Cruchy on the Outside Soft on the Inside Hot Sandwiches

I got Vitantonio Sandwich Baker and first tried it today! They were mini, cute hot sandwiches but made me full with lots of fillings.
 
Hot Sandwiches (4 pieces):

<Ham, Egg and Cheese>

1. Boil 2 eggs and make egg salad with some mayonnaise, salt and squeezed lemon
2. Place ham at the bottom, put some egg salad and sprinkle some cheese
3. Sandwich with the other half of bread

<Tomato and Mozzarella Cheese>

1. Put some cheese, sliced tomatoes on the bread
2. Put some cheese on top of the tomatoes again
3. Sandwich with the other half of bread

Fluffiest Vanilla Chiffon Cake with Royal Milk Tea Cream

Recipe by Rumi Kojima - Adjusted for a 20 cm chiffon cake pan:

 

This was the fluffiest, moist, tasty vanilla chiffon cake I ever had! Some little tips from the recipe about how to mix ingredients changed its entire texture and taste. You can never learn enough about baking!

Adjusted ingredients:

•  4 eggs used this time but 5 eggs will be better for a 20 cm cake pan - 1.5 times the recipe amount for all the ingredients (doubled amount for all the ingredients would be better for 20 cm cake pan...next time)
• 1/4 vanilla stick

My Memo for Tips for success:

• Don't mix egg yolk too much when it's mixed with vanilla, sugar and dry ingredients.
• Let egg white stay in the freezer to keep it cool before beating it.
• Meringue: 1. Add lemon or salt and 1/2 tsp sugar first and beat the egg white for about 3           minutes (draw a circle by a hand mixer). 2. As some peaks appear, add the half of the rest of the sugar and beat it 1 more minutes. 3. Add the rest of the sugar and keep beating for 1.5 more minutes, moving the hand mixer vertically.
• Mix 1/4 meringue into the egg yolk. Add all the egg yolk into the white and mix it quickly, following the mixing method of the recipe.
• Bake until the height of the cake becomes a little lower than the highest point.

Strawberry Yogurt Mousse & Chocolate Cake

Chocolate cake:
3 eggs
90 gram sugar
3 tbs milk
23 gram cocoa powder
30 gram flour
1.5 tbs vegetable oil

Strawberry yogurt mousse:
2 egg yolk
45 gram sugar
150 cc milk
9 gram gelatin + 63 cc cold water (usually gelatin: water = 1:7)
150 cc heavy cream
210 cc strawberry yogurt puree (see below for how to make it)

 

How to make the chocolate cake layer
Preparation:
*Take eggs and milk out of the fridge to keep them at a room temperature.
**Sift dry ingredients (flour and cocoa powder) in a bowl.
1. Mix eggs in a bowl and add sugar in it (while putting the bowl in hot water (optional)) and whip it all well.
2. When the mixture forms stiff peaks, add dry ingredients (flour and cocoa) to the mixture alternately with milk and vegetable oil.
3. Pour the mixture in to the cake pan (8 inch, removable bottom preferred but 9 inch should be okay.) and bake it for about 10-13 minutes at 355 °F.

How to make strawberry yogurt mousse
Preparation:
*Add cold water to gelatin in a small bowl and mix well to dissolve it.
**Make strawberry yogurt puree: If you can find strawberry puree at a store, just add yogurt (50 grams) in the puree (160 grams).
Even if you can't find the puree at a store, it's easy to make! Use strawberries or/and raspberries by following the below recipe.

1. Simmer strawberries or/and raspberries (about 130 - 140 grams) in a pot until it thickens. Add raspberry jam (2 tbs). (The total amount of the puree should be 160 grams.)
2. Cool the puree in a bowl and add yogurt (50 grams) in it.
(As long as the total amount of the puree is 210 cc, it's okay to change the ratio of the raspberries, jam and yogurt according to your preference.)
1. Mix egg yolk and sugar in a bowl.
2. Bring milk to boil in a pot and pour it slowly into the egg and sugar mixture.
3. Put the mixture back to the pot and simmer it at a low heat until it slightly thickens. (Try not to heat it up too much)
4. Remove the pot from the stove, melt in gelatin immediately and strain it into a bowl.
5. After the mixture in a bowl cools down, add strawberry yogurt puree in it.
6. Whip heavy cream in a separate bowl to the same consistency as the above strawberry yogurt mixture (I like to whip it well because the more whipped, the softer and lighter texture the mousse will be) and mix them both.
7. Pour it over the chocolate cake (cooled) in the cake pan and chill it until set for about 5-7 hours.

