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14 At-Home Chemical Peels That’ll Brighten Your Skin Over Time
Chemical peels have come a long way from the formulas that require a pro’s hand or several days of downtime. Some of the best chemical peels pack in exfoliating acids that quickly and gently smooth away dead skin and brighten dark spots—all without irritation. The best part? Many of them are bottled to be safe […]
When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
View this post on Instagram
Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
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When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
View this post on Instagram
Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
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When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
View this post on Instagram
Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
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When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
View this post on Instagram
Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
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When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
View this post on Instagram
Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
The 5-Ingredient Homemade Ice Cream Recipe Olympic Breakdancer Sunny Choi Makes When Going for Gold
It tastes like sweet victory.
When American B-girl Sunny Choi isn’t killing it on the dance floor, you’ll likely find her experimenting in the kitchen. In a recent conversation I had with Choi, she unveiled that aside from breaking, she has a deep passion for food. “I absolutely love to cook. For me, it’s being able to get creative and turn off my brain for a little bit, especially after a long day,” Choi says.
This year, Choi is set to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Games, marking breaking’s official Olympics debut. In anticipation of the event (competition is scheduled for August 9-10), Choi has partnered with Incredible Egg for their “Meant to Be Broken” campaign, to dive deeper into one of her all-time favorite ingredients to nosh on when training for competition: eggs.
But like many of us, Choi loves a good dessert, which is why she can’t get enough of her latest egg-based concoction, “Custard Freeze, Sunny Style,” a homemade, lactose-free ice cream.
Ahead, Choi shares the recipe for her five-ingredient custard-based ice cream, plus a few other egg-filled dishes she makes regularly to get her pumped up to hit the dance floor.
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Cooking as another form of self-expression
Choi isn’t shy about breaking (pun intended) boundaries, especially when performing on the dance floor. However, she’s found a similar passion for trying new things when cooking up a storm in the kitchen. In fact, it’s one of her favorite places to let her imagination run free. “I like to cook; I like to bake, and just kind of make things [with] whatever’s lying around my kitchen,” she says.
Over the last few years, Choi has poured a lot of her time into experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, in part due to her own personal struggles with lactose intolerance. “I have not the greatest stomach. I’m lactose intolerant, so I actually just generally can’t have dairy,” she says, which has made her even more savvy in the kitchen.
2 savory egg dishes Choi loves to make
Sesame oil fried eggs
Coincidentally, two of her all-time favorite savory recipes feature eggs: a simple sesame oil fried egg and a spicy take on shakshuka.
“[A sesame oil fried egg] is super simple, but it reminds me of home, which is why I like it,” Choi says. To make it, she fries eggs in sesame oil—instead of olive oil or any other oil—and garnishes it with a pinch of salt. “It just gives it a subtle sesame flavor. It’s the simplest thing in the world [with] tons of protein,” Choi says.
Spicy “shakshuka”
On the other hand, she also enjoys making a shakshuka-style breakfast from time to time. However, instead of the traditional Mediterranean spices—cumin, paprika, and cayenne—she adds her own creative twist by infusing the dish with chipotle peppers and green chiles for a more Latin-inspired rendition. “I throw some eggs in it, bake it, and then eat it with some tortillas,” Choi says.
The inspiration behind the “Custard Freeze”
When looking for something sweet, Choi’s iconic “custard freeze” recipe is something she makes on repeat, and it’s easy to understand why. Aside from how delicious it is, Choi says it’s lactose-free ice cream, naturally sweetened, and has a rich, creamy consistency. Swoon.
“When I was out looking for some sort of frozen treat, years ago, I couldn’t find anything that worked for me. So, I took bits and pieces from other places, threw it all together, and tested a bunch of different variations,” Choi says.
Choi’s custard freeze recipe features just a handful of ingredients: coconut cream, egg yolks, honey, vanilla, and almond extract. The best part? You don’t need a fancy ice cream maker to make it; a food processor or blender will help achieve soft serve ice cream consistency just as well.
After tons of testing, Choi finally perfected her recipe. “It stays scoopable, has a pretty high fat content, and so when you put it in the food processor and in the freezer, you don’t have to wait for it to thaw,” she says.
For those who haven’t made homemade ice cream before, this is a game-changer. “I’m impatient when I’m trying to get dessert and I don’t want to wait for my ice cream to get soft. So I can sneak a scoop and then go to practice,” she says.
Dare to be adventurous? Choi recommends trying it “Sunny’s style” by infusing the custard with matcha for an extra boost of energy (and flavor).
As Choi gears up to win gold this summer, she says she can’t wait to compete, meet new people, and take in the energy of the event. “But I think more than anything, [I’m most excited that] my family’s going to be there. We don’t often get together with everybody,” she says. Plus, just like her, they love food. “One of my nieces is planning out an entire ‘food day,’” Choi says. “It’s really about my family being there—I think is what I’m looking forward to [the most]—even more than the competition,” she adds.
Custard Freeze, Sunny Style Recipe
Yields 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut cream
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
- Heat coconut cream in a pot over medium heat to 170°F.
