I’ve never had fried chicken from Jollibee (I haven’t had chicken in almost five years!) and it wasn’t until a few months ago that I had my first fried peach and mango pie (don’t roll your eyes at me!). Vancouver got it’s first Jollibee location a year ago but I wasn’t ready to brave the crazy long lines just for the pie. The line eventually died down so I’m here to report back that I’ve finally had the pie and we’re going to recreate it today so you can have peach mango pie at home whenever the craving hits. I’m not going to start claiming that this homemade recipe is a “copycat recipe” or i ..read more

I don’t know how I’ve lived for so long without a Costco membership. My partner and I got one recently and our weekly Costco trip (on Mondays in the late afternoon to be exact) is always a highlight of my week. The one thing that makes or breaks my Costco trip? The free sample stations. I will shamelessly try everything Costco is sampling that day and I might even get seconds (embarrassing, I know) if I really liked the product. My latest free sample that evolve into an obsession — Pisti Pistachio Cream. The lady at the booth was giving out quartered pieces of whole grain toast smothered in t ..read more

Find yourself a friend that would spend their Saturday morning lining up for fresh mango mochi for you because that is the true testament to true friendship. This isn’t just normal mochi you can get at the grocery store, but whole mango mochi that when you search ‘mango mochi richmond’ on TikTok, you will notice that it has more than 620K views. It is being sold at the most unassuming place — a food court stall in a somewhat neglected (*neglected in it’s pre-mochi era) Chinese mall that specializes in… rice bowls? This rice bowl stall generates a ridiculous line every day that weaves througho ..read more

Welcome to my unofficial Valentine’s Day baking series! I feel like I’ve been neglecting the blog lately with my 12 Days of Christmas Cookies and 10 Days of Lunar New Year series being almost exclusively shared on Instagram. We are changing that with the next few recipes which were developed with Valentine’s Day in mind, but there are good for any time of the year. We’re starting off this unofficial series with these sparkly, crispy-yet-chewy (cookie buzzword!) stuffed red velvet cookies. What are they stuffed with? You can tell your Valentine that the cookies are stuffed with love, but here ..read more

My favourite thing about Lunar New Year is all the food, especially all the sweet treats that are shared among family and friends. What makes Lunar New Year sweets superior to all the other types of desserts out there is that everything! is! so! chewy! The main character of Lunar New Year celebrations is the nian gao (年糕), or new year cake, which is a steamed glutinous rice flour-based cake (which you then pan fry!) and it is the chewiest of them all. New year cake symbolizes progress and growth, making it a popular gift to give when visiting family and friends during the holiday. My family u ..read more

I know this isn’t a gingerbread house, but it’s something better! If you have been following along my gingerbread journey for a while, you might already be familiar with my yearly gingerbread houses. If not, here’s a little recap: Gingerbread Greenhouse 2019 Gingerbread Greenhouse 2020 Gingerbread Farmstand 2021 Gingerbread Storefront 2021 Gingerbread A-Frame 2021 In the past few years, I’ve always made a house or building of some sort so I wanted to challenge myself to make something different this year. My partner has always been telling to make a diorama or a scene from a classic movie so ..read more

Every year around mid to late November little holiday signifiers start popping up — peppermint mochas start appearing on café menus, Christmas music start making its way into stores at the mall, and the iconic tins of peppermint bark make their annual appearance at my local Williams Sonoma store. William Sonoma’s peppermint bark is at the top of that list for me. When I walk into the Vancouver location of Williams Sonoma and see the pyramid of red and white tins, my heart sings. It is full on singing — not just a subtle little melody, but a complete orchestra. That’s when I know that the holi ..read more

Tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival! Happy early Mid-Autumn! I’m done all my mooncake making for this year (I made close to 10 batches!) and I did a little recap over on Instagram last night. Besides making mooncakes leading up to Mid-Autumn and having a family dinner the night of, I don’t do too much for Mid-Autumn. When I was younger, my family would join my friends’ families for a lantern walk around the neighbourhood but unfortunately that was a tradition we grew out of as we grew up. This year, however, I tried my hardest to add more Mid-Autumn festivities — tonight I’m going to a show at th ..read more

A pumpkin recipe! Rarely do I share pumpkin recipes because I get overwhelmed by all the pumpkin recipes that surface the internet during the fall months and pumpkin just isn’t my favourite ingredient. Don’t get me wrong, I love using kabocha squash (or Japanese pumpkin) in a lot of my cooking and baking — kabocha cheesecake cream puffs, kabocha salted egg yolk sesame balls, and kabocha mooncakes —but I’ll always choose kabocha over pumpkin for both flavour and texture. These pumpkin mochi cakes might be the only exception. These 3-ingredient mochi cakes call for canned pumpkin purée (not pum ..read more

I’m finally resurfacing from the chaotic baking season of Mid-Autumn Festival, where I baked so many mooncakes and filmed so many mooncake-making tutorials for Instagram and Tiktok. It’s hard to find baking inspiration after a big holiday because I go 110% leading up to the holiday and I’m out of both motivation and unsalted butter shortly after the holiday passes. I’m back now and I have been recipe testing lots of pumpkin things behind the scenes as well as working on a lot of fall cookie decorating ideas that I can’t wait to share with you. I’m still contemplating whether I’m going to do a ..read more