Happy Birthday, Andy!

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Haaapy birthday dear Andy,

Haaaapy birthday to you!!

It's my dear husband's birthday today. Happy birthday, Andy ;D xxx

Last Saturday we had Andy's birthday lunch, and I made this "Ultimate cream slice" as Andy requested.

It's made of three layers of puff pastry, a mixture of vanilla cream and custard cream and strawberries in between each layer, then topped with a layer of icing, pistachio meringues, sugar coated strawberries, and roasted mixed nuts brittle,... yes, now you know why it's called "Ultimate" cream slice!


Cream slice may sound an unusual cake for a birthday (I initially thought that too...), but it's one of Andy's favourite cakes, so I thought why not treat him with a very special cream slice.

The cake was a serious cream and sugar heaven. I probably enjoyed it as much as or more than the birthday boy...

Happy Birthday, Andy! xxxxx

Halloween Cream Puff

Scary looking pumpkins and fancy dresses... yes, Halloween is here again!

I've been doing some Halloween baking this week and this is one of them.... Halloween special black Jack-o'-lantern cream puffs1

The pastry itself is my usual choux pastry with black food colouring. However the cream inside is the special thing of these guys! It's Pumpkin Cream! I added pureed pumpkin to custard cream and combined with whipped cream.
They are seriously, dangerously tasty!

It was very difficult to see if the pastries were going brown or not, but I think I judged it well. ;) They looked a bit like giant snails... ;D

Happy Halloween, everyone! Don't open the front door to strangers...;)

Easter Monday & Joint birthday party

As well as it was Lana's birthday yesterday, it was Easter Monday and we had an afternoon joint birthday party for Lana, Steve and me.

So..., there were three cakes on the table, what a treat! Of course, I started (oh, Lana did too!) with a slice of cake...

My birthday cake was made by my mum-in-law. It was a very pretty iced cake with lemon curd. Umm, yum yum, thank you, Chris!

I made sugar free non baked cheese cakes for Steve. Since it was Easter, I used Easter eggs as a cup and put bunnies and eggs on top.

Andy wanted to make vegetarian sausage rolls so I made a sheet of puff pastry too... I love making puff pastry. It's very therapeutic and much more rewarding when you see a nice rise and flaky pastry come out of the oven. ;D

Considering we had a bit of hectic days beforehand, I'm very pleased that we managed to have a lovely afternoon. :)

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.

Vanilla & Matcha mille feuille

I made puff pastry for Andy because he wanted to make a French biscuit that required puff pastry. (I forgot the name of it but the sweet and crunchy biscuits were very nice... so good that they were gone before we had a chance to take photos...)

With the left over puff pastry, I made mille feuille. One with vanilla custard cream and the other with matcha (green tea) custard cream. The puff pastry puffed up a little too much for mille feuille (I should have rolled the pastry thinner... ;( ... ), but they tasted great, anyway.

As I've mentioned many times in the past, I love green tea, and green tea custard is not an exception! It's so good... and a great variation of vanilla custard. Mix one tea spoon of green tea powder with one tea spoon of water, and add the mixture into the vanilla custard.

Enjoy an European style dessert and a taste of Japan at the same time! ;D

源氏パイもどき… (Genji Pie)

There is a snack called 源氏パイ (Genji Pie) in Japan, which is a sweet heart shaped small pie. So..., I made an attempt to create something similar to that with my left over puff pastry. (Have you seen my ultimate apple pie?)

I made long strips of pastry (approximately 1cm x 20cm), sprinkled brown sugar on them, and then rolled each short end so that they meet in the middle.

The pies became a bit thicker than the original 源氏パイ, but they were nicely crisp and tasted quite like it. Not bad... :D

Why not try them next time you have some puff pastry left? ;)

The tiniest croissants

With the leftover puff pastry for my Ultimate apple pie I made these tiny croissants. They were the smallest croissants I've ever made, eaten or even seen!

