Photos

I had trouble uploading images from the app I was using.
That is why I have not been uploading this blog.
I am sad that I had not been upldating this blog.
I hope there is another way to upload, I have many pictures I want to upload :--/

Lawson uchi cafe

I think I figured out a way to blog from my phone! How convenient is it to be able to blog any time any where? Convenience is every where, and it's not just technology. There is convenience stores everywhere here in Japan. Usually these types of stores are attached to a gas stations in U.S., but it's not the case in Japan. Convenience stores are more important and relied on than gas stations.

There is a Lawson convenience store that is about 2min walking distance from where I live. Convenience stores work hard on providing already made food as well as good looking sweets. I saw a cake that they identified as "new item"

The box contains 2 good looking strawberry shortcakes.

It was so simple and was a perfect after dinner desert. I think I will buy this cake again, and maybe I will try their chocolate cake sometimes soon.

Lawson "uchi cafe"
¥395

Bakery in Japan - quil fait bon

So I have arrived in Japan! (After a while of not updating this blog...)

One of my enjoyment in life here is going to be bakery hunting. I have a feeling I'm going to develop diabetes from eating so much bread and sweets, but eating is worth my time then worrying. Since I arrived in Japan, I have been eating bread everyday, yes everyday and I am not exaggerating.

One of the bakeries I went to so far, "quait fait bon", stands out to me. The bakery sales cakes, tarts, and pre-packaged sweets which can also be found in their online stores. There is a cafe attached to the bakery, so people can enjoy coffee and dessert there. At the time I went there, there was a 30-min wait for the cafe. I think because it was raining, there was few indoor seating available since some tables were located outdoor. There was no wait for the take home orders, so we decided to buy some for us and for guests that were planning to see us

It was so nice of them to put the plastic bag over the paper bag so it won't get wet!

The cake box is so cute that it was hard to see it go into the trash after we ate the cakes.

We got: short cake, chocolate cake, fig tart, caramel+pear tart, seasonal fruit tart.

They were quite pricey, actually they were really pricey. The cost varies but it's about ￥577 to ￥735 (about $7-$9) a piece.

The one I ate was the chocolate cake. I'm not sure if the other cakes tasted good, but the chocolate cake I ate was very rich. It probably contains a lot of butter. I think its not just regular butter, but some kind of specialty butter since stack of it was displayed along with the cakes. Although it didn't taste bad, it was not my type of taste that I like. It was just too rich for me.

We also got a pre-packaged cake for ￥682 (about $8.40) . Three different sticks of cake were in the package we got, and the box is also so cute.

I feel like I'm paying a lot for the packaging. It's so cute though, I can't really complain. I don't think I will come back to this bakery again any time soon. It didn't really fit my taste and the price is too much. But I'm glad I got the chance to try one of the cakes from this bakery. The stick cakes will be a cute gift for someone who likes sweets.

quait fait bon

location - Kyoto *also located in 9 other locations in Japan

website - http://www.quil-fait-bon.com/

Birthday Cake!! in May

(The sides have chocolate dots!)

This cake was for Miss WTL's birthday :D I'm able to put some pictures in this laptop now finally so I am late posting this. The birthday was actually in May! May Bday yeaay~

I forgot to take pictures before putting it in the box so it got little squished on the side haha. I got this strawberry layout idea from cookpad. It is supposed be like a flower. And red flower, I thought, is the image of WTL.

The cake traveled in the car for about 1 hour. It got little squished in the cooler. :/ Also, this was for a birthday surprise! It was fun, I think we did good job in being it a surprise haha! So we put the candles and lighted it up outside, came into the house, and surprise~. Lighting the candles outside was difficult because of the wind blowing >< . I didn't realize the chocolate would melt from the candles, but it did :(. I felt sad the cake was melting, but I think the taste did not change so it was okay! I think everyone enjoyed the cake :D and we were able to successfully surprise WTL! (Cake in box)

Birthday cake!

It was my brother's birthday recently, so I made a cake! I used the same sponge cake recipe from cookpad, so it is a smaller in size. Fruits I used are just strawberries and kiwis. Same toppings as the new year cake (profile pic). I like the strawberries and kiwi pieces on the boarder, it made the cake look pretty and colorful even though there is only two types of fruits there. Putting the fruits on the boarder was surprising not difficult, but the fruits was juicy, wet, and messy. Strawberries were, once again, not sweet. :(

I only got to eat a tiny little piece. Some people came over with about 2 hour notice...if I had known, I would have made a bigger cake! But I'm glad everyone ate it without any complaints. :D From that little piece I got, It tasted pretty good~

Did not have a chance to take a picture of the inside. :/

I wrote on the cake with chocolate + cream (I guess it's ganache) mixture in a bag. The words are really hard to read, haha. Just in case...the words read "Happy Birthday 00000"!

If no baking, go to a bakery

Today, I finally got to go to a place that has "bakery" in its name. Bakery is pretty rare around here. The place I went to is actually a little breakfast/lunch eatery place located in Cocoa Beach. It seems that all the bread they serve are home made! They have received many good reviews online, I think many locals and tourists both love this place.

What was surprising is the lady who served us were Japanese! She was a very nice and friendly person. I think that she part owns the restaurant. We even received box full of mini pastries and a loaf of bread at the end :D. I tasted few of these cute pastries when I got home, and they were tasty. I haven't tried the bread yet, but I am excited to try it!

Cheesecake gone weird

It certainly looks like cheese cake. But it's just kinda of...weird to me.

