It has been for quite a while since Coconut Oil became popular in the world. People say it is much healthier than any other vegetable oil or Butter. I was trying not to ride on this trend but just recently one pot of Coconut Oil has appeared on my kitchen shelf. So I have to start going into the usual mission of searching for healthy but tasty things.
I have tried using Coconut Oil for cooking before but this cake was my first attempt for making sweet with it.
I made two types of Japanese Sweets on the Halloween theme this year. One of them was ‘Mochi Ghost’ in my previous post and the other one was ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’.
These are my ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’.
It is getting colder now in the UK. However, before Winter is coming ‘Halloween is coming!’ I attempted making Japanese sweet last year in the Halloween theme. It was … OK but I was not satisfied. So this year I tried harder and these are the result.
I made two types of sweets for Halloween this year. First one is this Mochi Ghost 👻.
So I finalised the perfect recipe for making soft and moist ‘Dorayaki‘ Japanese Pancake. I am so proud of the taste and the texture with silky finish. We traditionally have it by sandwiching some Sweet Bean Paste such as Azuki ‘Tsubu-An‘ or White Bean ‘Shiro-An‘ Paste between two pieces. It is very recent that people started to put all sorts of cream and fruit instead. For me anything can be OK as long as the Pancake is tasty. I like trying any new flavour combination.
This time I went to a fusion of Japanese and the Western for my perfect Dorayaki. It was Matcha Custard Cream. I love Custard and this time I added a hint of Japanese ‘Matcha‘ Green Tea to this Western flavour. It is a versatile tasty cream to have with any sweet & dessert and it goes so well with Dorayaki’s soft and moist texture as well. How can you resist it by seeing the Matcha Custard Cream is oozing out from the Dorayaki?!
I made ‘Dorayaki‘ Japanese Pancake and posted here at the beginning of this year. Although it was good enough for me I was not convinced that it was the best I can make so I did not include the recipe to share it with people. I have tried making Dorayaki many times since then and now I think I have the best recipe which I can be proud of.
So here it is…
This recipe gives you a very soft and moist Pancake which is perfect for Dorayaki. Make one side smooth brown surface and the other side with a bouncy airy texture.
I like foraging. Although I hardly do any foraging myself I like the idea of it. Of course I hate the recent new foragers who never consider how nature’s cycle works and remove all mushrooms they can find from the area even before mushrooms open the umbrella. It is becoming a great threat to forests in the UK. That is outrageous! Nothing remains in the forest if people keep doing this.
That is not what I do. My foraging is much more in a smaller scale … such as Blackberry Picking. However, it does not seem a good season for Blackberry this year. It might be the problem where I live but I could get only handful of them.
Anyway, there is a sweet I always make in Blackberry season.
It is becoming the middle of Autumn ‘Chushu (中秋)’. Actually it is this Thursday, the 15th of September this year and that is the day we can see the Full Moon. The night of the day is called ‘Jugoya / 十五夜’ (‘Jugo‘ means fifteen and ‘Ya (Yoru)’ means night). Basically it is the Fifteenth Moon from the New Moon, hence the Full Moon.
In Japan we have a custom of ‘Tsukimi (月見)’ (viewing the Full Moon) on this day. It came from China during Nara / Heian period (8-11 C) into the life of upper class people. They had a party viewing the Full Moon and read poems about it. Later on in Edo period (17-19C) it was taken to common people as well and the day was combined with the festival for farmers to hope for a good harvest.
Nowadays, it is still the same. We enjoy viewing the Full Moon. We look forward to the clear sky with the beautiful Moon. On the day we prepare for the night by placing ‘Susuki (Japanese Silver Grass)’ and of course some sweets. What kind of sweet the family have depends on which region where they live but mostly they are ‘Mochi‘ type.
So I made these Japanese sweets for Jugoya Night, one is the Full Moon Yokan in Chocolate flavour and the other one is Moon Rabbit.
I have been on a quest for searching a great way of using ‘Houjicha‘ Japanese Green Tea. When I saw a photo of Parfait dessert on a magazine I thought “This is it! It must be definitely tasty if I make this with Houjicha flavour”. I also wanted to add some colour and texture to it. As I posted earlier I have been harvesting Raspberries in my garden so I decided to use some into this dessert. With soft, melting but slightly crunchy texture, roasted Green Tea aroma and fresh sweet and sour soft fruit … I think it is perfect to combine Houjicha and Raspberries all together to make a Parfait.
It is a great dessert for a dinner with friends. The best thing about this dish is that it is so simple to make. No fiddliness and no failure. I added some Raspberry and ready-made Meringue but you can use any other soft fruit or you don’t need to add anything at all. It is delicious as it is.
Yay, it is Raspberry time. It has been raining a lot almost every day here in London so I hardly water plants in my garden.
Whilst I was not even going out to my garden my Raspberries gradually started to appear. They were small and green at the beginning and became bigger …
The weather has been a little crazy in England. We had a short heat wave about three weeks ago and then it became very cold for a week. It suddenly became much hotter again and the temperature jumped up about 10 degree. Then again it became rainy for the last few days. It was thundering with heavy rain the other day but now at this moment …
The weather in Japan seems also a little strange this year. In some northern part it snowed right after the temperature was 30℃. However, it is June now and the one thing we are sure is that the ‘Tsuyu‘ is coming to Japan soon most definitely. ‘Tsuyu‘ is the Rainy season written as ‘梅雨‘ in Japanese. The first character ‘梅‘ means Plum and the second one ‘雨‘ is Rain. So why could ‘Plum-Rain’ mean Rainy Season?
There are several theories regarding the word. [Theory 1] It is because it’s the season Plum fruits ripen. [Theory 2] The word ‘Baiu (黴雨)’ came from China meaning as Rainy Season a long time ago. The first character ‘黴’ means ‘Mould’. Because in high humidity things gets mouldy easily so then it was actually ‘Mouldy Season’. However, people in Japan did not like the sound of Mouldy Season so changed the character ‘黴’ to ‘梅’ which has the same sound ‘Bai’. Now the Rainy Season is written as ‘梅雨’ and read either ‘Baiu’ or ‘Tsuyu’.
I wanted to make a Japanese sweet in the theme of Rainy Season. I tried several ideas and then a Puddle image popped into my mind.
This sweet is created from an image of a puddle with a leaf floating on its surface. Rain has been stopping for a while but some droplets have just started falling onto the puddle to make a swirl and some bubbles.
Sakura Junction 