One Year Wiser... Hopefully

Well, I'm not really sure if I'm one year wiser, and that's why you can't see that part of the text very clearly in the photo above. (How humble!) :P But I'm happy to tell you that I have made a progress. In the past, I used this kouglof mold only a few times. My first attempt in 2005 was close to a disaster, and on the second one, still the sides of the cake didn't turn brown almost at all. I blamed it on my oven-cum microwave and gave up on the pursuit of "nicely-browned kouglof cake." The mold had been left in the dark corner of my cupboard and forgotten since then. Yesterday, when I was trying to decide which cake to bake for my birthday, I realized that I was not as enthusiastic as previous years. I didn't want to spend hours in the kitchen decorating the cake, because my Meniere's syndrome was not completely gone and I still felt slightly dizzy once in a while. Also, I didn't want to do a major shopping just for this cake, either. And there was an unopened bottle of maraschino cherries which I wanted to use up somehow. All those lead me to chose this cherry pound cake, my favorite recipe. And I was happy with the decision. The only problem, though, was the decoration. The typical Japanese B-day cake decoration consists of strawberries and whipping cream, but it didn't look right for this cake. But if baked in a simple round or square tin, this cake would need some kind of icing, which I didn't want. So I thought about baking it in an interestingly shaped tin and simply sprinkling confectioner's sugar on top. The only interestingly-shaped tin I had was the kouglof mold. And I never had a success with it. Mmmmm... should I risk it? I did. After all. I tried to learn from the previous unsuccessful attempts and did a few things differently this time. First, I downscaled the recipe to 1/4. And this may be a crazy idea, but to brown the sides as much as possible, I pre-baked the mold, then buttered and floured the hot mold right before pouring the batter into it. It seemed to have worked, to some extent. See? It's slightly browned, isn't it? Much better than the caramel butter cake I baked before. This cake might have browned much more if I were patient enough to keep it in the oven for more than an hour... Now I don't know why my cake looks so airy with lots of big holes... like ant nest. Too much baking powder? Too much whipping when mixing the batter? Since I have made a little progress, now I want to be even better and be able to bake something like this soon. Would it help if I buy and use a bundt pan instead of this kouglof mold??? Anyway, I'm very happy today with this birthday cake and these small roses. :) Categories: Sweets

More Than Words

From Obachan to You All on Feb. 14, 2009 Often photos can say much more than words ever will. And what these photos are saying to you on this Valentine's Day is... ... that obachan failed to bake heart-shaped chocolate cupcakes and made a heart with ribbon instead. LOL Yeah, right. Those paper cups did not look firm enough at the store, but I was optimistic. Unfortunately the optimism didn't pay off, and after my cupcakes swelled up, they looked more like amoeba. :O This one in the photos was the best one (as long as you don't see the other side of it). Well, but that's not the only thing that these photos are telling you, dear readers. They have a more important message, and that is... " Have a special and romantic day with your sweetheart :) " Categories: Sweets

Merry Christmas!!

