A New Pop-Up Brings Cream Puffs and Cakes With Bold Asian Flavors to Seattle

Asian desserts that includes substances like matcha, ube, pandan, and black sesame have been broadly out there at Asian bakeries and cafes within the Seattle space for years. However the homeowners of a brand new Seattle pop-up bakery, Milk and Mochi, have been drawing strains at their pop-ups for combining these daring Asian flavors with standard Western-style desserts like muffins and the enterprise’ now social-media well-known creampuffs.

Sisters Nancy and Hannah Phan had been born in Saigon, Vietnam and grew up within the Los Angeles space earlier than transferring to Seattle within the final decade. The duo credit score their upbringing in a food-focused household within the cultural melting pot of Southern California as being the inspiration behind Milk and Mochi. “We loved these flavors all through our childhood and liked how totally different cultures shared and adopted substances and concepts, ” Nancy says. “Milk and Mochi is our try and have a good time flavors which might be nostalgic to many Asians and Asian-People in acquainted desserts.”

With no formal culinary coaching or expertise within the meals business, Hannah dove into baking throughout the pandemic, and the duo tweaked and perfected their recipes by testing them with household and mates, “who had been guinea pigs for a lot of failed makes an attempt,” she says.

The enterprise launched its first pop-up at Ono Poke in Edmonds early summer season 2022, and the overwhelming optimistic group response motivated the sisters to maintain going. Since then, they’ve had pop-ups at companies throughout Seattle and the Eastside, together with Coffeeholic in Columbia Metropolis, Aroom Espresso in Fremont, and Bellevue’s Cafe Aloe.

Milk and Mochi’s fall menu of choux au craquelin (cream puffs with a crunchy prime) consists of elaborate concoctions of Asian substances. One cream puff is crammed with red-bean paste and kinako (toasted soybean powder) diplomat cream and is topped with a bit of recent mochi lined in kinako. Different cream puff flavors embody hojicha (Japanese roasted inexperienced tea) with maple cream, and, in an Asian-American nod to the PSL memes, a kabocha pumpkin spiced cream filling topped with a crunchy oat crisp. Along with cream puffs, Milk and Mochi can also be introducing a darkish chocolate cake drizzled with a house-made miso caramel, offered by the slice.

These sorts of daring flavors are on the forefront of Milk and Mochi’s ethos. “If a dessert specifies an ingredient, we don’t need clients to hunt for it, the style ought to be very evident,” says Nancy Phan. “We love when clients fall in love with a taste they didn’t assume they’d like, or pay us the last word praise for Asian desserts: ‘Not too candy.’”

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Milk and Mochi

Past daring flavors, the Phan sisters have been getting consideration for the aesthetics and contrasting textures of their desserts. Prospects routinely publish cross-sections of Milk and Mochi’s cream puffs on social media, which has led to quite a lot of publicity — on-line pre-orders for the cream puffs now promote out inside minutes of being introduced, although the enterprise all the time saves some goodies for walk-up clients.

Wanting towards the longer term, Milk and Mochi is scouting areas to open a everlasting sit-down cafe, looking for to create an off-the-cuff vibe that options quite a lot of rotating baked items and desserts with assertive Asian flavors. “Our dream is to by no means have any everlasting taste mixtures, however a number of seasonal specialties, new experiments, and rotating favorites,” Hannah says.

Milk and Mochi’s subsequent pop-up is on the October 22 at DIY Tea in Newcastle. The sisters are additionally planning to create a field of customer-selected favorites, in time for the vacations.

For brand new flavors, pre-ordering, and upcoming pop-up schedules and areas comply with, Milk and Mochi on Instagram.