- Temper the egg yolks and then add egg yolk mixture back into the hot coconut cream. (To temper egg yolks, drizzle a portion of the hot coconut cream into the egg yolks while whisking. This prevents the egg yolks from cooking and turning into scrambled eggs once added into the hot coconut cream.)
- Continue to whisk mixture over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly. Mixture should be around 170°F. For food safety, always ensure eggs are cooked to 160°F and/or use pasteurized eggs.
- Remove pot from heat and place in an ice bath. Stir the mixture to cool. If using regular honey, you can add honey and flavorings at this time. If using raw honey, cool the mixture to 105°F before adding in the honey.
- Cool and then freeze mixture.
- Once frozen, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw at room temperature.
- Add mixture to food processor or blender and process until mixture reaches the consistency of soft serve ice cream.
- Serve immediately or transfer to a container and freeze for later. Enjoy!
Pro tips: For matcha frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 1 1/2 tablespoon matcha powder after removing mixture from heat. For chocolate frozen custard, remove the almond extract, mix in 1/4 cup cocoa into the coconut cream in the beginning and then once you remove the mixture from the heat, add in 0.5 ounces dark chocolate and mix until chocolate has melted. For coffee frozen custard, remove the almond extract and add 2 teaspoons of instant coffee into the mixture while it’s hot.
Humility: An Essential Value
Humility, a designer’s essential value—that has a nice ring to it. What about humility, an office manager’s essential value? Or a dentist’s? Or a librarian’s? They all sound great. When humility is our guiding light, the path is always open for fulfillment, evolution, connection, and engagement. In this chapter, we’re going to talk about why.
That said, this is a book for designers, and to that end, I’d like to start with a story—well, a journey, really. It’s a personal one, and I’m going to make myself a bit vulnerable along the way. I call it:
The Tale of Justin’s Preposterous Pate
When I was coming out of art school, a long-haired, goateed neophyte, print was a known quantity to me; design on the web, however, was rife with complexities to navigate and discover, a problem to be solved. Though I had been formally trained in graphic design, typography, and layout, what fascinated me was how these traditional skills might be applied to a fledgling digital landscape. This theme would ultimately shape the rest of my career.
So rather than graduate and go into print like many of my friends, I devoured HTML and JavaScript books into the wee hours of the morning and taught myself how to code during my senior year. I wanted—nay, needed—to better understand the underlying implications of what my design decisions would mean once rendered in a browser.
The late ’90s and early 2000s were the so-called “Wild West” of web design. Designers at the time were all figuring out how to apply design and visual communication to the digital landscape. What were the rules? How could we break them and still engage, entertain, and convey information? At a more macro level, how could my values, inclusive of humility, respect, and connection, align in tandem with that? I was hungry to find out.
Though I’m talking about a different era, those are timeless considerations between non-career interactions and the world of design. What are your core passions, or values, that transcend medium? It’s essentially the same concept we discussed earlier on the direct parallels between what fulfills you, agnostic of the tangible or digital realms; the core themes are all the same.
First within tables, animated GIFs, Flash, then with Web Standards, divs, and CSS, there was personality, raw unbridled creativity, and unique means of presentment that often defied any semblance of a visible grid. Splash screens and “browser requirement” pages aplenty. Usability and accessibility were typically victims of such a creation, but such paramount facets of any digital design were largely (and, in hindsight, unfairly) disregarded at the expense of experimentation.
For example, this iteration of my personal portfolio site (“the pseudoroom”) from that era was experimental, if not a bit heavy- handed, in the visual communication of the concept of a living sketchbook. Very skeuomorphic. I collaborated with fellow designer and dear friend Marc Clancy (now a co-founder of the creative project organizing app Milanote) on this one, where we’d first sketch and then pass a Photoshop file back and forth to trick things out and play with varied user interactions. Then, I’d break it down and code it into a digital layout.
Along with design folio pieces, the site also offered free downloads for Mac OS customizations: desktop wallpapers that were effectively design experimentation, custom-designed typefaces, and desktop icons.
From around the same time, GUI Galaxy was a design, pixel art, and Mac-centric news portal some graphic designer friends and I conceived, designed, developed, and deployed.
Design news portals were incredibly popular during this period, featuring (what would now be considered) Tweet-size, small-format snippets of pertinent news from the categories I previously mentioned. If you took Twitter, curated it to a few categories, and wrapped it in a custom-branded experience, you’d have a design news portal from the late 90s / early 2000s.
We as designers had evolved and created a bandwidth-sensitive, web standards award-winning, much more accessibility-conscious website. Still ripe with experimentation, yet more mindful of equitable engagement. You can see a couple of content panes here, noting general news (tech, design) and Mac-centric news below. We also offered many of the custom downloads I cited before as present on my folio site but branded and themed to GUI Galaxy.
The site’s backbone was a homegrown CMS, with the presentation layer consisting of global design + illustration + news author collaboration. And the collaboration effort here, in addition to experimentation on a ‘brand’ and content delivery, was hitting my core. We were designing something bigger than any single one of us and connecting with a global audience.
Collaboration and connection transcend medium in their impact, immensely fulfilling me as a designer.