Obachan's Christmas Wreath 2008 (With Cookies) I wish you had a wonderful Christmas time. :) It's Dec. 27th today and I'm adding some photos to this belated Christmas post @ an Internet Cafe, AGAIN. (No, not the one I posted about the other day.) Looks like Heaven thought that I haven't suffered enough in 2008 -- My ADSL connection got upset a couple of days ago, and went dead right after I posted this entry with only two photos yesterday. So I had to come here to email the technical support of my ISP anyway, and I decided to upload these photos as well, because I really think these are better than the two dinner photos I posted yesterday. Obachan's Christmas Tree 2008 I felt like a small tree this year and it was a right choice, I guess. The tree was again one of those Daiso 100yen stuff. The cookies were home-baked and not a great success. Well, you can't expect much when baking cookies in a cheap toaster oven without temperature control, you know. I was worried that it might take hours to make this wreath without a glue gun, but it didn't take too long. :) And here comes my light fruitcake. It was not as soft as I wanted, to tell you the truth, and that was my fault. This year, I wanted to tie the cake with ribbon with no wrapping -- as in the photos above -- and I didn't want the cake to be too wet because it would mess up the ribbon. So, though the recipe told me to make syrup and brush the cake with it until it is used up, I didn't follow the instruction; I only brushed my cake with rum a couple of times. What I got as a result was a rather chewy cake which wasn't sweet enough. I think I'm going to mature it some more, this time following the recipe's instruction. Carrot Cake (Baked in my Electric Rice Cooker) with Cream Cheese Frosting Yes. It worked. I mean, theoretically it should be possible to bake cakes in an electric rice cooker. It cooks rice by heating its inner pot. Then the batter in the heated inner pot should be "done," too, eventually. Some Japanese websites even dare to say that for baking certain types of cakes, electric rice cooker may be more suitable than oven because inner pressure and temperature are controlled more precisely. I doubt it, though. Anyway, for me, using a rice cooker for baking a cake was not as care-free as using an oven, and the texture of the cake was more like steamed cake than oven-baked ones. But I should say that the result was quite satisfactory. This is how the carrot cake looked when it came out of the rice cooker. And with cream frosting and decoration ... See inside? Oh, I got the carrot cake recipe here, if you're interested. ----- * Let me add a little warning if you're interested in baking cakes with electric rice cooker. I did have a satisfactory result, but I don't necessarily recommend this unorthodox use of the rice cooker, unless it "officially" has a baking function. To make this cake, I poured batter into the inner pot and pressed the start button. When the rice cooker beeped for the first time, the cake was not done yet, as expected. I switched on the rice cooker again right away to let it cook some more. (Be careful. Some "smart" rice cookers take it as abnormal heating and give you an error message.) The cake was still not done yet at the second beep. I pressed the start button again to let it cook for 10 to 15 more minutes and manually stopped the cooker. So it's a bother, isn't it? Besides, many websites warn that baking cakes somewhat damages the teflon coating of the inner pot. I assume that recent electric rice cookers with a baking function must have special program to keep certain temperature for longer (than regular rice-cooking) until batter will be done, and also have heavy-duty teflon coating on the inner pot. ----- And my cookies. Only two kinds this year: gingerbread cookies and shortbread cookies. And my creations looked like this altogether... (Maybe I could make a postcard out of this?) And the dinner photos... Obachan's Christmas Dinner 2008 Yes, I managed to make this Christmas dinner, after all. Despite some challenges, I didn't give up and enjoyed a Christmas dinner. After the dinner, I kept nibbling on desserts for hours, enjoying the sparkling wine, wishing the moment to last forever... Dear readers, Thank you so much for your support, especially for the past couple of weeks when it looked like things were going worse and worse. I'm so lucky to have you as my friends. *** Merry Christmas *** - obachan -

How I Wish...!!

Light Christmas Cake 2008 Oh, why can't photos capture the aroma and let viewers enjoy it? See this cake? It has just come out of the oven, and I really, really wish you could smell it. IT'S HEAVENLY! I don't know about the taste yet, but this cake does smell much better than any other fruitcakes I have baked before. This year, I used this light fruitcake recipe. Oh, of course I didn't make this huge batch; I reduced it to one-fifth. I picked the recipe after long hours of googling because the texture looked nice in the photo and it is the type of cake that you mature for weeks brushing with liquor over and over. And as you can see in this post, I used Myers's rum to soak the dried fruits this year and it was the key. The moment I opened the jar to use the soaked fruits today, I knew that I had made a right choice. It smelled already wonderfully then, and the aroma was even better when the cake was almost done in the oven. So, about two more weeks to mature it? Gee, I can hardly wait! :D ----- Here's another thing I should be working on to get ready for Christmas: Obachan's Prospective Christmas Wreath 2008 This photo may look better than the wreath I'm going to make... (The vine is from Daiso 100yen shop, BTW.) Categories: Sweets

Just To Let You Know...

