Grab your free 2015 Calendar!

We've only got less than 2 months to go until 2015!

As a thank you to all those lovely people who read and share my blog, I made The World of Sweets 2015 Calendar with some of my favourite recipes each month.

Visit '2015 Calendar' to grab your free copy now!

Bit of sneak peak for you...,

Macaron, sourdough breads, cheesecake, doughnut, and more... ;-d

Illustrated Choux Pastry recipe now online!

As I promised on my previous post, the illustrated Choux Pastry recipe is now on my Free Illustrated Recipes - BON APPETIT. - :)

The online version is not a very high resolution file, but if you would like a higher quality version for printing it's available too. Drop me an email, or leave me a comment. xx

Did you know that you can freeze unbaked choux pastries (at the step 8)? So, why not make a batch and freeze them. Next time all you have to do is to take out the frozen choux pastries and defrost them in the fridge overnight then bake as usual. You can enjoy small amount of choux pastries (even as little as one!) freshly made;D

I also tried freezing baked and cream filled choux pastries (the leftovers from the Matcha and Vanilla ones) and had it like an ice-cream....

It was awesome! Try this out too!

Check out BON APPETIT. Choux Pastry recipe.

Matcha and sweet beans bread

Green tea and sweet beans...This is my ultimate Japanese bread! Some people might already know but I LOVE green tea, and that's definitely a taste of home for me.

I added green tea powder into a soft Japanese style bread dough. Even a small amount of green tea powder is enough to make the dough beautiful green and you will immediately start to smell the distinctive flavour.

I also kneaded in sweet kidney beans to make it proper Japanesey. :)

I finished baking bread just in time for breakfast, and it was simply awesome... The sweet beans were spread nicely and blended with the aromatic green tea flavour so perfectly.

Nothing can beat freshly baked breads and a taste of home...

Ingredients:

Strong flour 245g

Matcha powder 5g

Yeast 3g

Salt 3g

Egg 1 + Milk =200g

Butter 30g

---

Kidney beans 1tin

Brown sugar 50g

---

Egg for glaze

1. Place the beans and sugar in a sauce pan, cover with water, and cook until the water has reduced and become sticky. Cool it aside.

2. Put all the ingredients except butter and cooked beans in the standing mixer, and knead for a few minutes.

3. Add butter and beans. Keep kneading for 10 minutes.

4. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover with cling film and rest it until it has doubled in size.

5. Punch the dough to let the air out. Divide into 10 pieces and make them into balls. Cover with cling film and rest for 10 minutes.

6. Gently reshape the balls into the shape you like and place on a baking tray. Rest until they have doubled in size.

7. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Egg wash the bread and bake for 15 minutes.

Rum raisin cake

I realised that lately I've been making lots of breads and not many cakes, and yesterday I had a sudden urge of doing those delicate and gentle movement of cake making.

Since my daughter wasn't going to have the cake, I decided to give it a little booze. I added rum raisins. I soak raisins and vanilla beans together in rum and keep it in the fridge. It's very useful when I want to spice up a simple cake or ice cream.

I have to admit the rum raisin cake was absolutely heavenly... It was sweet, buttery, and not so alcoholic, which was good for morning tea.;)

Dust the raisins with a little flour so that they won't sink on the bottom.

Ingredients:

Flour 90g

Almond powder 10g

Sugar 100g

Butter (melted) 100g

Egg 2

Rum raisin 50g

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Beat eggs and sugar until it's fluffy.

2. Fold in melted butter into 1.

3. Sift flour and almond powder into 2.

4. Fold in rum raisin into 3.

5. Pour the mixture into cupcake tin. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 20minutes.

Sweet potapo & Soy bread

Look at this beautiful colour! It's from roasted sweet potato and soy flour. :) I replaced some of the flour to soy flour, which is a good source of protein, and added left over roasted sweet potato.

When I cut into the round loaf, I was very pleased to see the nice yellow colour, and not only that, the bread tasted really good. Roasted sweet potato was a hero! It gave the bread a soft silky texture as well as natural sweetness.