Now, why am I taking you down this trip of design memory lane? Two reasons.
First, there’s a reason for the nostalgia for that design era (the “Wild West” era, as I called it earlier): the inherent exploration, personality, and creativity that saturated many design portals and personal portfolio sites. Ultra-finely detailed pixel art UI, custom illustration, bespoke vector graphics, all underpinned by a strong design community.
Today’s web design has been in a period of stagnation. I suspect there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a site whose structure looks something like this: a hero image / banner with text overlaid, perhaps with a lovely rotating carousel of images (laying the snark on heavy there), a call to action, and three columns of sub-content directly beneath. Maybe an icon library is employed with selections that vaguely relate to their respective content.
Design, as it’s applied to the digital landscape, is in dire need of thoughtful layout, typography, and visual engagement that goes hand-in-hand with all the modern considerations we now know are paramount: usability. Accessibility. Load times and bandwidth- sensitive content delivery. A responsive presentation that meets human beings wherever they’re engaging from. We must be mindful of, and respectful toward, those concerns—but not at the expense of creativity of visual communication or via replicating cookie-cutter layouts.
Pixel Problems
Websites during this period were often designed and built on Macs whose OS and desktops looked something like this. This is Mac OS 7.5, but 8 and 9 weren’t that different.
Desktop icons fascinated me: how could any single one, at any given point, stand out to get my attention? In this example, the user’s desktop is tidy, but think of a more realistic example with icon pandemonium. Or, say an icon was part of a larger system grouping (fonts, extensions, control panels)—how did it also maintain cohesion amongst a group?
These were 32 x 32 pixel creations, utilizing a 256-color palette, designed pixel-by-pixel as mini mosaics. To me, this was the embodiment of digital visual communication under such ridiculous constraints. And often, ridiculous restrictions can yield the purification of concept and theme.
So I began to research and do my homework. I was a student of this new medium, hungry to dissect, process, discover, and make it my own.
Expanding upon the notion of exploration, I wanted to see how I could push the limits of a 32×32 pixel grid with that 256-color palette. Those ridiculous constraints forced a clarity of concept and presentation that I found incredibly appealing. The digital gauntlet had been tossed, and that challenge fueled me. And so, in my dorm room into the wee hours of the morning, I toiled away, bringing conceptual sketches into mini mosaic fruition.
These are some of my creations, utilizing the only tool available at the time to create icons called ResEdit. ResEdit was a clunky, built-in Mac OS utility not really made for exactly what we were using it for. At the core of all of this work: Research. Challenge. Problem- solving. Again, these core connection-based values are agnostic of medium.
There’s one more design portal I want to talk about, which also serves as the second reason for my story to bring this all together.
This is K10k, short for Kaliber 1000. K10k was founded in 1998 by Michael Schmidt and Toke Nygaard, and was the design news portal on the web during this period. With its pixel art-fueled presentation, ultra-focused care given to every facet and detail, and with many of the more influential designers of the time who were invited to be news authors on the site, well… it was the place to be, my friend. With respect where respect is due, GUI Galaxy’s concept was inspired by what these folks were doing.
For my part, the combination of my web design work and pixel art exploration began to get me some notoriety in the design scene. Eventually, K10k noticed and added me as one of their very select group of news authors to contribute content to the site.
Amongst my personal work and side projects—and now with this inclusion—in the design community, this put me on the map. My design work also began to be published in various printed collections, in magazines domestically and overseas, and featured on other design news portals. With that degree of success while in my early twenties, something else happened:
I evolved—devolved, really—into a colossal asshole (and in just about a year out of art school, no less). The press and the praise became what fulfilled me, and they went straight to my head. They inflated my ego. I actually felt somewhat superior to my fellow designers.
The casualties? My design stagnated. Its evolution—my evolution— stagnated.
I felt so supremely confident in my abilities that I effectively stopped researching and discovering. When previously sketching concepts or iterating ideas in lead was my automatic step one, I instead leaped right into Photoshop. I drew my inspiration from the smallest of sources (and with blinders on). Any critique of my work from my peers was often vehemently dismissed. The most tragic loss: I had lost touch with my values.
My ego almost cost me some of my friendships and burgeoning professional relationships. I was toxic in talking about design and in collaboration. But thankfully, those same friends gave me a priceless gift: candor. They called me out on my unhealthy behavior.
Admittedly, it was a gift I initially did not accept but ultimately was able to deeply reflect upon. I was soon able to accept, and process, and course correct. The realization laid me low, but the re-awakening was essential. I let go of the “reward” of adulation and re-centered upon what stoked the fire for me in art school. Most importantly: I got back to my core values.
Always Students
Following that short-term regression, I was able to push forward in my personal design and career. And I could self-reflect as I got older to facilitate further growth and course correction as needed.
As an example, let’s talk about the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC was designed “to help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity.” Thanks, Wikipedia.
Around fifteen years ago, in one of my earlier professional roles, I designed the interface for the application that generated the LHC’s particle collision diagrams. These diagrams are the rendering of what’s actually happening inside the Collider during any given particle collision event and are often considered works of art unto themselves.
