Vegan and Gluten-free Chocolate-Kumquat Cupcakes

I was lucky enough to receive a bunch of fresh kumquats from a dear friend, Celina, and I wanted to do something fun with them. I love pairing kumquats with chocolate, and it just made sense to go that route. It has been a minute since I made a cupcake, and I wanted to make…

Fruity Pebble Baked Tofu Doughnuts

I love doing baking tofu doughnuts. Not only is it a great way to use up any leftover silken tofu, but the actual doughnuts themselves have this soft, chewy texture and are the furthest thing from dry! I wanted to showcase a fun flavor combination, since I was playing around with ruby chocolate and Fruity…

“Chicken and Dumplings”: a plated dish

This dish is a revisited version of a recipe I made a few years ago, but as a more composed plated dish. The dish itself was what I made for a collaboration dinner at Mader Lao in Oklahoma, with my friends Gabriel and Dara(from season 12 of Masterchef!). I offered to do the entree, which…

Spheal Dango

Originally, these were just going to be ring seal dango(round mochi-type rice dumplings). However, that idea kind of shifted towards doing Spheals instead thanks to my dear friend, Justina, who straight up to me to do that. And I am (mostly) glad I listened to her, especially after seeing the end product! I say mostly…

Vegan Spumoni Ice Cream Sandwiches

I am unashamed to admit that the recipe you are about to read was the result of me needing to clean out my refrigerator of several leftover components. I purchased way too many fresh cherries, I had half a block of unpureed bright green edamame tofu that I needed to use up, some chocolate ganache…

Blue Chiffon Cake with Tofu Rare Cheese and Blackberries

This recipe was one of several parts of a blue and white-themed dessert tea tower I have been meaning to make. I had purchased a cute blue and white tea tower from the Pokemon Center in Japan, and it inspired me to make high tea-friendly desserts. However, I wanted to embrace the color of the…

Edamame-Garlic Confit Gazpacho with Socca, Sumac, and Nasturtiums

So as a part of my post-Asia diet, I swore off of foods with added sugars in them. Which is a lot of things, considering the fact that I primarily am a pastry person. In an attempt to eat better, I wanted to make something that was sugar-free, vegan, gluten-free, and still high in protein….

Baked Tofu “Kitten” Doughnuts

This recipe came from two different inspirations. The first is the kawaii doughnuts you’d see in Japan – very popular in Harajuku, kawaii character doughnuts are shaped to resemble cute animals like frogs, rabbits, and in this particular case, kittens! I have been meaning to make a version of these, especially because they are all…

Tofu Ice Cream

It took forever to perfect my tofu ice cream recipe. Back in college, when I was learning how to make ice cream from scratch, I thought tofu ice cream would be as simple as coconut milk, sugar, tofu, and that would be it. However, what happened was that the ice cream, even after churning it,…

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….

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…

Kinako-Tofu Rare Cheesecake

Tofu cheesecake literally takes me back to high school. I still remember taking Japanese 3, we would have these cooking projects, and one of them was making Japanese desserts. One of those desserts was tofu rare cheesecake. The crust was made with these digestive biscuits, while the cheesecake filling was made with cream cheese/yogurt, and…

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…

Rowlet Inarizushi

When I was a kid who did not like raw fish yet, I found myself ordering only three things whenever we would go out for sushi: cucumber rolls, tamagoyaki(Japanese omelet), and inarizushi. Inari refers to these puffed tofu skins that are based in a sweet soy mixture, giving them a sweet, smoky, and almost salty…

Chrysanthemum Douhua

One of my earliest food memories was going to dim sum with my parents on Sundays. We would be served chrysanthemum tea with everything we ate and we would usually finish off a meal of spareribs, sticky rice, and dumplings and fried radish cakes with egg tarts and a sweet tofu called douhua. Douhua, which…

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…

Yuzu tofu matzoh balls with chili-fennel broth

I feel like whenever the holidays roll around, there are always weird recipes or dishes that come up. This recipe would be one of those. I purchased yuzu flavored tofu from the local Japanese grocery store on a whim, thinking it would be fun to bake a dessert with. Little did I read, it was…

Vegan and Gluten-free Devil’s Food Cake

I came up with the idea to make this cake because I wanted to make my vegan chocolate-tofu mousse again, but also wanted to pair it with something that would compliment it perfectly, so I figured, why not chocolate mousse on chocolate cake? For the cake itself, I went with my gluten-free and vegan devil’s…

“Rebirth”: a plated dessert

With this dessert, I was going for that phoenix from the ashes motif, but using all gluten-free and vegan ingredients! During the peak of 2020 quarantining, when everyone hogged all of the flour, eggs, and butter, I had to pivot and learn how to make desserts without any of those things, and this is really…

Tofu ice cream with tofu water meringue

So this would not be the first tofu ice cream recipe I have made. However, it would be the first where I do not use coconut milk – that makes a huge difference in the actual flavor of the ice cream, as coconut milk, while it does contain the necessary fat to create creamy vegan…