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…
Tag: xanthan gum
Acorn Sticky Toffee Puddings
This recipe came up because my friend and talented chef, Kesha Taro, and I were talking about acorn flour. Kesha worked for Gordon Ramsay doing culinary production for decades. She worked briefly on season 10, but I didn’t meet her until season 11 open casting calls, and she was super kind. Flash forward years later,…
Persimmon-Osmanthus-Sesame Gateau
This is definitely one of those recipes where if you do not have patience, it will not come together. Some of my recipes employ processes that may take hours, even days to do. That applies in this case too. For starters, let’s talk about persimmon. Persimmon is an autumnal to winter fruit that comes in…
Maple-candied Pumpkin and Acorn Cake
This cake was inspired from when I was in Kyoto, admiring all of the autumn nature-themed artwork in several of the local museums there. I wanted to make this yellow-ish cake with pretty reds and oranges, indicative of autumnal colors, and flavors. And since I play Animal Crossing, I am fully aware that maple leaves…
The Bamboo Cutter: a petit gateau
This was inspired by the Japanese story called “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”. The story itself featured a bamboo cutter who uncovered a little girl, named Kaguya, one day when he was cutting open stalks of bamboo. She was specifically found inside of a glowing bamboo stalk. As the story progresses, Kaguya is revealed…
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,…
Sesame-Kinako-Chocolate: a Petit Gateau
This recipe came about because I was craving something kinako-flavored. Kinako is a toasted soybean flour, which is 100% gluten-free! It kind of tastes like peanut butter, in that it is nutty and warming. I personally love using it with flavors like sesame, which is where the inspiration to pair the two came into play…
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…
Gluten-free coconut-lime cheesecakes
I have been craving Magnolia Bakery’s lime and coconut cheesecake since I had it years ago when I visited New York. While one can make the argument that I could just drive to Downtown L.A. to get it, I’m lazy. Lazy enough to try making my own version of it, anyways. So for the cake,…
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…
Matcha-coconut cookies
Continuing along with the dessert Instagram lives I have been doing with Shari, we decided to do cookies as our next demonstration. This is funny to me, just because we went with something as technical as working with yeast to something even less forgiving like a souffle to something a lot easier, being cookies. I…
Flexibility, love, and trust: a plated dessert
I took inspiration from a couple things when I was conceptualizing this dessert. The first was wanting to use tofu and kinako(toasted soy bean flour) in a dessert, just to do a soy-forward concept. The second was the lyrics of the song from Steven Universe, “Here Comes a Thought”. I feel like you need flexibility…
Stormy seas, clear skies tart
This was loosely inspired by a smoothie bowl aesthetic, but I wanted to that take and make a pie out of it. I don’t know. That’s just how I was feeling. There was something about round things being placed into swirly things that looks really cool. So I went ahead and made a purple ube…
Waiting for the rain: a plated concept
The inspiration for this dessert came from Maaya Sakamoto’s song, “Waiting for the Rain”. It was a song I first listened to my senior year when I was going through some serious shit. Maybe not the best thing to listen to, because it was a beautiful, but sad song. The lyrics really stood out to…
Freddy's Harajuku 