Designing the interface for this application was a fascinating process for me, in that I worked with Fermilab physicists to understand what the application was trying to achieve, but also how the physicists themselves would be using it. To that end, in this role,
I cut my teeth on usability testing, working with the Fermilab team to iterate and improve the interface. How they spoke and what they spoke about was like an alien language to me. And by making myself humble and working under the mindset that I was but a student, I made myself available to be a part of their world to generate that vital connection.
I also had my first ethnographic observation experience: going to the Fermilab location and observing how the physicists used the tool in their actual environment, on their actual terminals. For example, one takeaway was that due to the level of ambient light-driven contrast within the facility, the data columns ended up using white text on a dark gray background instead of black text-on-white. This enabled them to pore over reams of data during the day and ease their eye strain. And Fermilab and CERN are government entities with rigorous accessibility standards, so my knowledge in that realm also grew. The barrier-free design was another essential form of connection.
So to those core drivers of my visual problem-solving soul and ultimate fulfillment: discovery, exposure to new media, observation, human connection, and evolution. What opened the door for those values was me checking my ego before I walked through it.
An evergreen willingness to listen, learn, understand, grow, evolve, and connect yields our best work. In particular, I want to focus on the words ‘grow’ and ‘evolve’ in that statement. If we are always students of our craft, we are also continually making ourselves available to evolve. Yes, we have years of applicable design study under our belt. Or the focused lab sessions from a UX bootcamp. Or the monogrammed portfolio of our work. Or, ultimately, decades of a career behind us.
But all that said: experience does not equal “expert.”
As soon as we close our minds via an inner monologue of ‘knowing it all’ or branding ourselves a “#thoughtleader” on social media, the designer we are is our final form. The designer we can be will never exist.
I am a creative.
I am a creative. What I do is alchemy. It is a mystery. I do not so much do it, as let it be done through me.
I am a creative. Not all creative people like this label. Not all see themselves this way. Some creative people see science in what they do. That is their truth, and I respect it. Maybe I even envy them, a little. But my process is different—my being is different.
Apologizing and qualifying in advance is a distraction. That’s what my brain does to sabotage me. I set it aside for now. I can come back later to apologize and qualify. After I’ve said what I came to say. Which is hard enough.
Except when it is easy and flows like a river of wine.
Sometimes it does come that way. Sometimes what I need to create comes in an instant. I have learned not to say it at that moment, because if you admit that sometimes the idea just comes and it is the best idea and you know it is the best idea, they think you don’t work hard enough.
Sometimes I work and work and work until the idea comes. Sometimes it comes instantly and I don’t tell anyone for three days. Sometimes I’m so excited by the idea that came instantly that I blurt it out, can’t help myself. Like a boy who found a prize in his Cracker Jacks. Sometimes I get away with this. Sometimes other people agree: yes, that is the best idea. Most times they don’t and I regret having given way to enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is best saved for the meeting where it will make a difference. Not the casual get-together that precedes that meeting by two other meetings. Nobody knows why we have all these meetings. We keep saying we’re doing away with them, but then just finding other ways to have them. Sometimes they are even good. But other times they are a distraction from the actual work. The proportion between when meetings are useful, and when they are a pitiful distraction, varies, depending on what you do and where you do it. And who you are and how you do it. Again I digress. I am a creative. That is the theme.
Sometimes many hours of hard and patient work produce something that is barely serviceable. Sometimes I have to accept that and move on to the next project.
Don’t ask about process. I am a creative.
I am a creative. I don’t control my dreams. And I don’t control my best ideas.
I can hammer away, surround myself with facts or images, and sometimes that works. I can go for a walk, and sometimes that works. I can be making dinner and there’s a Eureka having nothing to do with sizzling oil and bubbling pots. Often I know what to do the instant I wake up. And then, almost as often, as I become conscious and part of the world again, the idea that would have saved me turns to vanishing dust in a mindless wind of oblivion. For creativity, I believe, comes from that other world. The one we enter in dreams, and perhaps, before birth and after death. But that’s for poets to wonder, and I am not a poet. I am a creative. And it’s for theologians to mass armies about in their creative world that they insist is real. But that is another digression. And a depressing one. Maybe on a much more important topic than whether I am a creative or not. But still a digression from what I came here to say.
Sometimes the process is avoidance. And agony. You know the cliché about the tortured artist? It’s true, even when the artist (and let’s put that noun in quotes) is trying to write a soft drink jingle, a callback in a tired sitcom, a budget request.
Some people who hate being called creative may be closeted creatives, but that’s between them and their gods. No offense meant. Your truth is true, too. But mine is for me.
Creatives recognize creatives.
Creatives recognize creatives like queers recognize queers, like real rappers recognize real rappers, like cons know cons. Creatives feel massive respect for creatives. We love, honor, emulate, and practically deify the great ones. To deify any human is, of course, a tragic mistake. We have been warned. We know better. We know people are just people. They squabble, they are lonely, they regret their most important decisions, they are poor and hungry, they can be cruel, they can be just as stupid as we can, because, like us, they are clay. But. But. But they make this amazing thing. They birth something that did not exist before them, and could not exist without them. They are the mothers of ideas. And I suppose, since it’s just lying there, I have to add that they are the mothers of invention. Ba dum bum! OK, that’s done. Continue.