Yes. Christmas fruitcake, again. OK. The problem solved. The Internet is back. Yay!! FYI, the problem was not the modem itself. It was more like the balance of the speed of downloading and uploading, as far as I can understand. The system I'm using is called ADSL, one of the broadband services. And it seems like that when the above mentioned balance is no good, the connection becomes unstable or dead. That was the answer I got from the net search. Now the question is why the balance which had been OK for years becomes "no good" one day, all of sudden, even though the setting is absolutely untouched. But looks like it is difficult to nail down the specific cause(s) of the problem, and ISPs -- at least here in Japan -- do not really help you with the investigation. What they do instead seems to be adjusting the speed balance at their end. I heard that it does regain the connection, but slows down your Internet (of course-- why would they make it faster for free?). Well, in my case, the connection seems to be OK now and the speed is just a little bit slower but not too terrible, so I'm happy. The good thing is that the problem was solved real quick with no charge, and I didn't have to bring my modem to the store or clean up my apartment to have people come into my room to fix some lines and cables. Phew! Anyway, now that my Internet connection is fine, I wanted to let you know that I soaked some dried fruit again for Christmas fruitcake. I might go for a light fruitcake this year, with less or no molasses added, and try more simple and plain decoration... like this. No icing at all. Or I might go for a real heavy, classic pecan-nuts-and-cherries topping. I don't know. You'll see. ;) I've been looking for ideas through google image search. Isn't it great? The Internet rocks! I can't live without it -- definitely. Categories: Sweets

Store-bought Mont Blanc

Store-bought Mont Blanc Mont Blanc is my absolute favorite, but I have never tried making one myself. See inside? This one consisted of sponge(?) cake at the bottom and layers of whipping cream and chocolate sponge cake, covered with chestnut cream and topped with whipping cream, a piece of bitter chocolate and a chervil leaf. Another fluffy, not-too-sweet dessert which disappeared VERY quickly. ;) Categories: Sweets

Sweet Potato & Apple Cake

Sweet Potato and Apple Cake Just wanted to enjoy the heavenly aromatic harmony of sweet potato, apple, Cinnamon and butter on a Sunday afternoon. I was planning to go fishing this weekend, but the typhoon (Sinlaku) blew my plan. So, instead, I baked this cake, cut it into sticks like this, and enjoyed it as I painted a watercolor and later read a couple of (comic) books. Ah, domestic fun! :P There was a murder in town the day before yesterday. The place was near the bento shop where I often buy bento on my way home from work. When I was riding my bike there yesterday, I was stopped by a detective and asked if I had seen any stranger (with a knife) around there on the day of the murder. Wow! Just like a TV drama! Unfortunately, the murderer has not been found yet. Categories: Sweets

Mango Mousse Cake

Store-bought Mango Mousse Cake No, I didn't make this cake. (Again!) That's why it looks so nice. :P I came back from work around 3 pm, and felt like a relaxing tea time at home. My choice was this light, fluffy mousse cake with a chervil leaf from my balcony garden on top ... ... and this refreshing iced tea with a mint leaf from my balcony garden. Though not raining, it is depressingly cloudy outside. It's another humid and gloomy day in the rainy season here. This tea time was really a good idea. I'm glad that I took this shot of iced tea. .. It looks refreshing and makes me feel better on a day like this. Categories: Sweets

Cloudberry Jam on Cheesecake

Japanese Cheesecake with Cloudberry Jam from Finland Thank you sooooooooo much, dear readers, for letting me know how well cloudberry jam goes with cheesecake. I know -- only one person actually mentioned it, but I'm sure there were many, MANY others who were nodding enthusiastically in front of the display. I'm sure there were, because the combination is THIS GOOD! YUM! Oh, this cheesecake? No, I didn't bake it. It was store-bought -- one of those affordable sweets from Japanese convenience stores. And though it was labeled "baked cheesecake," it looked so white and creamy that I thought it was a gelatin cheesecake. But I definitely loved this baked one. Yes, with this berry jam from the country of Muumipeikko (Moomin), it was ... Heavenly. Divine. Mmmmmmm...... :) BTW, my favorite is Nuuskamuikkunen (Snufkin). Categories: Sweets