They were so popular in the house that the whole loaf was gone before noon... ;D

Ingredients:

Strong flour 200g

Soy flour 50g

Yeast 3g

Salt 3g

Milk 180g

Roasted sweet potato (skinned and mashed) 200g

Olive oil 1 tsp

1. Put all the ingredients except oil in the standing mixer, and knead for a few minutes.

2. Add oil. Keep kneading for 10 minutes.

3. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover with cling film and rest it until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough to let the air out. Make it into a ball and rest for 10 minutes.

5. Gently reshape the dough and place on a baking tin. Rest it until it has doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Bake for 40 minutes.

Banana milk buns

My daughter loves bananas. She is only 11 months but will easily eat a whole banana... Blood is thicker than water...

Anyway, I made banana buns for her. Because the ripe banana was already sweet as is, I didn't add any sugar. But the bread still had a subtle sweetness and taste of banana but not too over powering.

Andy and Lana kept going back for more. Seeing them enjoy my baking is the best compliment for me. ;D xxx

Ingredients:

Strong flour 215g

Rye flour 35g

Yeast 3g

Salt 3g

Milk 200g

Banana (peeled and mashed) 100g

Butter 20g

Egg for egg wash

1. Put all the ingredients except butter in the standing mixer, and knead for a few minutes.

2. Add butter. Keep kneading for 10 minutes.

3. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover with cling film and rest it until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough to let the air out. Divide the dough into 7 pieces. Make them into balls and rest for 10 minutes.

5. Gently reshape the dough and place on a baking tray. Rest it until it has doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Egg wash the top. Bake for 20 minutes.

Rice flour milk bread

My basic ratio of ingredients for a loaf of bread is 'flour 100%, liquid 80%, + others...' and I like to vary the types of flour or liquid, or add other ingredients such as nuts, fruits and jams.

Today, I mixed rice flour with strong flour. The inside of the loaf was beautifully white and the texture was so nice and soft. I couldn't taste the rice flour much but it had a subtle sweetness of rice.

Next time I'm going to add more rice flour to see if the dough still keeps a good spring and shape. ;)

Ingredients:

Strong flour 200g

Rice flour 50g

Milk 200g

Brown sugar 20g

Yeast 3g

Salt 3g

Butter 20g

1. Put all the ingredients except butter in the standing mixer, and knead for a few minutes.

2. Add butter. Keep kneading for 10 minutes.

3. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover with cling film and rest it until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough to let the air out. Make a ball and rest the dough for 10 minutes.

5.Grease the tin. Reshape the dough and place in the tin. Rest it until it has doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 190ºc. Bake for 40 minutes.

Soft taro bread

The other day I saw taro potatoes in a shop and bought some. I love those sticky potatoes like taro or yam, and not only they are nice when they are cooked with sugar and soy sauce, but also great in bread!

Mashed taro potatoes gives the bread nice soft texture. I also use milk as the liquid to make the bread even softer and look nicely white inside.

Next time you get taro potatoes, save some to make these super soft rolls. You won't taste the taro but will be amazed how soft they are!

Ingredients:

Flour 250g

Mashed taro 100g

Yeast 4g

Sugar 1tsp

Salt 3g

Milk 200g

Butter 20g

1. Put all the ingredients except butter in the standing mixer, and knead for a minutes.

2. Add butter. Keep kneading for 10 minutes.

3. Cover the dough with cling film and rest it until it has doubled in size.

4. Punch the dough to let the air out. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and make them into balls. Rest for 10 minutes.

5. Reshape the balls, place them on a baking tray, and rest it until it has doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 200ºc. Dust the bread lightly with flour, bake for 20 minutes.

Flaky square bread

I bought a couple of square bread tins in Japan. They are about 10cm  and come with a lid so you can bake a perfect square bread. Pretty cool. ;D

I tried out one of the recipes that I've had in mind for a while, which involves puff pastry. I wasn't sure whether it would work or not, but the result was pretty good.

The bread was very soft so I struggled a little when I took it out from the tin, but I was please to see nice sharp corners. With the high butter content from the puff pastry, the bread is nicely flaky and has rich buttery flavour. It definitely nice when it's cut thick and toasted, which brings up the flavour of the butter even more!

I used my own puff pastry but ready-to-roll ones from shops will do the job. Unfortunately I don't know where  you can find these tins in the UK, but they are available on Amazon Japan.

