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…
Tag: valrhona
Molten Nutella Bouchons with coffee whip and hazelnut bark
So these were my entry to the Feed Feed’s holiday Nutella recipe contest! Basically we just had to make a recipe that featured Nutella. Initially, I wanted to go in with this super complex chocolate-hazelnut-coffee petit gateau that resembled a zen garden. BUT after looking at what kinds of recipes the Feed Feed featured(i.e. more…
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…
Chocolate-raspberry-rose tarts
I literally only came up with these because I had a coworker who was putting in her two-weeks, and I wanted to thank her properly for all of the hard work she had done! She specifically requested chocolate and raspberry, and I just happened to have made a batch of raspberry-rose jam, so I wanted…
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…
Chocolate checkerboard cake
So I actually made this cake for a co-worker’s birthday – her name is Kristina and she is an incredibly kindhearted person and an extremely hardworking sales manager. During the pandemic, when we were extremely understaffed, Kristina literally held down the fort, despite that meaning she had to work 12 hour days for months. Since…
Strawberry and pistachio pate choux
I was pretty happy with how these puffs came out, considering that ever since I got some Strawberry Inspiration(naturally strawberry flavored chocolate) couverture from Valrhona, I wanted to do a strawberry and pistachio dessert. There was something about crunchy and salty versus sweet and tart which just sounded like a fun combination, and while the…
Raspberry red velvet doughnut creams
I feel like the hallmark to a great baker is how they approach the simpler things. For me, whenever I order multiple cupcakes from a bakery, one flavor is always red velvet. The simple reason is because with red velvet, there are a few criteria that need to be met: the cake must be red,…
Coconut-chocolate-caramel cake
In a lot of ways, this cake is almost a German chocolate cake, and almond an Almond Joy cake. If I swapped the macadamia nuts with pecans, it’s basically German chocolate. If I omitted the caramel and swapped the macadamia for almonds, we have Almond Joy. This cake features chocolate, coconut, macadamia nuts, and salted…
Sea buckthorn torte
This cake is my homage to sachertorte. For those of you unaware of what that is, sachertorte is a Viennese chocolate cake that has a thin layer of apricot jam inside of it, and it is covered in a beautiful chocolate glaze. It is a highly technical and iconic cake to Austria, to the point…
Storms and bad weather: a plated dessert
When I was conceptualizing this dessert, I wanted to come up with something with a lot of visual contrast and tropical flavors. So I went with passionfruit, and since the inside of a passionfruit is yellow and black, I wanted to focus on those two colors. I knew I wanted to make the dessert inspired…
Rose quartz: chocolate-Turkish delight cookies
Chocolate-Turkish delight ice cream is one of my absolute favorites. That and I love to make Turkish delight. I don’t know why. There’s something about how pretty they look that really appeals to me. That gem-like aesthetic. But since I know for a fact that this flavor combination works, I decided to take it from…
Freddy's Harajuku 