Pokemon-themed. So after thinking through what I could do, it just made sense to go the route of Cottonee. Cottonee, as the name may imply, is a cotton ball-themed Grass/Fairy type Pokemon. It…

Tofu Cheesecake with Honeyed Plums

This cheesecake was the brain child of me wanting to use silken tofu in a dessert, but also wanting to play around with plums while they were still in season. I have been playing around with what I call “blank slate”-types of desserts, where the dessert components are left super open-ended in a way where…

Mt. Pav-lava with Dinosaur Shortbreads

My friend Samantha(from season 9 and Back to Win) gifted me with these dinosaur cookie cutters back in January, but truthfully, I had zero ideas on what to do with these. I am not a major dinosaur enthusiast(I never even watched Jurassic Park, though I DID grow up on The Land Before Time rip Little…

P.O.G. “Pearl”: a Petit Gateau

These little pearls were inspired by a recent trip to Hawaii(yes, I have been to Oahu 4 times in the past 3 years, I am addicted. Well, that and I have a bunch of friends who live there – shout out to Ann and Lauren – so Waikiki along with Austin have been two places…