Ingredients:

Strong flour 250g

Sugar 20g

Salt 3g

Yeast 2g

Milk 150g

Butter 20g

Egg 1

Puff pastry 100gx2

1. Mix all the ingredients except puff pastry in a standing mixer. Knead for 10 minutes.

2. Place the dough in a clean bowl and let it rise until the dough is twice the size of original size.

3. Take out the dough on a floured surface. Divide the dough into 2 pieces and shape them into a ball. Cover the dough with cling film and let it rest for 10 minutes.

4. Grease the bread tin. Roll out the dough and fold the puff pastry in. Shape into the tin.

5. When the dough has doubled in size, preheat the oven to 180ºc. Bake for 40 minutes.

Round loaf

When we were in Japan, I finally got this round bread tin I'd always wanted. It is known as 'トヨ型 (Toyo Gata)' in Japan. I've never come across this type of bread tin here in the UK so I did a bit of research to see where it's originally from. Apparently there is a almond cake made in a rounded tin like this in Germany and Austria called 'Rehrücken' (which means saddle of venison). So, maybe that's where it came from.

Anyway, I used the tin to bake my Milk Rye bread again. Since I cannot see the inside once I put the other half of the tin, I was bit worried (and excited) to see how the bread was done. When I opened the tin...., it was... PERFECT!

I used 500g of the dough and when the dough rose about twice the size, I put the other half of the tin and waited for another 10 minutes, then baked it. Make usre you take out the bread from the tin as soon as it comes out of the oven or the bread gets soggy because of the moist inside the tin.

The tin even have waves so when you cut it you get nice even slices! Perfect for a buttery toast... ;) I can see this tin is going to be my new friend in the kitchen. :D

The tin is available on Amazon JP. I also found something similar on Amazon UK.

Milk Rye bread

Since we came back from Japan, I'd been feeling a lack of energy to go in the kitchen and bake...;( However, today I finally got off my bum and decided to bake for my girl (and Andy and myself...)

I used 'Yudane' method (湯だね) to make a nice soft bread with an unique flavour of rye. This time I also made a starter by using much less yeast than usual, flour and milk (I call it 'Nakadane' in my recipe below).

After a long preparation, the bread came out just how I wanted. My girl loved it. She ate almost the whole thing. I dipped it into a home made super spicy tomato soup. Look! My bread looks as if it was in a bath of tomato soup! ;D

So..., today's baking session was really good. It certainly lifted up my '.......☁☹☔' mind a bit. And... most importantly it was very rewarding to see Lana eating it so well. ;)

Ingredients:

Yudane

Rye flour 100g

Boiling water 100g

---

Nakadane

Milk 100g

Strong flour 100g

Yeast 2g

---

Strong flour 300g

Milk 150g

Sugar 40g

Butter 40g

Salt 4g

DAY 1---

1. Make Yudane by mixing rye flour and boiling water together to form a dough. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the fridge overnight.

2. Make Nakadane. Warm up milk to lukewarm. In a bowl combine milk, flour and yeast and bring them together. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it in the fridge overnight.

DAY 2---

1. Take out Yudane and Nakadane from the fridge in order to bring them to room temperature.

2. Combine all the remaining ingredients and mix with the standing mixer for 1 minute.

3. While continue kneading, add Nakadane into 2 little by little followed by Yudane. Knead for 10 minutes.

4. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover the bowl with cling film and leave it until the dough has doubled in size.

5. Take out the dough on a floured surface. Reshape into a ball. Leave it for 10 minutes.

6. Shape the dough into a tin. Leave it until the dough has risen twice the size of the original size.

7. Preheat the oven to 200ºc. Bake 40 minutes.

Chestnut tart

As I mentioned on the previous post, now I've got a lot of chestnut jam, I will be making quite a few chestnuts stuff. :D

First off, it's a chestnut tart! I put a generous amount of chestnut jam in the filling. The tart is simple but the combination of the sweet pastry and dense, moist, aromatic chestnut filling is for me a perfect winter treat.

A few slices of that and a hot milky tea in front of TV.., what else do we need...?

Ingredients:

Sweet pastry 1 (see here)

Chestnut jam 200g (see here)

Almond powder 100g

Egg 1

Sugar 50g

Cream 50g

1. Prepare the sweet pastry. Line the pastry on a 9 inch tart tin. Prick the bottom of the tart case with a fork. Rest it in the freezer.

2. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Make the filling. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

3. Pour the mixture into the tart case. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

Croissant with raisin starter

After making the tiny croissants, I had an urge to make proper croissants.

This time I decided to use no yeast but my raisin starter. For the raisin starter, I do the same as the raisin yeast, then combine the liquid with the same amount of flour. I feed the starter for 3 days (I do 'water : flour = 1:1').
I've explained it very simply here but the makings of a starter is a bit more complicated than that and needs a great deal of attention... I'm still experimenting in order to achieve 'the one'. Anyway..., hopefully I will be able to share the details of the raisin starter on another post some time soon.

So... back to the croissants! The process of folding a sheet of butter is very similar to puff pastry. I have made an illustration below to show you how to do it. Hope that will help. ;) One thing to remember is to work quickly in order to keep the butter cold. We don't want the butter to melt into the dough.

After hours of preparation, I finally got my croissants! They weren't as airy as French ones, but still nice and crisp, very good indeed! I say they are more like 'Le Croissant au Japon' (forgive my french...;D). They were so addictive that I had a few for breakfast and five (or maybe more... I lost count...) for lunch... They didn't make it for dinner...

I shouldn't think about the amount of butter I consumed from them..., well, I don't care... I went for a run the following morning anyway...;)

Ingredients:

Raisin starter 200g

Flour 400g

Milk 200g

Sugar 50g

Butter 40g

Salt pinch

Butter (for folding in) 230g

1. Take the raisin starter out from the fridge to bring it to room temperature.

2. Combine all the ingredients and knead in the standing mixer for 10 minutes.

3. Leave it in the fridge overnight.

4. Prepare butter for folding in the dough. Wrap the butter with cling film and make a sheet of 20cmx 20cm square. Rest it in the fridge.

5. Take put the dough from fridge and roll it out to 40cm x 40cm square.

6. Fold the butter in (see below for how to do it). Chill in the fridge for 1 hour.

7. Repeat the process two more times.

8. Wrap the dough in a cling film and rest it overnight.

9. Roll out the dough to 3-4mm thickness. Cut each edge so that you have a nice rectangle shape.

10. Cut the dough into triangles. Make a small cut on the short side.

11. Roll the triangle from the wide end to the pointed end. Place the croissants on a baking tray, cover with a cling film, and leave them for 3-4 hours.

12. Preheat the oven to 200ºc.

13. Egg wash the croissants and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until the croissants are lightly brown.

Pineapple starter baked doughnuts

I made pineapple yeast and also made a starter with it. The starter didn't look very active...;( I think it's because it's getting cold... just like me...

Anyway, hoping that the starter would work, I made mini baked doughnuts. To my surprise, the doughnuts rose quite well, so I guess the starter worked?

The doughnuts were tiny bit dry so I poured icing sugar over them. They tasted nice but I thought they looked a bit like onion rings with Marie Rose sauce. Well.., we had them with beer. :D

I might try this with my other yeast (Banana? Lemon? Raisin?)

Ingredients:

Pineapple starter 100g

Flour 200g

Demerara sugar 100g

Egg 2

Vanilla extract 1/2 tsp

Oil 2 tbsp

1. Bring the starter to room temperature.

2. Mix eggs and sugar well.

3. Add oil and vanilla extract into 2 and mix well.

4. Mix the starter into 3.

5. Fold in flour into 4. Let the mixture rest over night.

6. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Pour the mixer into a cake tin.

7. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 15 minutes.

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.

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.

Pumpkin cream bread

It's this time of the year again! It's the pumpkin season! I love autumn. There are so many foods in this season that I love. Pumpkin is definitely one of them.

The other day I found a really cute pumpkin in a shop. For a couple of day the pumpkin was my baby's best friend and then came back to me in the kitchen. I decided to turn Mr pumpkin to a nice smooth pumpkin cream.

This silky and creamy pumpkin paste is so versatile that you can use it in breads, cakes, any other desserts but also nice to eat as is!

Here is how to make the pumpkin cream:
Ingredients

Pumpkin (after cooked) 700g

Double cream 80g

Demerara sugar 60g

Salt 5g

Butter 50g

Cinnamon 1/2-1 tsp

1. Peel the pumpkin skin and take the seeds away. Cut in small pieces. Put them in a microwave safe bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and cook for 10 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft.

