To start my new year off

I baked two recipes that I had in my new recipe baking queue. Baking for the restaurant always put new recipes on at the end of the queue.

First up, smittenkitchen's Cranberry pie with thick pecan cumble. This has been in the back of my mind since I read the post. I love anything with crumble and this combination with of the tart cranberry filling and a sweet crumble sounded great. 

Right out of the oven

first slice, dust with powdered sugar and dollop of whipped cream

The cranberry filling isn't really that tart. It really goes will with the crumble and whipped cream. smittenkitchen's pie crust is so delicious, so buttery and flakey.  I'm sharing this one with the restaurant and hope the customers like it.

Next up, RasaMalaysia's Pineapple Tarts. Found these on pinterest and was hoping I had a free moment in my baking schedule to make these up. I think what got me was the pineapple jam. 

pineapple jam  and egg wash

tarts filled, scored and washed

golden brown

first bite, YUM!

With this recipe, it is all about prep. I made the jam first, takes a while to get out the water from the pineapple. Not like your normal jam that sticky and syrupy [I guess I could make it more like that with more sugar]. It's more chunky and not too sweet. 

Then I got the egg wash ready, I made this up now before I forgot. I add some condensed milk as the note at the end of the recipe suggested. Adding condensed milk to any this is good.

The dough at first looked like it was going to be trouble. But the more you kneaded it stop sticking and it wan't too hard after that. 

These tart are so good. The jam are perfectly sweet and the dough is light and slightly sweet. I think I may try this dough with an pan. 

For my last item of the first day of the year, Ozoni. It's a soup, clear broth, I usually make a chicken soup with mizuna [japanese mustard greens] with mochi. But I didn't plan this out well and didn't have most of the ingredients plus started to get lazy. So I decided to go to the restaurant to for the soup and add the mochi to it. Here's a recipe from PBS Food/Marc Matsumoto for Ozoni if you want to make up some. Ozoni is usually eaten on New Year's Day for good luck for the coming year. But it is a great filling soup for anytime of year. Have great 2015! 

Clear broth with mixed veggies and garlic oil from the restaurant with mochi 

Happy New Year!

Wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! I'm starting off the new year with some visiting family--niece arrives today. Then my sister and bil arrive in 4 days. They are all coming into some cold weather but then are off to drive up to almost Canada [upstate NY] where it looks like it will be a winter wonderland for them. 

Hope I can get my niece to help me out and make some macarons and maybe even try out the giant bread maker to make up some mochi. Speaking of mochi, I better soak that rice.

Hope the New Year brings more pictures of things I've been making and doing. Or at least non blurry pictures from my new camera. 

Have a great New Year's Eve and a great year to come!

Doughnuts!!!

Sweet Potato Rice Flour Doughnuts to exact. Doughnuts was one of my favorite things until WG said "it's the worst thing you can eat!" These days, I usually just look and wish I could eat one. On a real bad day, if there is a munkin around I'll have that without feeling too guilty of having eaten he worst thing I could eat. But after I saw this recipe I just had to try it. It has so many of my favorite things, doughnuts, sweet potatoes [I had a batch of potatoes in my freezer, a pat on my thrifty self shoulder], the color orange and rice flour [I'm thinking it will have the mochi-chew quality--yummmm].

While doing some research on korean fried chicken, found my way to Beyond Kimchee. I thought I was there to check out her fried chicken recipe but how could I help myself from not stopping to read about sweet potato doughnuts. Here's a link to the recipe: http://www.beyondkimchee.com/sweet-potato-rice-donuts/

The recipe is pretty easy, especially if you already have the potatoes ready. And the frying up is pretty easy as you don't have to cook it as hot as regular deep fried item. See the Beyond Kimchee's comments about oil temp. Got some pictures of my recipe test [yes, I remembered this time].

Pre-doughnuts

I love the color from the potatoes.

Manju

Just heard this story on NPR about an manju shop in seattle that inspired this post. 
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/07/07/156204377/manju-a-taste-of-home-for-seattles-japanese-community


This is slowly becoming an obsession of mine. Like jam, I'll probably start making batch after batch of manju or mochi till I get it right. That's why I got the bread making machine from a friend of mine to try and make mochi with it. Still have make some up maybe in a week or two. 


Here's a giant pan of chi chi dango that made up for girl's day. Still not just right. Shared it with people from work. Not everyone like the gooey texture. They just don't know what they are missing. Yum!

Recipes testing and my broken cake

UPDATE: 9.10.11

I crossed off what I tested.
_____________________

With the long weekend here, I'll have some time [one day] to do some recipe testing. Here's my list of what I want to test:

nutella rice crispie treats

chocolate malted cupcakes

plum crumble or crisp

brownies

mango something

chocolate dobash--like Delite bakery in Hawaii--maybe turn into cupcake

cream puffs

mochi something

macarons

My recipe testing list is so long and always growing. Most likely, I will only get to 2 of them. I also have make up a cheesecake. That extra day isn't enough.

As for my broken cake, I tried making one of my favorites, Sour Cream Apricot Cake for the restaurant. It's a very moist and delicate [not too sweet] bundt cake with chopped dried apricots soaked in some kind of liqueur [I used some Applekorn]. I thought it would be great with dollop of whipped cream. Well, when I filpped it out of the pan [I knew it was going to be bad when I had to shake the pan to death], only the bottom half came out, the top was stuck in the pan. I guess I did a very sucky job and greasing and flouring the pan. 

Oh well, not Oat and the staff at the restaurant can enjoy my broken cake. I tried it, it was delicious. Maybe next week, the customers can enjoy, too.

I'll post some pics of my testing soon.