Spiced Lingonberry Cake -- Obachan's Version

Jams from Finland :) I don’t know how many times I have repeated this on my blog, but blogging has truly broadened my horizons. Not only it has increased my culinary knowledge, but it gave me chances to taste some foods that I can never buy in this rural city in Japan, even by ordering online. This time it was these jams. I got these jams several weeks ago from someone in Finland who I came to know through blogging. Spiced Lingonberry Cake - Obachan's Version - Actually we do have lingonberries in northern part of Japan, and I have tasted lingonberry jam once before when a friend of mine gave me a tiny jar of it as a souvenir. I loved the jam very much, but it was such a small amount and it looked obviously expensive, so all I could do was spreading it very thinly on my toast several mornings. Using it for cooking/baking was totally out of question. But this time, given this large jar of much tastier lingonberry jam from Finland, I felt no hesitation. ;) The night I received these jams, I made a dish which was sort of like mock “Swedish meatballs” and enjoyed it with generous amount of this lingonberry jam. (Sorry, no photos.) Maybe it was a strange idea to choose a Swedish dish to use the berry jam from Finland, but I really wanted to try the jam with some kind of meat, and when I googled for an idea, the combination of Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam looked like a must-have. Of course I didn’t have enough ingredients to make “real” Swedish meatballs, but even with my “mock” dish, I was able to find out how the jam goes well with meat. Mmmmmm..... And this is my second attempt with the lingonberry jam. I adopted the recipe from this site (scroll down), and reduced it to half. I didn’t have sour cream and it was raining outside (meaning that I didn’t feel like going grocery shopping), I substituted it with yogurt and cottage cheese. So, again, my cake must have been pretty different from what it should be – perhaps much softer, fluffier and lighter-tasting. But I’m happy to say that I do love my “mock” spiced lingonberry cake very much. This sweet-n-tart cake was perfect for the tea time on this dull, rainy afternoon. ... Now what should I use the other kind of jam: cloudberry jam for? That is something I've never ever had before, and sooooooooo tasty! :D Categories: Sweets

* Happy Birthday to Me *

My Homemade Birthday Cake Pink has never been my favorite color. When I took photos of my birthday cakes with flowers in previous years, I never used pink flowers. However, I do love the delicate pinkish white of cherry blossoms. I can never fully explain how much I love to see that color in spring -- the season when everything looks fresh and alive. Usually cherry trees start blooming in late March around here, but I don’t see too many of them around my birthday. That is why it never occurred to me to relate my birthday to that beloved blossoms. But this year, because of the warm weather, some cherry trees in this neighborhood are already in full bloom now. And as I was riding my bike enjoying the view of such early blossoms yesterday, I thought, “Maybe the day I was born was a warm, sunny day like this, and some cherry trees might have been in half-bloom then, if not full-bloom.” I remember that there were a couple of cherry trees near my parents’ house, including the big one at the gate of our local shrine. I have heard from mom that when she gave birth to me, it was not easy because I was a breech baby. So when I was born safely, someone in my family must have run to the relatives’ house to tell the good news (because we didn't have the phone at that time yet. Ahem!) and visited the shrine to thank God on his/her way home. That “someone” might have looked up the cherry blossoms blooming in the spring sunshine, with the blue sky in the background, and felt rejoiced. When I thought about that, I suddenly felt like making a birthday cake with cherry blossoms. Actually, using cherry blossoms for baking is not such a crazy idea. Recently I see more and more sakura (cherry blossom) cakes and cookies being sold at the stores as well as their recipes shared on the net. You think we make jam out of the blossoms and use it for baking? No. Usually we use salted cherry blossoms or liqueur flavored with the blossoms. For the cake I made this time, I used the sakura liqueur to flavor the top layer and sank some salted sakura in it. The white layer is the mixture of canned white peach and yogurt set with gelatin, and the bottom is a graham cracker crust. The original recipe (Japanese) is here. As you can see in the photo on top of this post, the pink layer of my cake was a bit too soft and the edges didn’t turn out as sharp as I wanted. I was too lazy to buy gelatin sheets (leaf) and used regular gelatin powder, thinking that it would turn out firm enough if I refrigerate the cake longer than recommended in the recipe. Wrong! :P Now I know that there was a good reason for using different kinds of gelatins for those layers: sheet (leaf) for the top layer and powder for the white layer. I tried to hide the ragged edges with whipped cream, but obviously it wasn't a good idea... :P So I can't say that this was a great success. But there’s something I like so much about this cake – maybe the color combination? – and I'm glad that I chose to make this one for my birthday 2008. (I might try another sakura cake sometime soon...) ----- Let me add a little more about the aroma of the cherry blossoms. It’s kind of tricky. I don’t think that the blossoms themselves have such a distinctive fragrance like roses or plum blossoms do. When most Japanese smell things like incense, soap, cologne or sweets with “cherry blossom fragrance,” we are not associating it with the smell of the blossoms on the tree; actually we are associating it more with the smell of a Japanese wagashi called Sakuramochi. The smell of sakuramochi comes from the salt-preserved cherry leaf wrapped around the rice cake, and according to some scientific websites, the smell is caused by a substance named “coumarin“ which is contained in the cherry leaves. They say that the substance does not produce the smell while in the live cherry leaves, but does so when the leaves are salt-preserved. Interesting! Now, many Japanese kids hate sakuramochi because of its smell, and I was one of them, too. I don’t know how to describe the smell… it is somewhat sweet, but different from typical floral fragrance. It’s more… how shall I say… starchy? I don’t know…　Anyway, I would say that whether you love sakura-flavored sweets/drinks really depends on whether you can truly love the smell of coumarin or not. (I’ve read that Polish vodka called zubrowka has the coumarin smell, too. So don't be surprised if a Japanese who smelled zubrowka would say, "Gosh, this smells like a cherry blossom rice cake!") Now, being an adult, I don’t hate that smell of salted cherry leaves any more –- I even love it. But let me warn you… If you are interested in trying out some cherry-blossom flavored sweets/drinks, don’t feel too discouraged if you find them quite different from what you expected. ;) Categories: Sweets