2. Put the pumpkin in a blender and make a smooth paste.

3. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until they're mixed together well.

4. Get creative! Use in bread, cake, ice cream, anything you like or eat as is.:D

I made some pumpkin cream bread. Not only did I add the pumpkin cream in the bread dough but also I put the cream inside of the roll. The dough turned bright yellow and had nice soft texture. The sweet cream oozed out when I bit into the roll.... Heavenly...

I finished baking those rolls late last night and had to have one because it smelt so nice and one taste bite was certainly not enough. I didn't care what time of the night it was... It was that tasty...

I also made "Ducks" (which became "deformed ducks"... and "Booboo pig". ;D

Ingredients:

Strong flour 250g

Plain flour 250g

Yeast 7g

Egg 1

Milk 140g

Butter 50g

Sugar 50g

Salt 5g

Pumpkin cream 200g

Extra pumpkin cream to put inside.

Egg for egg wash

Pumpkin seeds to decorate

1. Put all the ingredients in a standing mixer and knead for 10 minutes.

2. Cover the bowl with cling film and rest the dough until it's doubled in size.

3. Take out the dough on a floured surface and divide into 16 pieces and make balls. Let them rest for 10 minutes.

4. Roll out each ball and place a tablespoon of pumpkin cream in the middle. Seal the dough tightly and place the roll on a baking tray with the sealed side facing down.

5. Rest the dough again until it's doubled in size.

6. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Egg wash the top of the rolls and put pumpkin seed on top.

7. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 20 minutes.

黒あん・白あん (Black bean paste, butter bean paste)

As I said on the previous Sesame pudding post, I'm going to share how to make black bean paste (黒あん, Kuro-an).

So..., it's pretty much the same as Azuki but this time I used freshly grated palm sugar.

Ingredients

Dried black beans 250g

Palm sugar (grated) 150g

Salt pinch

Water

1. Soak the beans overnight.

2. Put the beans in a large pot with enough water to cover the beans. Bring it to boil.

3. When the water is boiled, pour the water away and replace with fresh water. Bring it boil again.

4. Turn the heat down. Add sugar and salt. Simmer until the beans are soft.

5. Mash them in the way you like. 

I also made butter bean paste which is called 白あん (Shiro-An). All you need to do is to change the black beans to butter beans and you'll have a nice white bean paste. ;D

Those bean pastes can be used in cakes, puddings, biscuits... but also nice as is... So, I made little Kuro-An balls and Shiro-An balls for my after dinner treat. Yum yum yum;D

Green tea pudding

I haven't had Japanese stuff for a little while and seeing my mum adding a photo of Japanese food on Facebook made me miss a taste of home...

So..., I searched cupboards and found green tea powder that my mum got for me from Japan. Great! Since I have THIS demanding baby in my arms, I decided to make green tea pudding in a super easy way.

Not only is this pudding easy to make but also it doesn't have mike or eggs, so it's good for those who have dietary issues with them. And of course, it's yummy. ;D

The smooth pudding and rich green tea flavour was just what I needed to satisfy my Japanese food craving...

You can use normal milk instead of soy milk if you prefer...;

Green tea powder 1tbsp

Sugar 1tbsp

Soy milk 200g

Corn flour 1 1/2 tbsp

1. Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan and mix well.

2. Cook over a low heat until the mixture thickens.

3. Pour the mixture into a cup. Let it set in the fridge.

Skinny blackberry muffin

We still have a lot of blackberry jam left that I made after our foraging the other day so I made skinny muffins with it to go with morning coffee.

Only sugar in those muffins are from the jam and I reduced the amount of fat as much as I could. So..., they weren't like those very sweet and buttery cupcakes but still have nice moist texture thanks to the blackberry jam and it's perfect for someone like me who sometimes wants to feel "Oh, I'm being healthy!".

You can use any jams instead of blackberry jam;)

Ingredients:

Flour 100g

Egg 2

Blackberry jam 3 tbsp

Oil 2 tbsp

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. 

2. Beat eggs until it's light and fluffy.

3. Add blackberry jam and oil into 2. Mix well.

4. Fold flour into 3. Pour the mixture into muffin tin. Bake for 20 minutes.