Look at the size of pine corn behind! They were so cute looking like a toy. I wanted to leave them on the table as a display but they went into my belly instead...

Ultimate apple pie

Today we visited Andy's friend and his family and I brought this ultimate apple pie.

I've been thinking about what to make without eggs the whole week because Andy's friend doesn't eat eggs, and I eventually settled on the ultimate Autumn & Winter classic, apple pie.

We cut the pie after the amazing food Andy's friend's wife cooked for us. The prawn curry and mushroom rice was so tasty! I loved it when we had the pie, their 5 year-old boy grabbed the pie, ate it and gave me a big smile. Not only that, he tried to eat my piece too! I take that as a big compliment for my apple pie. :D

Thanks so much to the Kumar for the lovey time.

Ingredients:

Puff pastry 1 (see here)

Apple confiture 150g (see here)

Apple 5

Sugar 50g

Lemon juice 1 tbsp

Raisin 2-3 tbsp

Almond slice 2-3 tbsp

Apricot jam 3 tbsp

Water 1 tsp

1. Cut apples into small pieces, and cook with sugar and lemon juice in a pan over medium heat until the liquid from the apples is reduced and thickened.

2. Preheat the oven to 190ºc. Make puff pastry. Roll out the pastry onto tart tin.

3. Spread apple confiture on the bottom of the pie. Put cooked apples and raisins on top. Sprinkle almonds.

4. Decorate the top of the pie with remaining pastry. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until the pie is golden.

5. Mix apricot jam and water and put in the microwave for 30 second. While the pie is hot, glaze the pie with thinned apricot jam.

Sweet potato and apple pie

Winter is coming... It's time for nice comforting treats so I made these mini pies filled with sweet potato cream and apple confiture.

I make the fillings and puff pastry myself but if you can't find time to do all that, use a ready made puff pastry and apple jam. (I don' know if you can find sweet potato cream in a shop... maybe you've got a time to make sweet potato cream yourself?) Then all you've got to do is to roll out the pastry and put the jam and cream... and bake!
The super cute and tasty pies will be ready in less than a hour. Glaze the pies with thinned apricot jam to make it pretty. ;)

I like these mini pies a lot but I think Andy liked them even more... He kept going back to them. What a nice complement to a baker. :D

Mini apple pie

We had the first harvest from our garden's apple tree the other day and yes of course, there is no time for me to wait but go in the kitchen to make the classic apple dessert, Apple pie!

First I made an apple confiture to put in the pie. I used much less sugar than I normally does when I make a jam in order to enjoy the natural sweetness of the apples.

This time I made the puff pastry myself too. It came out pretty well. The pastry rose nicely and was light and flaky.

Instead of a big pie, I baked mini apple pies. They were easy to pick up..., maybe too easy that you eat more and more...

The apples you grow yourself taste so good and feels rewarding too. There are more apples on the tree. Hummm, what shall I make next... ;)

Puff pastry from scratch? Why not? :)

Ingredients:

Puff pastry

Butter (diced and softened) 100g 

Flour 200g

Cold water 100ml

Salt pinch

Apple confiture

2-3 tbsp each

1. Prepare the puff pastry. Sift flour in a bowl and add cold water to make a smooth dough. 

2. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a square (1cm thick).

3. Place the butter in the middle of the dough and fold the 4 corners so that the butter is properly sealed. Chill in the freezer for 10 minutes.

4. Roll out the dough again to a long rectangle. (5mm thick)

5. Letter fold the dough.

6. Turn the dough 90 degrees.

7. Repeat 4 and 5. Wrap the dough in the cling film and chill in the freezer for 10 minutes.

8. Repeat 4 to 7 two more times. (see below for how to.)

9. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Roll out the dough very thinly. Cut it into 8 pieces. Press the pastry into cupcake tin.

10. Put 2-3 tbsp of apple confiture into the pastry. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until the top becomes golden.