Creatives belittle our own small achievements, because we compare them to those of the great ones. Beautiful animation! Well, I’m no Miyazaki. Now THAT is greatness. That is greatness straight from the mind of God. This half-starved little thing that I made? It more or less fell off the back of the turnip truck. And the turnips weren’t even fresh.
Creatives knows that, at best, they are Salieri. Even the creatives who are Mozart believe that.
I am a creative. I haven’t worked in advertising in 30 years, but in my nightmares, it’s my former creative directors who judge me. And they are right to do so. I am too lazy, too facile, and when it really counts, my mind goes blank. There is no pill for creative dysfunction.
I am a creative. Every deadline I make is an adventure that makes Indiana Jones look like a pensioner snoring in a deck chair. The longer I remain a creative, the faster I am when I do my work and the longer I brood and walk in circles and stare blankly before I do that work.
I am still 10 times faster than people who are not creative, or people who have only been creative a short while, or people who have only been professionally creative a short while. It’s just that, before I work 10 times as fast as they do, I spend twice as long as they do putting the work off. I am that confident in my ability to do a great job when I put my mind to it. I am that addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement. I am still that afraid of the jump.
I am not an artist.
I am a creative. Not an artist. Though I dreamed, as a lad, of someday being that. Some of us belittle our gifts and dislike ourselves because we are not Michelangelos and Warhols. That is narcissism—but at least we aren’t in politics.
I am a creative. Though I believe in reason and science, I decide by intuition and impulse. And live with what follows—the catastrophes as well as the triumphs.
I am a creative. Every word I’ve said here will annoy other creatives, who see things differently. Ask two creatives a question, get three opinions. Our disagreement, our passion about it, and our commitment to our own truth are, at least to me, the proofs that we are creatives, no matter how we may feel about it.
I am a creative. I lament my lack of taste in the areas about which I know very little, which is to say almost all areas of human knowledge. And I trust my taste above all other things in the areas closest to my heart, or perhaps, more accurately, to my obsessions. Without my obsessions, I would probably have to spend my time looking life in the eye, and almost none of us can do that for long. Not honestly. Not really. Because much in life, if you really look at it, is unbearable.
I am a creative. I believe, as a parent believes, that when I am gone, some small good part of me will carry on in the mind of at least one other person.
Working saves me from worrying about work.
I am a creative. I live in dread of my small gift suddenly going away.
I am a creative. I am too busy making the next thing to spend too much time deeply considering that almost nothing I make will come anywhere near the greatness I comically aspire to.
I am a creative. I believe in the ultimate mystery of process. I believe in it so much, I am even fool enough to publish an essay I dictated into a tiny machine and didn’t take time to review or revise. I won’t do this often, I promise. But I did it just now, because, as afraid as I might be of your seeing through my pitiful gestures toward the beautiful, I was even more afraid of forgetting what I came to say.
There. I think I’ve said it.
Opportunities for AI in Accessibility
In reading Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it. In fact, I’m very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft as an accessibility innovation strategist who helps run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways; and it can also be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well.
I’d like you to consider this a “yes… and” piece to complement Joe’s post. I’m not trying to refute any of what he’s saying but rather provide some visibility to projects and opportunities where AI can make meaningful differences for people with disabilities. To be clear, I’m not saying that there aren’t real risks or pressing issues with AI that need to be addressed—there are, and we’ve needed to address them, like, yesterday—but I want to take a little time to talk about what’s possible in hopes that we’ll get there one day.
Alternative text
Joe’s piece spends a lot of time talking about computer-vision models generating alternative text. He highlights a ton of valid issues with the current state of things. And while computer-vision models continue to improve in the quality and richness of detail in their descriptions, their results aren’t great. As he rightly points out, the current state of image analysis is pretty poor—especially for certain image types—in large part because current AI systems examine images in isolation rather than within the contexts that they’re in (which is a consequence of having separate “foundation” models for text analysis and image analysis). Today’s models aren’t trained to distinguish between images that are contextually relevant (that should probably have descriptions) and those that are purely decorative (which might not need a description) either. Still, I still think there’s potential in this space.
As Joe mentions, human-in-the-loop authoring of alt text should absolutely be a thing. And if AI can pop in to offer a starting point for alt text—even if that starting point might be a prompt saying What is this BS? That’s not right at all… Let me try to offer a starting point—I think that’s a win.
Taking things a step further, if we can specifically train a model to analyze image usage in context, it could help us more quickly identify which images are likely to be decorative and which ones likely require a description. That will help reinforce which contexts call for image descriptions and it’ll improve authors’ efficiency toward making their pages more accessible.
