I’ve been living in Minnesota for 20 years, and although I do go back to Japan to visit my family every few years because of the unfortunate timing I’ve never had a chance to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mother all these years.
I used to send her flowers, but quickly I realized that sweets seem to bring her more joy (lol), so the past several years I’ve been arranging to have some kind of cake delivered to her.
This year for the first time I sent her a vegan cake from a Japanese online store, specifically vegan tiramisu, and thankfully, she (and my dad) both liked it.
But if I had a chance to celebrate Mother’s Day with her together, this is something I would prepare for us.
Since I had a fabulous afternoon tea experience at Baccarat Hotel a couple of years ago, I’ve been having this dream to serve my own vegan afternoon tea at home.
It took me a while, but I finally decided to buy a tiered stand.
So here is my very first homemade vegan afternoon tea.
On the bottom tray you’ll find sandwiches.
Cucumber and mayo.
Radish and feta spread.
Curried “egg” salad.
The second tray holds scones.
Two types: plain and strawberry.
And the top is of course the dessert tray.
Raspberry and lemon macarons.
Canelé.
I had to have this picture taken with my pinky up!
My very first home afternoon tea guest was my hubby.
I am proud to announce that most everything you see were made by me, from the bread, mayo, and feta spread for the sandwiches, the scones, the butter, to the dessert items.
The only thing I didn’t make was the jam.
It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun!
Will I do it again?
Of course!
Happy Mother’s Day.
We are planning to make a gift box with some of the items from this afternoon tea and bring it to my mother-in-law tomorrow.
Doughnuts are not the healthiest snack, but we do love them.
I coated the doughnut rings with cardamom sugar, and these holes with cinnamon sugar.
They were both so tasty!
I used purple potatoes for these potato doughnuts, and here is an evidence.
However…
They turned green!
Apparently, the purple color in the potato reacted to other ingredients (baking powder/soda).
This minty green color is not unappetizing, and I actually found it a fun color, although I couldn’t hide my initial disappointment in not seeing the bright purple color inside.
They almost look like chocolate truffles, but they are actually miso balls.
You combine miso and other things and make it into balls.
It’s kind of like instant miso soup.
You just put a ball in a bowl and pour hot water over it.
Voila, you’ll have delicious miso soup in seconds.
You can use any type of miso, but this time I used super dark, called Haccho (left) and white (right) miso.
We use this very dark type of miso in the region where I’m from, but it’s hard to find in the U.S.
So when I saw it at the local Asian market, I was so excited.
Now when it comes to other ingredients, you get to pick what you like in your miso soup.
But you do need to add something like dried fish flakes (for non-vegans) or dried salted seaweed called “Shio-kombu”, something that works as the soup base.
I also like to add some sweetener (e.g., sugar) just to give some “umami.”
Other than that almost anything that typically tastes good when frozen-and-thawed is a good choice.
Easy, right?
↑ I couldn’t wait for them to be frozen, so I tried one right away.
It was so good!
But I did freeze the rest of them for the future use.
Put them in a container and freeze them.
This is how they looked after placed in the freezer for a few hours.
They were still somewhat soft but hard enough to be handled easily and not stick with one another.
Now we can have miso soup without any hassle whenever we want!
