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It’s mulberry picking season here in the Bay Area, and a friend generously gifted us a jar of homemade mulberry jam. While my partner experiments with mulberry-inspired cocktails, I went digging for baked goods recipes that could highlight the mulberry jam’s flavor.
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![[healthy] passionfruit pound cake – no cane sugar no butter](http://emmacado.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/PXL_20250606_0305305452-scaled.jpg)
When you’ve got a big jar of passion fruit jam nearing its expiration date, and your partner can’t quite use it up in cocktails, it’s the perfect excuse to get creative in the kitchen. I couldn’t let that tropical, tangy delicacy go to waste. So I started experimenting: first with passion fruit triple chocolate cookies (a tasty idea, but the seeds hardened in the bake), and then with a passion fruit pound cake, which turned out to be a delicious success.
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Contestants: Arsicult, Juniper, Jina Bakes, Jane the Bakery, Neighbor Bakehouse, and… Safeway (yes, we need Costco in here next time!)
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I first saw these car wheel–like, tightly layered pastries at Jina Bakes in San Francisco. They switched up the monthly flavors—strawberry, hojicha, lemon custard—and I loved every single one. Suddenly, they started sprouting in every bakery I visited, and I knew I had to bake it myself. My confidence was boosted after successfully baking croissants after 6 trials and experimenting with both sweet and savory versions. I rolled up my sleeves again and even bought pastry rings just to try making this viral “New York Roll” at home, filled with passionfruit coconut pastry cream and topped with dark chocolate ganache.
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The best banana bread I’ve ever had wasn’t even eaten by the person who made it. A former colleague, who’s lactose intolerant, used to bake incredible dark chocolate banana bread—but never tasted it herself. Instead, she refined the recipe based on feedback from lucky coworkers like me. Inspired by her, I always turn to banana bread when I have leftover ripe bananas. This version is rich with dark chocolate, subtly nutty from chunky peanut butter, and has a fun texture thanks to shredded coconut. It’s deliciously moist, indulgent, and still has room for future experiments!
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Bringing back what we learned from coffee class at Hanoi to the Bay Area 🙂
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Friend planned to propose on July 4th and hence made these heart shape mousse for the first time! Recipe is not optimized so needs to keep refining.
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Housewarming gift for friends who like citrusy and chocolate cake flavors. Thought about making Valencia cake (orange and chocolate flavor) at first, but since I have a jar of fig jam and a box of fresh fig, pivoted to make a fig & chocolate cake instead. However, Fig & chocolate crisp bottom is so “chocolate” heavy, completely covering the fig flavor, I decided to make the other layers fig flavor rather than chocolate + fig flavors, and only have a mirror glaze of pure chocolate flavor.
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Friend sent me a tiktok video with scallion croissants, as someone who loves scallion steam bun, scallion pancake and of course meat floss, I decided to recreate the scallion croissants with meat floss. Thanks to multiple croissant trials at pandemic, I was able to leverage the Weekend Bakery croissant recipe and came up with the recipe to combine my favorite flavors with my favorite pastry texture.
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It’s 2023 holiday time!! Hustling to two parties today so making some cute Christmas themed cookies 🙂