While complex images—like graphs and charts—are challenging to describe in any sort of succinct way (even for humans), the image example shared in the GPT4 announcement points to an interesting opportunity as well. Let’s suppose that you came across a chart whose description was simply the title of the chart and the kind of visualization it was, such as: Pie chart comparing smartphone usage to feature phone usage among US households making under $30,000 a year. (That would be a pretty awful alt text for a chart since that would tend to leave many questions about the data unanswered, but then again, let’s suppose that that was the description that was in place.) If your browser knew that that image was a pie chart (because an onboard model concluded this), imagine a world where users could ask questions like these about the graphic:
- Do more people use smartphones or feature phones?
- How many more?
- Is there a group of people that don’t fall into either of these buckets?
- How many is that?
Setting aside the realities of large language model (LLM) hallucinations—where a model just makes up plausible-sounding “facts”—for a moment, the opportunity to learn more about images and data in this way could be revolutionary for blind and low-vision folks as well as for people with various forms of color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and so on. It could also be useful in educational contexts to help people who can see these charts, as is, to understand the data in the charts.
Taking things a step further: What if you could ask your browser to simplify a complex chart? What if you could ask it to isolate a single line on a line graph? What if you could ask your browser to transpose the colors of the different lines to work better for form of color blindness you have? What if you could ask it to swap colors for patterns? Given these tools’ chat-based interfaces and our existing ability to manipulate images in today’s AI tools, that seems like a possibility.
Now imagine a purpose-built model that could extract the information from that chart and convert it to another format. For example, perhaps it could turn that pie chart (or better yet, a series of pie charts) into more accessible (and useful) formats, like spreadsheets. That would be amazing!
Matching algorithms
Safiya Umoja Noble absolutely hit the nail on the head when she titled her book Algorithms of Oppression. While her book was focused on the ways that search engines reinforce racism, I think that it’s equally true that all computer models have the potential to amplify conflict, bias, and intolerance. Whether it’s Twitter always showing you the latest tweet from a bored billionaire, YouTube sending us into a Q-hole, or Instagram warping our ideas of what natural bodies look like, we know that poorly authored and maintained algorithms are incredibly harmful. A lot of this stems from a lack of diversity among the people who shape and build them. When these platforms are built with inclusively baked in, however, there’s real potential for algorithm development to help people with disabilities.
Take Mentra, for example. They are an employment network for neurodivergent people. They use an algorithm to match job seekers with potential employers based on over 75 data points. On the job-seeker side of things, it considers each candidate’s strengths, their necessary and preferred workplace accommodations, environmental sensitivities, and so on. On the employer side, it considers each work environment, communication factors related to each job, and the like. As a company run by neurodivergent folks, Mentra made the decision to flip the script when it came to typical employment sites. They use their algorithm to propose available candidates to companies, who can then connect with job seekers that they are interested in; reducing the emotional and physical labor on the job-seeker side of things.
When more people with disabilities are involved in the creation of algorithms, that can reduce the chances that these algorithms will inflict harm on their communities. That’s why diverse teams are so important.
Imagine that a social media company’s recommendation engine was tuned to analyze who you’re following and if it was tuned to prioritize follow recommendations for people who talked about similar things but who were different in some key ways from your existing sphere of influence. For example, if you were to follow a bunch of nondisabled white male academics who talk about AI, it could suggest that you follow academics who are disabled or aren’t white or aren’t male who also talk about AI. If you took its recommendations, perhaps you’d get a more holistic and nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the AI field. These same systems should also use their understanding of biases about particular communities—including, for instance, the disability community—to make sure that they aren’t recommending any of their users follow accounts that perpetuate biases against (or, worse, spewing hate toward) those groups.
Other ways that AI can helps people with disabilities
If I weren’t trying to put this together between other tasks, I’m sure that I could go on and on, providing all kinds of examples of how AI could be used to help people with disabilities, but I’m going to make this last section into a bit of a lightning round. In no particular order:
- Voice preservation. You may have seen the VALL-E paper or Apple’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day announcement or you may be familiar with the voice-preservation offerings from Microsoft, Acapela, or others. It’s possible to train an AI model to replicate your voice, which can be a tremendous boon for people who have ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) or motor-neuron disease or other medical conditions that can lead to an inability to talk. This is, of course, the same tech that can also be used to create audio deepfakes, so it’s something that we need to approach responsibly, but the tech has truly transformative potential.
- Voice recognition. Researchers like those in the Speech Accessibility Project are paying people with disabilities for their help in collecting recordings of people with atypical speech. As I type, they are actively recruiting people with Parkinson’s and related conditions, and they have plans to expand this to other conditions as the project progresses. This research will result in more inclusive data sets that will let more people with disabilities use voice assistants, dictation software, and voice-response services as well as control their computers and other devices more easily, using only their voice.
- Text transformation. The current generation of LLMs is quite capable of adjusting existing text content without injecting hallucinations. This is hugely empowering for people with cognitive disabilities who may benefit from text summaries or simplified versions of text or even text that’s prepped for Bionic Reading.
The importance of diverse teams and data
We need to recognize that our differences matter. Our lived experiences are influenced by the intersections of the identities that we exist in. These lived experiences—with all their complexities (and joys and pain)—are valuable inputs to the software, services, and societies that we shape. Our differences need to be represented in the data that we use to train new models, and the folks who contribute that valuable information need to be compensated for sharing it with us. Inclusive data sets yield more robust models that foster more equitable outcomes.
