Baking
My first year at Chapel Hill was pretty stressful; I found baking to be a relaxing hobby. Here are some of my creations.
Gingerbread cake with spiced Italian meringue buttercream and candied cranberries.
Prinsesstårta: Swedish vanilla sponge with pastry cream and homemade raspberry jam.
Prinsesstårta (inside).
Carrot Cake with cream cheese icing and marzipan carrots.
Guiness Stout Cake: Deep chocolate layer cake.
S'mores Cake: Chocolate cake with marshmallow fluff buttercream and graham cracker crumble.
Tiramisu Cake: Chocolate cake soaked in fresh espresso and iced with whipped cream.
Croquembouche: tower of homemade cream puffs held together by caramel.
Black Forest Cake: Chocolate cake with a cherry compote, cherry liquor, and whipped cream icing.
Black Forest Cake 2: Although I felt this one looks better, it did not taste as good.
My first wedding cake! Chocolate cake with peppermint Swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate ganache. Congrats Meredith and Mario!
Chocolate with chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache. A small cake made with the scraps leftover from the wedding cake.
Dutch Apple Pie.
Apple tart with an apricot glaze and an almond meal crust.
Another Raspberry Chocolate cake. This one has homemade jam in the center.
Hummingbird Cake.
Mint Chocolate Chip Cake.
S'mores Cake, take 2.
Blackberry Pie with a Buttermilk Crust. I was really proud of this one :)
Chocolate Stout Cake with Bourbon-Vanilla Icing. For my Uncle's Birthday (hey, Bill!)
Mint Chocolate Chip Cake 2.
My second attempt at the Hummingbird Cake.
Another chocolate stout cake with bourbon vanilla cream cheese icing.
Raspberry chocolate cake with an (honestly failed) attempt at a mirror glaze.
(Gluten-free) Strawberry Shortcake.
Another freaking chocolate raspberry cake :)
Apple Pie, Thanksgiving 2023.
Mint Chocolate Chip Cake, take 3.
Joulutorttu! Happy Finnish Independence Day!
And yet another chocolate stout cake with bourbon vanilla cream cheese icing. This one is getting popular...
Another take on my carrot cake (this time at altitude). My carrot cakes might be my personal favorite.
Another wedding cake, this time for my sister. Stout cake with coffee swiss meringue buttercream and gum paste roses.
My (winning!) submission to the TABLE Magazine amatuer baking competition. Deep molasses cookies soaked in rum, topped with lemon curd and whipped cream.
Personal Projects and Media (click images)
Pokémon Orange & Blue is a version of the Pokémon games themed around my undergraduate university: Bucknell. It is written in Java and was created by myself and 3 good friends of mine. As we are all avid fans of Pokémon, our goal was to create something that looked and felt like one of the original games. Among other things, this project was an exercise in the Agile Scrum methodology. The above Pokéball links to a .jar file of the game, which requires an updated version of Java to run.
I worked on a software team with three other coders on a project commissioned by Bucknell's Griot Institute (for Africana Studies) to help create an interactive map to creatively display the history of the sugar mills of Antigua. This was done using an agile/scrum methodology and relied heavily on the previous expertise of our team members. The main vision of this project was to provide a visually-pleasing way to present the history of the African Diaspora in Antigua.
Visual Disturbances was an interdisciplinary project amongst people in the Mathematics, Computer Science, Psychology, and Film & Media Studies fields. I was in charge of the data analysis and visualizations for this project and provided major contributions to the upcoming paper (see publications).
Caught is a short film written, directed, and produced by myself and my good friend Alex Gao for a 24-hour horror film competition. A very special thanks to our leading lady: Hannah Rickertsen! After a very fun and very late night, we won first place (and the cash price)! Our film was screened at the beautiful campus theatre and can be watched on YouTube (click image).