Sorry for the picture overload but I didn't want to make multiple posts and used as few pictures as I could to give an accurate representation of each confection ( Read more... )

An intriguing Japanese confection that I was introduced to via Youtube videos was mochi ... I thought I'd try and make some. So I bought Mochiko flour.

And then I visited an Asian grocery store that's been around for a number of years, for the first time, back in July. And came home with a few goodies.

So I decided NOT to make mochi.


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No, you're not having a flashback to four months ago.

I just realized that I never posted the meal for this past Easter.

Which was a shame because I made a delicious Tuscan bread and vegetable soup called "ribollita" for starters ...


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I thought I had it straightened out in my head ... dango were Japanese confections in which (sweet glutinous) rice flour was mixed with water (and some sugar), kneaded and shaped into balls, boiled, threaded onto skewers in 3-5 pieces, and basted with soy sauce or topped with sweet red bean (anko) paste, as in mitarashi dango. Grilling the balls ( Read more... )

The basic cream puff may be dressed up in many ways.

In this post, I used Chef John's recipe for 'crack' cream puffs in which a crunchy sugar cookie type topping is placed on a larger than usual cream puff before baking.  I also made the vanilla bean pastry cream to fill the puffs but skipped the chocolate base for the puffs because, unlike my ( Read more... )

Dorayaki is a delicious Japanese snack or confection which traditionally consists of a sweet red bean paste (anko) sandwiched between two 'pancakes'. Slightly different versions of the recipe may be found on several blogs but this is the first one I ran across some time ago, on Nami's "Just One Cookbook" site. It uses the Mochiko (sweet rice flour ( Read more... )

This jam filled sandwich cookie is a copycat of a commercial cookie produced by the Purity Factories in Newfoundland. The same recipe is found on several web sites. The one I found first and used is here. Even though there's no ginger used in the cookie dough, the finished cookie tastes similar to gingerbread cookies, probably due to the brown ( Read more... )

A while ago, I went shopping and came home with a nice clamshell of strawberries. They were on my list. They were even on sale. Trouble, was, I had forgotten why I bought them. (I must learn to write these things down ... somewhere.) So there I was, staring at these very perishable fresh fruit while the clock was counting down. I finally came up ( Read more... )

I've been curious about this cheesecake for some time and finally got around to giving it a try.

"Jiggly" Japanese Cheesecake


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The last post on the theme of easy Japanese dishes features a Japanese version of the classic Western hamburger, hambagu, or hamburger steak patty. I'm including a couple of miso soups, a vegetable side dish and some pudding (or purin, in Japanese) to finish things off.

The recipe for the hamburger comes from TabiEats and it was meant to be used ( Read more... )