Want a model that doesn’t demean or patronize or objectify people with disabilities? Make sure that you have content about disabilities that’s authored by people with a range of disabilities, and make sure that that’s well represented in the training data.
Want a model that doesn’t use ableist language? You may be able to use existing data sets to build a filter that can intercept and remediate ableist language before it reaches readers. That being said, when it comes to sensitivity reading, AI models won’t be replacing human copy editors anytime soon.
Want a coding copilot that gives you accessible recommendations from the jump? Train it on code that you know to be accessible.
I have no doubt that AI can and will harm people… today, tomorrow, and well into the future. But I also believe that we can acknowledge that and, with an eye towards accessibility (and, more broadly, inclusion), make thoughtful, considerate, and intentional changes in our approaches to AI that will reduce harm over time as well. Today, tomorrow, and well into the future.
Many thanks to Kartik Sawhney for helping me with the development of this piece, Ashley Bischoff for her invaluable editorial assistance, and, of course, Joe Dolson for the prompt.
The Wax and the Wane of the Web
I offer a single bit of advice to friends and family when they become new parents: When you start to think that you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change. Just as you start to get the hang of feedings, diapers, and regular naps, it’s time for solid food, potty training, and overnight sleeping. When you figure those out, it’s time for preschool and rare naps. The cycle goes on and on.
The same applies for those of us working in design and development these days. Having worked on the web for almost three decades at this point, I’ve seen the regular wax and wane of ideas, techniques, and technologies. Each time that we as developers and designers get into a regular rhythm, some new idea or technology comes along to shake things up and remake our world.
How we got here
I built my first website in the mid-’90s. Design and development on the web back then was a free-for-all, with few established norms. For any layout aside from a single column, we used table elements, often with empty cells containing a single pixel spacer GIF to add empty space. We styled text with numerous font tags, nesting the tags every time we wanted to vary the font style. And we had only three or four typefaces to choose from: Arial, Courier, or Times New Roman. When Verdana and Georgia came out in 1996, we rejoiced because our options had nearly doubled. The only safe colors to choose from were the 216 “web safe” colors known to work across platforms. The few interactive elements (like contact forms, guest books, and counters) were mostly powered by CGI scripts (predominantly written in Perl at the time). Achieving any kind of unique look involved a pile of hacks all the way down. Interaction was often limited to specific pages in a site.
The birth of web standards
At the turn of the century, a new cycle started. Crufty code littered with table layouts and font tags waned, and a push for web standards waxed. Newer technologies like CSS got more widespread adoption by browsers makers, developers, and designers. This shift toward standards didn’t happen accidentally or overnight. It took active engagement between the W3C and browser vendors and heavy evangelism from folks like the Web Standards Project to build standards. A List Apart and books like Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman played key roles in teaching developers and designers why standards are important, how to implement them, and how to sell them to their organizations. And approaches like progressive enhancement introduced the idea that content should be available for all browsers—with additional enhancements available for more advanced browsers. Meanwhile, sites like the CSS Zen Garden showcased just how powerful and versatile CSS can be when combined with a solid semantic HTML structure.
Server-side languages like PHP, Java, and .NET overtook Perl as the predominant back-end processors, and the cgi-bin was tossed in the trash bin. With these better server-side tools came the first era of web applications, starting with content-management systems (particularly in the blogging space with tools like Blogger, Grey Matter, Movable Type, and WordPress). In the mid-2000s, AJAX opened doors for asynchronous interaction between the front end and back end. Suddenly, pages could update their content without needing to reload. A crop of JavaScript frameworks like Prototype, YUI, and jQuery arose to help developers build more reliable client-side interaction across browsers that had wildly varying levels of standards support. Techniques like image replacement let crafty designers and developers display fonts of their choosing. And technologies like Flash made it possible to add animations, games, and even more interactivity.
These new technologies, standards, and techniques reinvigorated the industry in many ways. Web design flourished as designers and developers explored more diverse styles and layouts. But we still relied on tons of hacks. Early CSS was a huge improvement over table-based layouts when it came to basic layout and text styling, but its limitations at the time meant that designers and developers still relied heavily on images for complex shapes (such as rounded or angled corners) and tiled backgrounds for the appearance of full-length columns (among other hacks). Complicated layouts required all manner of nested floats or absolute positioning (or both). Flash and image replacement for custom fonts was a great start toward varying the typefaces from the big five, but both hacks introduced accessibility and performance problems. And JavaScript libraries made it easy for anyone to add a dash of interaction to pages, although at the cost of doubling or even quadrupling the download size of simple websites.
The web as software platform
The symbiosis between the front end and back end continued to improve, and that led to the current era of modern web applications. Between expanded server-side programming languages (which kept growing to include Ruby, Python, Go, and others) and newer front-end tools like React, Vue, and Angular, we could build fully capable software on the web. Alongside these tools came others, including collaborative version control, build automation, and shared package libraries. What was once primarily an environment for linked documents became a realm of infinite possibilities.