 (I wanted to be able to see two separate layers on the outside the cake after chilling it; however, the mousse covered all around the cake in a pan because the cake usually shrinks while cooling and there is a small gap between the cake and the pan where the mousse goes all over around while chilling to set. I simply scraped the mousse off the edge of the cake by sliding a pallet knife all around the cake...Any other suggestions or advice to avoid this situation will be very much appreciated!)

This is a vanilla cake version (recipe at Mont Blank Cake) of the same strawberry yogurt mousse cake with chocolate whipped cream (100 ml whipped cream and 40 gram melted chocolate) and vanilla whipped cream on top. The combination of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry yogurt was very good!

Green Tea and Double Chocolate Fruit Parfait Twins

                                                                              

             

Moist Pumpkin Cupcakes with Milky Vanilla Frosting with Apple Cinnamon

Chocolate Heart Cookies with Orange and Walnut Flavor

Sugary Cinnamon Blueberry and Pineapple Breakfast Mini Muffins

Muffins:
(for 24 cup mini muffin pan)

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 -1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup melted butter 
• Blueberry or/and pineapple chunks

Glaze:

• 5 tbs butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2/3 teaspoon cinnamon

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 - 13 minutes.

Rosy Mini Apple Tarts with Creamy Vanilla Custard

Very Strawberry Custard Tart

Ingredients:
Makes 2 7-inch tarts

Pie crust:

• 100 grams flour
• 2 grams salt
• 70 grams butter
• 35 - 40 ml cold water

Custard:

• 24 grams flour
• 60 grams sugar
• 3 egg yolk
• 300 ml milk
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract or 1 vanilla stick

(*This should make about 250 gram custard. Add the following into the 250 gram custard.)

• 80 ml whipped cream + 2 tbs powder sugar
• 3.5 grams gelatin, dissolved in 24.5 ml water (for soft custard, add a little more than half)

Strawberries:

• About 2- 3 regular packages of strawberries for 2 tarts

Nappage (cake glaze):

• 15 ml water
• 8 grams sugar
• 1 grams gelatin + 7 ml water

Preparation: Wash strawberries well and cut each half. Let them dry on a paper towel.

How to make pie crust:

1. Combine flour, salt, butter in a food processor. 
2. When the mixture is mixed like coarse meal, with small size pieces of butter, add water gradually.
3. Stop adding water when the dough holds together. (adding too much water makes the crust tough.)
4. Take dough out of the machine and cover it with plastic wrap.
5. Refrigerate about 30 minutes to 1 hour or longer.
6. Take it out from the refrigerator and roll out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface to about 10 inch circle.
7. Place the dough onto a 7-inch pie pan and trim the dough to within a half inch of the edge of the pie dish.
8. Pre-bake the dough with pie weight at 370 °F for 10 minutes and bake without pie weights at 355°F for another 7-10 minutes. (line the pie crust with parchment paper and fill it with pie weights till about 2/3 height of the pie pan)

How to make custard:

1. Put flour, sugar and egg yolk in a bowl and add a little bit of milk (about 2 tbs from 300 milk) into the bowl and mix all together.
2. Heat the rest of the milk and bring to a boil.
3. Add the milk SLOWLY into the egg mixture in a bowl and mix it all together.
4. Return to the pot or a put it into a double boiler, stir gently and slowly with a spatula until it thickens, over a low heat for a regular pot/a medium high for a double boiler (I use a double boiler, which makes it a lot easier to make smooth custard).
5. Transfer the custard into a bowl and cool it by putting the bowl of custard in a ice water in a separate bowl. 
6. Cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap. When it's ready and cool, the plastic wrap will come off clean.

Finishing:

1. Pour the cooled custard into the baked, cooled pie crust and let it stay for for about 3-5 minutes (in fridge if the custard isn't still too soft).
2. Make nappage (see below) and let it cool a little bit and decorate the pie with strawberries.
3. Brush the strawberries with nappage and enjoy!

