teh baking!!
Tomorrow is White Day, so I decided to make something to bring into work, since I crapped out on Valentines day. I found a recipe for something called "Buccellati", which is apparently some kind of Italian cake. I altered the original amounts, since there's no way in hell I'm going to make something that uses 5 cups of flour when I don't even have an oven!!
Buccellati (adjusted for Japanese kitchens!!)
Ingredients:
2.5 cups of flour
4 tbsp of melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
~ 1/2 cup of milk
1 lemon or orange, zested
1 tsp baking powder
Directions:
1. Zest the lemon by peeling off only the very outside part of the flesh. Don't dig into the white part, as it tastes bitter and no one wants a bitter cake, right?! If you don't have a lemon zester (I sure don't), you can do what I did and just use a vegetable peeler, then chop the zest up into really small pieces.
2. In a bowl, mix together the flour, melted butter, egg, and sugar. Knead the mixture, gradually adding milk until you have a dough that is sticky and moist, but doesn't goo up your hands. I ended up using a little less than half a cup.
3. Add in the lemon zest and baking powder, and knead some more until it's all mixed together really well. I ended up using a tiiiiiny bit of additional milk here in order to get the baking powder to mix in properly.
4. The original recipe has you roll it into a log and stick it in a bundt pan, but I cut the ingredients in half and don't own a bundt pan, so I rolled them into small balls and stuck them inside little aluminum trays that I use for my bento.
5. Stick those puppies into the toaster oven (it's all I have!) for about 5 minutes, or until they get golden toasty brown. Let them sit for a minute or two, rotate, then cook them for another 2 or 3 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they don't burn. Toaster ovens are great at uneven cooking!!
6. Take them out and let them cool. In the mean time, take your lemon and squeeze out all the juice, then mix in a ton of powdered sugar, until you get a tart icing that is *just* liquidy enough to drizzle. Once your Buccellati-s have cooled, drizzle on the icing. Once that dries, sprinkle a bit of powdered sugar, and you're done!
The original recipe didn't have icing, but instead it was sprinkled with almonds and dusted in powdered sugar or some such nonsense. But almonds are expensive in Japan.
Pictures:
They're not so much cake-like as they are scone-like, but they're very delicious and hopefully the icing isn't too sweet for Japanese tastes. I made a few testers that were pretty large, so this version of the recipe actually makes about 5 more than I ended up with. And oooh, now my whole apartment smells deliciously lemony.
I figured out why my other adventures in baking never really worked out so well. I only have one measuring spoon, and the whole time I thought it was a tablespoon amount (the only measurements written on it are millilitres), but it's actually a teaspoon! Whoops!
Buccellati (adjusted for Japanese kitchens!!)
Ingredients:
2.5 cups of flour
4 tbsp of melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
~ 1/2 cup of milk
1 lemon or orange, zested
1 tsp baking powder
Directions:
1. Zest the lemon by peeling off only the very outside part of the flesh. Don't dig into the white part, as it tastes bitter and no one wants a bitter cake, right?! If you don't have a lemon zester (I sure don't), you can do what I did and just use a vegetable peeler, then chop the zest up into really small pieces.
2. In a bowl, mix together the flour, melted butter, egg, and sugar. Knead the mixture, gradually adding milk until you have a dough that is sticky and moist, but doesn't goo up your hands. I ended up using a little less than half a cup.
3. Add in the lemon zest and baking powder, and knead some more until it's all mixed together really well. I ended up using a tiiiiiny bit of additional milk here in order to get the baking powder to mix in properly.
4. The original recipe has you roll it into a log and stick it in a bundt pan, but I cut the ingredients in half and don't own a bundt pan, so I rolled them into small balls and stuck them inside little aluminum trays that I use for my bento.
5. Stick those puppies into the toaster oven (it's all I have!) for about 5 minutes, or until they get golden toasty brown. Let them sit for a minute or two, rotate, then cook them for another 2 or 3 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they don't burn. Toaster ovens are great at uneven cooking!!
6. Take them out and let them cool. In the mean time, take your lemon and squeeze out all the juice, then mix in a ton of powdered sugar, until you get a tart icing that is *just* liquidy enough to drizzle. Once your Buccellati-s have cooled, drizzle on the icing. Once that dries, sprinkle a bit of powdered sugar, and you're done!
The original recipe didn't have icing, but instead it was sprinkled with almonds and dusted in powdered sugar or some such nonsense. But almonds are expensive in Japan.
Pictures:
They're not so much cake-like as they are scone-like, but they're very delicious and hopefully the icing isn't too sweet for Japanese tastes. I made a few testers that were pretty large, so this version of the recipe actually makes about 5 more than I ended up with. And oooh, now my whole apartment smells deliciously lemony.
I figured out why my other adventures in baking never really worked out so well. I only have one measuring spoon, and the whole time I thought it was a tablespoon amount (the only measurements written on it are millilitres), but it's actually a teaspoon! Whoops!