At the same time, mobile devices became more capable, and they gave us internet access in our pockets. Mobile apps and responsive design opened up opportunities for new interactions anywhere and any time.
This combination of capable mobile devices and powerful development tools contributed to the waxing of social media and other centralized tools for people to connect and consume. As it became easier and more common to connect with others directly on Twitter, Facebook, and even Slack, the desire for hosted personal sites waned. Social media offered connections on a global scale, with both the good and bad that that entails.
Want a much more extensive history of how we got here, with some other takes on ways that we can improve? Jeremy Keith wrote “Of Time and the Web.” Or check out the “Web Design History Timeline” at the Web Design Museum. Neal Agarwal also has a fun tour through “Internet Artifacts.”
Where we are now
In the last couple of years, it’s felt like we’ve begun to reach another major inflection point. As social-media platforms fracture and wane, there’s been a growing interest in owning our own content again. There are many different ways to make a website, from the tried-and-true classic of hosting plain HTML files to static site generators to content management systems of all flavors. The fracturing of social media also comes with a cost: we lose crucial infrastructure for discovery and connection. Webmentions, RSS, ActivityPub, and other tools of the IndieWeb can help with this, but they’re still relatively underimplemented and hard to use for the less nerdy. We can build amazing personal websites and add to them regularly, but without discovery and connection, it can sometimes feel like we may as well be shouting into the void.
Browser support for CSS, JavaScript, and other standards like web components has accelerated, especially through efforts like Interop. New technologies gain support across the board in a fraction of the time that they used to. I often learn about a new feature and check its browser support only to find that its coverage is already above 80 percent. Nowadays, the barrier to using newer techniques often isn’t browser support but simply the limits of how quickly designers and developers can learn what’s available and how to adopt it.
Today, with a few commands and a couple of lines of code, we can prototype almost any idea. All the tools that we now have available make it easier than ever to start something new. But the upfront cost that these frameworks may save in initial delivery eventually comes due as upgrading and maintaining them becomes a part of our technical debt.
If we rely on third-party frameworks, adopting new standards can sometimes take longer since we may have to wait for those frameworks to adopt those standards. These frameworks—which used to let us adopt new techniques sooner—have now become hindrances instead. These same frameworks often come with performance costs too, forcing users to wait for scripts to load before they can read or interact with pages. And when scripts fail (whether through poor code, network issues, or other environmental factors), there’s often no alternative, leaving users with blank or broken pages.
Where do we go from here?
Today’s hacks help to shape tomorrow’s standards. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing hacks—for now—to move the present forward. Problems only arise when we’re unwilling to admit that they’re hacks or we hesitate to replace them. So what can we do to create the future we want for the web?
Build for the long haul. Optimize for performance, for accessibility, and for the user. Weigh the costs of those developer-friendly tools. They may make your job a little easier today, but how do they affect everything else? What’s the cost to users? To future developers? To standards adoption? Sometimes the convenience may be worth it. Sometimes it’s just a hack that you’ve grown accustomed to. And sometimes it’s holding you back from even better options.
Start from standards. Standards continue to evolve over time, but browsers have done a remarkably good job of continuing to support older standards. The same isn’t always true of third-party frameworks. Sites built with even the hackiest of HTML from the ’90s still work just fine today. The same can’t always be said of sites built with frameworks even after just a couple years.
Design with care. Whether your craft is code, pixels, or processes, consider the impacts of each decision. The convenience of many a modern tool comes at the cost of not always understanding the underlying decisions that have led to its design and not always considering the impact that those decisions can have. Rather than rushing headlong to “move fast and break things,” use the time saved by modern tools to consider more carefully and design with deliberation.
Always be learning. If you’re always learning, you’re also growing. Sometimes it may be hard to pinpoint what’s worth learning and what’s just today’s hack. You might end up focusing on something that won’t matter next year, even if you were to focus solely on learning standards. (Remember XHTML?) But constant learning opens up new connections in your brain, and the hacks that you learn one day may help to inform different experiments another day.
Play, experiment, and be weird! This web that we’ve built is the ultimate experiment. It’s the single largest human endeavor in history, and yet each of us can create our own pocket within it. Be courageous and try new things. Build a playground for ideas. Make goofy experiments in your own mad science lab. Start your own small business. There has never been a more empowering place to be creative, take risks, and explore what we’re capable of.
Share and amplify. As you experiment, play, and learn, share what’s worked for you. Write on your own website, post on whichever social media site you prefer, or shout it from a TikTok. Write something for A List Apart! But take the time to amplify others too: find new voices, learn from them, and share what they’ve taught you.
Go forth and make
As designers and developers for the web (and beyond), we’re responsible for building the future every day, whether that may take the shape of personal websites, social media tools used by billions, or anything in between. Let’s imbue our values into the things that we create, and let’s make the web a better place for everyone. Create that thing that only you are uniquely qualified to make. Then share it, make it better, make it again, or make something new. Learn. Make. Share. Grow. Rinse and repeat. Every time you think that you’ve mastered the web, everything will change.