How to make nappage (make this right when decorating the pie with strawberries):

1. Dissolve gelatin in water.
2. Microwave water and sugar for about 15- 20 seconds and add the gelatin, stirring until dissolved.
3. Let nappage cool down a little bit. When nappage is just warm not hot or cold is the best time to brush the fruit with it (if it's hot, it won't stay on fruit but if it's cold, it'll get too hard to brush). If nappage gets cold and hard, microwave it again to the right temperature.

Kiwifruit and Green Tea Smoothie

 

Ingredients:

2 kiwifruit

1 banana

About 1/4 cup yogurt (about 60 ml)

About 1/4 cup milk

About 70 ml green tea, cold

5 small ice cubes

1 - 2 tbs honey to your preference

Strawberry Shortcake

Sponge cake (7 inch cake pan):
3 eggs
90 grams sugar
75 grams flour
30 grams butter
2 tbs vanilla extract

Mont Blanc Cake (Chestnut, Cream & Custard)

For Vanilla Cake:
4 egg white and yolk
A pinch of salt
80 grams sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
60 grams flour
65 ml heavy cream

For Chestnut Cream:
250 grams chestnuts, cooked (boiled and peeled)
190 ml milk (add more if needed)
3 tbs sugar
1 tbs honey
1 tsp rum
1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla extract

For Custard:
1 egg yolk
8 grams flour
20 grams sugar
100 ml milk
some vanilla extract

Whipped Cream:
150 ml heavy cream
1.5 tbs powder sugar
1 tsp vanilla extrac

How to make vanilla cake:

1. Preheat the oven 355 and place cupcake liners in a 12-cupcake pan.
2. Separate eggs into bowls and chill egg white in a freezer and leave egg yolk out in a small bowl.
3. Prepare flour, sugar and heavy cream in small separate bowls.
4. Take out egg white from the freezer and add a pinch of salt and beat it to make stiff melange, while adding sugar three separate times.
5. Combine egg yolk one by one and then vanilla extract.
6. Microwave heavy cream in a separate bowl for about 25-30 seconds (until it gets warm but not hot).
7. Add in flour and the warm heavy cream alternatively (heavy cream needs to be warm; otherwise, the oil in the cream will break the air bubble in the batter and the cake won't rise).
8. Pour batter into the cupcake pan.
9. Bake at 355°F for about 12 - 14 minutes.

How to make chestnut cream:

1. Cut chestnut into small pieces and put them into a small pot.
2. Add in milk and simmer chestnut in it for about 5 minuets until it softens.
3. Remove from heat, use immersion blender (or a regular blender) to make chestnut puree. 
4. Transfer the chestnut puree into a bowl and mash it through a strainer (If the chestnut is too hard to go through the strainer, you can loosen it up by adding a little bit of milk). At this point, it should be very smooth, creamy chestnut puree like paste.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to flavor the chestnut paste.

Gâteau au Chocolat

Gyu-don

For about 4 servings

Ingredients:
1 pound shredded beef
1 large onions
1/3 cup chopped green onions

Sauce:
300 ml dashi (water and dashi powder)
3.5 tbs soy sauce
3.5 tbs sake (ryori-syu, sold by H-mart)
3.5 tbs sugar

1. Slice onions and green onions.
2. Simmer the sauce in a pot and cook beef in it quickly.
3. Remove beef on the side.
4. Put about 2 scoops of sauce in a sauce pan and cook onions in it until they soften.
5. Add beef for one person and simmer with onions for about 3 minutes.
6. Sprinkle green onions and enjoy!

Moist, Fluffy, Tropical Waffles

Dry ingredients:
1 3/4 cup pancake mix (1 3/4 cup flour & 2.3 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt as a substitute)
 2 - 3 tbs sugar

Wet ingredients:
3 tbs butter, melted
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 sour cream or Greek yogurt
(For pancakes, add 1 tsp vanilla extract)

*Any tropical fruit (optional), diced: mango, peaches, papaya, pears, kiwis, apples etc.

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
2. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until it's all mixed.
3. Cook in a waffle maker (I use a waring pro waffle maker. At 3.5 temperature)
4. Toss fruit on top of a waffle and enjoy!

