One of my favorite things to eat are taiyaki, which are Japanese fish-shaped waffles. They do not have fish in them but are just shaped like fish. There’s a shop in So Cal called Somi Somi that I love, that sells these filled with custard, red bean, Nutella, cheese, or ice cream (with toppings). There…

For Valentine’s Day treats for my friends this year, I tried my hand at making chocolates. I tempered the chocolate and poured it into a mold, then made a soft caramel filling. After taking the chocolates out of the mold, I drizzled them with ruby chocolate to give it a pink color. Ruby chocolate is…

We have some French bakeries in town that make great croissants (Eva Bakery, Les Madeleines, and Tulie Bakery). The pain au chocolat from Tulie Bakery is my favorite, I even wrote a short essay on how it was the best thing I ever ate. I got bored one day and began to research making croissants…

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family has had a tradition of making and decorating gingerbread houses. While my mom made the houses from scratch when I was younger, more recently sometimes my sister Natalie and I have made the dough, cut the house shapes, baked, and assembled the houses. Every…

How do you color macarons? I’m not a big fan of food coloring, but you can achieve a dark color in a macaron by using food grade charcoal powder (available at Whole Foods). The dark colored macaron would be the backdrop blackberries and lime curd, which I thought would go well together. This was one…

I made these cupcakes for a surprise birthday party for my friend Tessa who loves fruity desserts. The frosting has pulverized freeze-dried raspberries in it. When I piped the frosting on, originally it was way too sweet, so I scraped it off and piped about 1/3 of the amount on. I also added a fresh…

A friend of mine on the lacrosse team was throwing a party and requested that we bring side dishes to the party. I didn’t feel like making a vegetable or starch and decided that donuts would qualify as a side dish. I have these mini donut molds for baking cake donuts, and we always have…

To celebrate a late birthday for a friend, I whipped out my three sizes of cake pans and made a chocolate raspberry cake. The cake is a rich moist chocolate cake, sliced into layers and filled with raspberry jam and raspberry swiss meringue buttercream flavored with powdered freeze-dried raspberries. The outside of the cake is…

I baked a special cake for my friend Nick’s birthday party. It is so exciting to bake cakes for my friends’ birthdays so they don’t have to buy and eat storebought cake. He wanted a lavender cake, so I made this lavender layer cake with lavender Swiss meringue buttercream, berries, candied lemon, and fresh cherries…

These were doubly patriotic cupcakes for the 4th of July: white cupcake with blueberries and a strawberry buttercream. The doubly patriotic part is the fruit: topped with red strawberry, white raspberry, and blueberry. My mom took these to her house church to share that night!