Feeling Cozy...

Pound Cake with Candied Buntan Citrus Peels Ever since I started working at the supermarket, I have been craving sweets, especially cakes. After my work from dawn to lunchtime, I come back to my apartment and see bright afternoon sunshine coming through the lace curtain. Yes, it's my favorite time of the day. Soon it became my everyday routine to enjoy, after quick lunch, home-made sweets with hot black tea with milk. It is so cozy to watch the steam coming up from the tea cup. Nice buttery cake and warm tea heal me more than anything else. (And I guess my body is trying to develop a "thermal" fat layer to keep me warm when at work early in the morning. That must be the reason behind this craving for sweets.) :P BTW, the candied citrus peels in this pound cake were made from buntan citrus from dad's orchard, and as you might have guessed, it was my mom who made them. Buntans look pretty similar to grapefruits, but they are less juicy than grapefruits and taste sweeter. The rind is much more bitter than that of regular oranges, but after the bitterness is largely removed by repeated boiling and soaking in water, buntan rind can make good candied peels with the remaining bitterness balancing out the sweetness of granulated sugar. Yes, I admit it. There's nothing wrong or outrageous about making candied buntan peels. The problem is that making them has become my mom's major winter project in the past couple of years. (Her mom's summer project is making that bright-colored shiso drink. Remember?) And when she does it, she does it all the way. In summer, the two fridges at my parents' house are filled with plastic bottles with bright reddish-pink drinks, and in winter, me, my sister and mom's tea ceremony students receive her home-made candied citrus rinds in big ziploc bags more than once... Mom's Candied Buntan Peels Mom says that she and her students munch on them as they chat after their weekly tea ceremony lessons and they all love them. (Of course. How could the students say anything bad about something their teacher made?) And I heard that my sis once baked bread with them. Here I am with this pound cake, gradually developing a fat layer underneath my skin. Hahaha ... Categories: Sweets

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yes, I started working at a supermarket two days ago. My job is packing seafood and putting them on the shelves from 7:00 to 13:00. I need to memorize what code number should be used for which fish and which fish should go where on the shelves. But you know what? I'm enjoying my work now. :D These are no-butter and no-egg brownies that I baked a couple of days ago. At that thime I didn't even think about St. Valentine's day, but today is the 14th and I still have some of these left, so why not. I wish you all a very R*O*M*A*N*T*I*C Valentine's day. ;) Categories: Sweets