I cooked a lot during our vacation, but I missed baking.
I looked through my cookbooks, and I decided on sesame cookies as my first baking project after our vacation.
Me giving the cookies good energy through the oven door (lol).
I’ve used this recipe before, but this time I added Matcha.
It didn’t show the color much, but you can certainly taste Matcha.
I really enjoy baking and eating home-baked sweets.
Hope I can bake much more before going back to work.
Happy New Year!
This mochi made of oatmeal is absolutely delicious!!
I sprinkled Kinako (roasted soy powder) and then drizzled a mixture of soy sauce and maple syrup.
This salty-sweet syrup was so good, almost addictive.
I liked it so much that I made another batch right after I finished these!
Oatmeal Mochi recipe (in Japanese) -> https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm1AeO2BdC4/
What do you wish for 2023?
Me?
WORLD PEACE.
This Bûche De Noël (or Yule Log) is not made of cake but made of sandwich bread!
You need several (I used four) slices of white bread.
Take crust off.
Roll them flat with a rolling pin.
Spread your favorite jam (I used cherry jam) and roll them into a log.
Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest while you prepare Adzuki butter.
I just combined and mixed store-bought sweet Adzuki paste and vegan butter until it was creamy.
Spread it over the log.
Voila!
As you can imagine, it’s quite small.
It’s perfect for one or two (I ate the whole thing myself!).
It was absolutely delicious!
Since it’s so easy to make, it can be a make-your-own project for kids too.
If Adzuki is not your cup of tea, you can simply use chocolate whipped cream or any frosting.
Merry Christmas.
I hope it’s not too shocking to you.
The idea came from last night…
I celebrated our anniversary month at Kaiseki Furukawa, a Kaiseki restaurant, in Minneapolis.
This was our second course, a part of the 10-course meal.
This course consisted of eight different things, and one of them was a Shiitake shortbread cookie.
When the chef told me what it was, I was initially skeptical.
But once I had my first bite, I loved it!
It definitely tasted like Shiitake.
It was unique and delicious.
Since I liked the cookie so much that I wanted to make Shiitake sweets myself.
Luckily, I had some dried local Shiitake.
I picked madeleine to be my first Shiitake sweets.
I added powdered dried Shiitake to the batter.
They turned out great!
They got the beautiful brown color.
And they were delicious!!
Who knew mushroom can taste so good in a cake?
The last few years my husband has been ordering a custom vegan cake for me for my birthday from Betsy.
https://www.instagram.com/seymourmunchmore/
This year I requested a cake made of coffee/rum sponge cake, vanilla frosting, and chestnut cream.
She did an awesome job as usual.
It was not only pretty but also delicious.
Stollen is a traditional German Christmas bread.
It doesn’t seem like a too popular thing here in the U.S., (at least in the region where I live, I don’t know many people who buy, make, or eat it or talk about it).
For some reason, it’s extremely popular in Japan, and I see it everywhere on social media this time of the year.
I’ve wanted to make one myself the past few years, but I didn’t have a chance to do so until this year.
My stollen is very well spiced and packed with black walnuts (from my brother-in-law’s yad) and rum soaked fruits.
This was so delicious!!
I told myself to eat one slice a day, but that plan did not work well.
Once I eat a slice, I can’t stop!
I loved enjoying this stollen with a cup of black tea (yes, it’s all gone now).
I used this recipe (in Japanese) as a base.
This time of the year whenever I go to Costco, I check the produce section to see if they have persimmons.
This week I was lucky because I finally found some.
They usually have a package of 12 large persimmons, but this year they have a smaller package, a bag of 7 smaller sized persimmons.
That’s okay because 12 is a bit too much for our household of two.
So pretty！
Persimmon is good as is, but I also like it when a little acidity is added.
So, I splashed some fresh lemon juice to coat the persimmon filling.
I also added fresh thyme.
It turned out great!
A little drizzle of sweetened coconut cream made it a perfect snack for my 3:00 coffee time.
A famous cookbook author in Japan, Harumi Kurihara, said in one of her cookbooks that home cooking is like a soap opera.
One thing leads to the next, and it’s always continuous.
I totally understand it.
One of the major reasons I made these was simply because I had custard cream (or pastry cream) left from the cake ↓
https://sideb.culinarytribune.com/2022/11/26/raspberry-lemon-cake
and the Taiyaki ↓
I also had extra sweet Azuki beans from making the Taiyaki, too.
I added add Matcha to the pastry cream, and that, sweet Azuki, and whipped coconut cream were used as the filling for these puffs.
The puff recipe is from one of Yuko Shirasaki’s cookbooks called “Heta Oyatsu (in Japanese)”.
I bought the book only because I wanted to try this one recipe.
I have actually tried a few other recipes from the book, but I still think it was worth buying the book even just for this one recipe!
I thoroughly enjoyed the Thanksgiving meals, but now I’m ready for something totally different.
I haven’t made Taiyaki, or stuffed Japanese cake, for a while, and I knew it was time to make some.
One of the reasons I wanted to make Taiyaki was that I had some leftover custard cream, and I thought it would be perfect to fill the fish.
Making Taiyaki is a tricky job.
You want to make sure there is enough filling inside, but you don’t want it to spill.
You want the fish to have a nice color, but you don’t want it to burn.
Taiyaki is traditionally filled with sweet Azuki beans, but today you will find so many unique fillings.
My favorites are Azuki and custard cream, so I decided to use them both.
Why not, right?
These were so delicious!!
These guys were a bit overfilled.
They may not be ideal for selling, but I don’t mind them at all because a lot of filling is always good.
For the Thanksgiving dessert we didn’t have a pie.
We had a cake instead.
When I made my husband’s belated birthday cake last week
https://sideb.culinarytribune.com/2022/11/18/belated-birthday-lemon-cake
I had extra cake sponge and I froze it for a later use.
I also had some extra lemon curd, so it was perfect.
This is very similar to his birthday cake, but this time I came up with a new way to make frosting.
I’ve never been a big basic frosting (butter and powdered sugar) fan.
The amount of powdered sugar that goes in horrifies me and I don’t care for the harsh powdered sugar taste.
This time I made vegan custard cream first, and added vegan butter and some powdered sugar, way less than typically used.
It turned out great!
It’s creamy, buttery, and sweet, but not overly sweet.
I think this is how I’m going to make frosting (or butter cream) from now on.
