Comfort food: cacao madeleines

I consider most of what I cook as comfort food because I only cook what we love and we indulge in some delicious breakfast everyday. But today I needed something special for tea, something sweet and warm, because the weather was chilly, because we had a short night and a long day, because I was sad we split our 4 kittens into 2 groups to deliver to their new homes and one group has left already. So I decided to prepare madeleines. I used the recipe I presented before, but slightly changed it: I added plenty of cacao powder, refrigerated 90min and cooked all the time at 200. I managed to obtain pretty bumps ans the taste of cacao was well present which is not often the case with cacao taste sweets.
Now it’s time we go deliver our last two kittens. En route to Hayama! It’s gonna be a long trip for them!

May 14, 2016

Sable-navette

Guests for dinner at home twice in a raw and working each day until late, I needed something delicious, simple to accomodate with fruits… and that can be prepared in advance.

I invented this recipe of little bites sable with neroli, that feels like eating navettes marseillaises. Just flour, butter, egg, brown sugar and plenty of neroli.

April 25, 2016

Natsumikan fluffy and frosted cakes

We have two natsumikan trees in the garden, or also called amanatsu. Every year the trees are covered with fruits and usually I would make jam with them and also use the zest since I know they are perfectly safe of chemicals and other nasty products. Usually the fruits are rather sour but this year they are incredibly sweet, as I discovered while making some fluffy cakes with the peel and the juice. For the fluffy cakes I used the recipe of the madeleine but put a little more baking powder and baked them at 180deg until golden. And because the juice of the fruit is really good I did a little frosting using only ice sugar and juice. Perfect for tea or breakfast!

February 1, 2016

Sometimes

Sometimes all these happen: you have a tough day at work, you want to cry it out and prepare a lovely post (yes, for you guys!) when the squarespace app crashes before you’ve saved this beautiful coconut pyramids recipe, the only thing that remains to do is to say “sorry guys, I’m going home and eat the coconut pyramids with my supportive husband!”

Well, hopefully the next morning the sky is blue, Mount Fuji is all covered in fresh snow and the storm has passed, so now I can share with you my recipe inspired by the nordic cookbook. For a 20one-bite pyramids I used 1egg, 45g of brown caster sugar, 100g of coconut flakes, 40g of melted butter. Mix the egg and sugar, add the coconut and the melted buter, stir well and let sit for 10-30min so that the coconut get moisted. Pre-heat the oven at 175deg and on a cooking sheet form the pyramids. Cook until the tip is golden. Enjoy!

January 19, 2016

Looking for the perfect madeleine recipe: may be I’ve found it!!!

Well, an other rainy Sunday to test some madeleine recipe and I think this time it’s the right one. At first I was a bit reluctant in trying it because it has a lot more butter in it, but so far it’s the one that guarantees the best bumps and the perfect consistency. So, too bad for the butter outage that we still have in Japan, this is the recipe I will adopt as a base for my madeleines from now on!

I found it on the blog Piroulie (http://piroulie.canalblog.com/archives/2008/12/03/10442707.html) and it’s a Lenotre recipe. I always do smaller amounts so I used: 100g of flour, 85g of butter, 40g of brown caster sugar, 2 eggs, 3g of baking powder, a pinch of salt, a large table spoon of honey, then whatever you want for flavoring. This time I used neroli. I first melt the butter in a little pan. Then in a bowl I mix the eggs, the sugar, the salt and the honey, and batter well until a foam starts forming. Then I add the flour, the baking powder and continue to mix. Finally I add the butter and the flavoring and refrigirated for 30min. The oven is preheated at 230deg and as soon as I insert the madeleines I drop the temperature to 200deg as Piroulie recommended. After about 5-7min I again lower to 180deg, then the bumps appear nice and big! I bake until almost all golden, and remove from the mold as soon as I take it out. Quite simple and really delicious!!

December 14, 2015

Cardamom and vanilla madeleines

I am still looking for the perfect madeleine recipe, so I have tried a new one. And because it’s getting cold and I wanted something really sweet I opted for adding vanilla and cardamom to the madeleines and finished with a sugar frost where I added cinnamon.

Taste-wise the cardamom and vanilla is always amazing, the additional cinnamon in the sugar frost, made the final taste something like sweet chai, which was exactly what I wanted. As for the madeleine, I won’t share with you my recipe because I didn’t find it satisfactory enough. The delicious taste was unfortunately not accompanied by the madeleines typical shape and was disappointing in that respect. A good reason to try again!!!

November 30, 2015

Madeleines

Since my last trial of madeleines this summer I didn’t had te time to get my molds and to try again, but now that days are really getting shorter and cooler the tea-time after gardening all afternoon requires a little complement and madeleines are perfect for that. So I went to buy some molds to Kappabashi street the other day and I just tried to make some madeleines again. I picked a different recipe than last time but I am not completely satisfied with the shape. They get a little bump, but not as big as I expeted. Taste-wise: perfect. Let me work a little on the recipe before sharing it. But if you have a good one let me know!!

October 29, 2015

Chai and apple cake

Delicious for a rainy day like today, I made an apple and chai cake with big apple from Aomori I bought at the coop market. For the chai I made a mix of cinnamon powder, cardamom seeds and fresh gratted ginger. The rest is just flour, baking powder, brown sugar and a bit of vegetal oil. All stired well and baked 30min at 170deg. Served with chai tea for breakfast or tea.

October 10, 2015

Lime and ginger cake

No better excuse than a typhoon to induldge with a cup tea and a piece of cake. The other day I bought beautiful limes in Ohara, so I decided to use them and make a lime cake, then I found a little piece of ginger in the fridge and found that it’d be the perfect combination. Et voila! How the lime and ginger cake recipe was written and executed.

I mixed half flour and half corn starch, baking powder, brown caster sugar, a bit of oil, eggs, stired well. Added the zest of one large lime, and the juice too. Added the gratted ginger (a little piece is enough). Stirred well again. Greased a cake pan, put the dough in, baked in the oven at 150~180deg until golden. Ate with a nice cup of Earl Grey. And kept the rest for breakfast!!!

October 1, 2015