Shrimp & Peas Risotto with White Wine and Sake

 

Shrimp stock:

3/4 to 1 lb shrimp shells (shells for the stock, *meat for the risotto below)

2 cups water

2 1/4 oofu dashi packages =12.5 grams and add 1.5 cups water or simply 1.5 cups chicken broth or use consomme

1 cup leek green, chopped

4 shakes (pinches) of pepper

4 parsley sprigs

3 bay leaves

Risotto:

2 tbs butter

1.5 bacon stripes

3/4 shallot, chopped

1 cup leak white, chopped

5 mushrooms, diced

1 cup dry arborio rice

1.5/4 cup white wine (or dry sherry)

1/4 cup sake

*3/4 to 1 lb shrimp meat

1/2 - 3/4 cup green peas

1/2 tsp salt or less

A pinch of pepper

A pinch of cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp sage (optional)

1/8 nutmeg

3 tbs grated Parmesan

Some chives or parsley as garnish

1. Devein shrimp and put the shells and all other stock ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer stock for 10 minutes. Strain stock into a bowl and put it back into the saucepan over low heat.
2. Melt butter in a saute pan over medium heat and cook bacon, shallot, leak white and mushrooms for 2 minutes.
3. Add in rice and saute for 2 minutes (try not to allow vegetables or rice to brown).
4. Pour white wine and sake into the saucepan and let it evaporates.
5. Add a ladle of warm stock (about 1/2 cup) and stir until absorbed. Continue adding stock in the same way until rice is tender.
6. Add in shrimp and green peas and cook until shrimp is pink and add in the rest of all the spices (from salt to nutmeg).
7. Remove from the heat, add Parmesan and chives or parsley as garnish.

Crispy Milan Cookies

Ingredients:
150 grams egg white (5-6 eggs)
150 grams powdered sugar
150 grams flour
150 ml heavy cream
*3 tsp earl grey tea leaves to make earl grey flavored heavy cream for earl grey cookies. (optional - see below)
**3/4 tsp earl grey tea leaves to add in batter. (optional)

Chocolate filling:
90 ml heavy cream
5 ounces of 70 % chocolate + 1 ounce semisweet chocolate
***1 orange zest (optional)

1. Preheat the oven at 350 F.
2. Sift flour and put aside. 
3. Beat egg white and make meringue by adding sugar gradually until it forms stiff peaks.
4. Add flour and heavy cream. (To make plain and earl grey flavored cookies, devide batter into halves in separate bowls and add plain and earl grey heavy cream into each batter.)
5. Squeeze the dough in the icing bag to shape very thin, long shapes on a cookie pan and bake for 17 - 19 minutes (important - space them about 1.5 inches apart as they spread! Bake well until the edge of the cookies turn brown).
6. While cookies cool down, heat chocolate filling ingredients until the chocolate melts and put the chocolate filling on each cookie and sandwich it with another cookie.

To make earl grey flavored cookies:
*At the very beginning, make earl grey heavy cream by microwaving 50 ml heavy cream with tea leaves for 40 seconds or more. Remove tea after it steeps and add in more heavy cream to make 75 ml in total. In a separate bowl, put 75 ml plain heavy cream to make plain ones and chill both in the fridge. 
 **Add tea leaves into the earl grey batter after step 4.

Karaage (Fried Chicken) and Pickled Leaf Mustard and Egg Frid Rice

To marinate chicken:

• About 3 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thigh (I used 2 packages of chicken thigh)
• Salt (3/4 tsp - 1 tsp) & pepper
• 4 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tbs mirin
• 2 tbs ginger juice
• 2.5 - 3 large garlic cloves

Before frying chicken:

• 1 egg to mix in the marinated chicken
• Potato (corn) starch for frying

1. Marinate chicken with all the ingredient and put it in fridge at least 3 - 4 hours or over night.
2. Heat oil in a pot.
3. Mix beaten egg well in the marinated chicken.  This will make chicken tender and juicy.
4. Cover the chicken with corn starch thoroughly one by one and fry in oil at 160 degrees first and take the chicken out of the oil when the batter hardens. Fry them again at 180 degrees until the outside is golden brown. This way will remove excess oil and make the outside of the chicken crispy.