Melon pan

Any Japanese or anyone who is into Japan must know メロンパン(melon pan, which means melon bread). For me Melon Pan is something I've liked since I was a kid and tried so many of them from different shops.

So..., for those who are thinking "what is Melon Pan?'. Although Melon Pan has the word 'melon', it doesn't necessarily means the bread has melon in it, nor even melon flavoured. The reason why it's called 'Melon Pan' is because it looks like a melon. (No? Ok, it does in my eyes anyway...) Usually a sweet bun is topped with biscuit and the biscuit has lines to make the bread look like melon.

In Japan you get all sorts of melon pans such as green tea melon pan, one with custard cream inside..., I've had earl grey flavoured one, mango flavoured one, strawberry, caramel, chocolate..., the list goes on and on....

I'm sure everyone has the one they like. I like the one with crunchy biscuit on top of a nice soft bun. And of course, a freshly baked melon pan is simply too good to resist. :D

Chestnut bread

Look at these shinny breads! I love it when the breads come out from the oven like this. :)

It's the Autumn's must, Chestnut bread!

Not only does the bread have the sweet chestnut jam inside but also the jam is mixed in the bread dough. I shaped and decorated the bread to look like a chestnut too... (although it looks more like onigiri...)

These sweet tasting breads are so good that I can have them as breakfast, snack, with tea, or simply anytime! In fact I ate it after dinner as an evening treat to myself... ;D

Blackberry crumble muffin

There was some crumble topping left from my chestnut crumble cake, so I baked some blackberry crumble muffins.

Because I didn't strain the jam the muffins had a lot of pips, which I was quite fine with, but if you like more smooth texture I recommend you use a jam without pips our strain it with a sieve.

By the way, for some of the muffins I mixed the crumble topping in the batter in stead of putting it on top. And..., it was actually pretty good! One thing is when you mix in the crumble, make use not to over mix or the cake will become tough.

Ingredients:

Flour 150g

Baking powder 1 tsp

Brown sugar 150g

Egg 3

Butter (melted) 100g

Blackberry Jam 100g

Crumble (see chestnut crumble cake or apple crumble cake)

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Make the crumble by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and rub with fingers until the mixture becomes sandy.

2. Make the cake mixture. Beat eggs and sugar together until it's fluffy.

3. Add melted butter into 2 and mix well.

4. Sift flour and baking powder. Fold them into 3.

5. Fold in blackberry jam into 4. (Mix in the crumble if you want the crumble in the batter.)

6. Pour the cake mixture into a cake tin. Put the crumble on top.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is lightly golden.

Have you seen my other cakes with Blackberry jam?

Skinny Blackberry pie

Blackberry Swiss roll

Chestnut crumble cake

I made a chestnut crumble cake with my homemade chestnut jam. With a generous amount of chestnut jam, the cake came out really moist and had a nice sweet chestnut flavour. The cinnamon flavoured crumble on top gave a nice crunch too.

The good thing about this cake is that you can enjoy it in two ways. It's nice warm straight from the oven or rest it to cool in the fridge and have it the following day. Either way, this is a real Autumn treat for me and definitely has got that moreish-ness!

Ingredients:

Flour 150g

Baking powder 1 tsp

Brown sugar 150g

Egg 3

Butter (melted) 100g

Chestnut jam 150g

---

Crumble

Butter 50g

Demerara sugar 50g

Flour 75g

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Make the crumble by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and rub with fingers until the mixture becomes sandy.

2. Make the cake mixture. Beat eggs and sugar together until it's fluffy.

3. Add melted butter into 2 and mix well.

4. Sift flour and baking powder. Fold them into 3.

5. Fold in chestnut jam into 4.

6. Pour the cake mixture into a cake tin. Put the crumble on top.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is lightly golden.

Rye bread

I've experimented with raisin yeast, lemon yeast, banana yeast in the past. Now, I've started a rye flour sourdough starter. If this starter goes well, it'll keep for years.

I'm using a very simple technique, which requires only rye flour and water. After three days of 'feed' the starter became bubbly. So I took some of the starter out and put the rest in the fridge to let it 'sleep'.

I mixed some rye flour (100g), strong white flour (100g), salt (1/2tsp), oil (2tbsp), and handful of walnuts together with the starter (200g). Then I added water and kneaded to form a dough.

I rested the dough overnight in room temperature and the following day shaped the bread to put in a loaf tin and rested it for a few hours.

So... now, it was time to bake. I covered the loaf tin with foil and baked for 40 minutes at 190ºc, then turned the heat down to 170ºc and baked another 30 minutes. The bread didn't rise much and looked pretty dense. But it smelled good.

I didn't taste the bread immediately because I remembered someone said before that rye bread tastes better a day after it's baked. So I patiently waited another day....

Finally...., we had it! First we cut a slice and tried as is. I was like..."!", "This is just like those german rye breads!" and Andy was like..."It's nice!" We put some cheese on too. Then we did our clasic thing... "I'm gonna have another piece, do you want one?", "Yes, go on!"...nom nom nom... "Another one?", "Yes, please." nom nom nom.... So..., the bread was gone... here we were again, greedy greedy...

I was very pleased with the result as I thought the starter wasn't 100% successful. Although it was very tasty I'm still going to work on the recipe. Once I'm confident with the recipe then I'll share how to make the starter and the bread so please bear with me. :)

Roasted pumpkin seeds

According to a famous chef, they waste as little as possible in a professional kitchen. So..., I did the same. I roasted the pumpkin seeds after making the pumpkin cream.

I washed the seeds thoroughly and roasted them in the oven until they were lightly golden and crispy. I sprinkled brown sugar and cinnamon. These roasted seeds make a great snack. I'm literally munchin' them with a bottle of 0% beer now...

Chestnut jam

The other day I found chestnuts in the supermarket and I got all excited BECAUSE I can make one of my favourite jam, chestnut jam!

It's quite a job to peel the chestnut shells but when you see the nice sweet jam as a result, it's all worth it. I do "chestnut : sugar = 2:1" and it's already very sweet for my liking, but if you want to make it even sweeter you can add more sugar.

I made quite a lot so some of them are going into my cake..;) Let's see how it goes...

Ingredients:

Chestnut:Sugar=2:1

Water

1. Cook the chestnuts in the shell in a boiled water for 10 minutes. Let them cool in a fresh water.

2. Peel the shell off.

3. Place the chestnuts in a pot. Pour just enough water to cover the chestnuts. Add sugar and cook over a low heat until it thickens.

4. Puree the jam to make it smooth.