I love fluffy cheese cakes. I can't eat rich cheesecakes such as NY style cheesecake because it makes me feel overwhelmed with the richness after few bites. So I used the Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake recipe from Dianna's Deserts website. However, I arranged it too much that its not really the same recipe anymore.

I used Neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese for the first time. I always wondered how this type of cheese taste like. Well, it looks just like cream cheese, maybe softer than cream cheese, and it has less fat than cream cheese! I'm not sure how to pronounce Neufachatel, but its such a cool name. The name has accent marks which I can't type here.

Next change I made is that I used sour cream. I had about half empty container of sour cream in the refrigerator, which I wish I could say is about to expire or something, but it has already expired for maybe over one month. It looked okay and it did not smell anything bad so I used about 1/2 cup of it.

I am used to making meringue now. I have fun folding the egg white and the batter. I put the whole thing in the oven thinking it will turn out good, and I started to clean up the mess. Than I saw the pile of flour and corn starch that I had sifted on the table across from where I stood. I totally forgot to put the flour in.

I heard that by not taking it out right after it finished baking will reduce the risk of shrinking. Although I did that, it still shrinked, not too much, maybe because it didn't have flour in it. After putting on some melted jam+water glaze and cooled down a little more, I tasted it. It was still a little warm. It seemed a lot like mouse or suffle. It tasted quite alright. However, the crust I made from leftover crackers were horrible! The water had seeped in through the spring-form pan and absolutely soaked the crust. It made it soggy and rubbery, ew!

Hopefully, the cheese cake will become not so much like mouse once it has cooled more. I will taste it again perhaps tomorrow! The glaze on cheesecake is pretty good. Maybe I will try different type of Neufchatel cheese cake sometime again, and next time I think I will pass putting the crust at the bottom.

Strawberry Short Cake

Strawberries were on sale at Publics, and they were 3 for $5! So many strawberries, but they are not so sweet. I figured I won't eat them all as is, so I decided to make strawberry shortcake. I haven't made this simple cake for... I don't know how long. I just remember last time I made it, it didn't turn out that good.

Today, I found a great sponge cake recipe, it is very simple and easy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://cookpad.com/recipe/552012 (with pictures)

Here is the translation:

Makes 18cm round cake

Cake flour - 90g

Egg - 3

Sugar - 90g

Butter (melted) - 10g

Milk (room temperature to warm) - 20cc

Vanilla Oil - little bit

1. Sift flour, put it aside. Sift the sugar, put it aside.

2. Prepare the cake pan with lining it with parchment paper.

3. Put the egg and 1/3 of sugar in bowl, mix with beater. You can put the bowl on top of a pan with boiling water to have double boiler. It will be better when the egg mixture is warm...close to room temperature.

4. When the eggs get creamy, add half of the remaining sugar to egg mixture. Add the rest of sugar after more beating.

5. Beat eggs until fluffy.

6. Add vanilla, flour (separate in to 2 or 3 times) and fold with rubber spatula.

7. Add the butter and milk, fold with spatula.

8. Pour into pan, drop the pan from about 15cm hight for 3 times and let the air bubbles out. Bake for 30 min. at 350Degrees F.

(Recipe credit: ゆみさくちゃん)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cake pan used for this recipe is smaller than standard size in the U.S. I used a round casserole dish, not sure exactly what size, that was smaller than my cake pan. Usually this type of sponge cake will taste really good when you brush on some syrup (Sugar, water, and maybe some liquor) after cutting the cake in half.

I put some grapes on top of the cakes today, but I do not recommend doing that. Maybe blueberries would taste better. Although grapes do seem like they are "berries." Are they??

Wait...this is supposed to be strawberry short cake. I have no idea why I even put grapes in the first place.

Hamburger and the bun

If eating fast food is unhealthy, is eating home-made hamburgers healthy? That's my question.
I just finished eating a hamburger that I made myself from the bun to the meat patty. Actually I just made the bun and the meat patty...I did not make the toppings. Anyway, it turned out quite nice. :D

I baked the buns last night, and it was pretty easy and simple. I used a recipe from cookpad once again. Because the recipe had no oil in it, I adjusted the recipe a little and added some egg to it.


The recipe is for 6 buns, but I dropped one dough ball on the floor, so I had 5. They were not too soft or not too hard. Perfect for hamburgers.

I had fried pork cutlets and onion rings yesterday, and today I ate hamburgers. I am eating too much greasy food that I do not feel healthy at all. So it turns out hamburgers even the one's made at home are pretty greasy, but maybe not as salty as fast food burgers so it is all good!

Cupcake size cream puffs

Why is it that I never see big cream puffs at the stores? I see them everywhere in Japan. There's even ice cream cream puffs at some stores. So I always wanted to make cupcake size cream puffs to satisfy myself. I think that I can say I succeeded in making them today. Last attempt in making them(I think it was last week) turned out horrible...they poofed up in the oven, but they just shrunk and became flat when I took them out. So that day, I felt disappointed but managed to remake them...in smaller size. I searched for different recipe to try today and decided on making this recipe. The author of the recipe gave out some helpful tips. I followed the tips and baked them at higher temperature than usual, and also I left the puffs in the oven for a while after they were done.

Because I baked them at higher temperature, they turned out looking awesomely rustic . I think the key was to leave them in the oven after they are done baking. They did not shrink :D They came out so poofy that some of them was super hollow (like the one in the pic)!


The puffs turned out great and all, but I forgot I had run out of regular white granulated sugar the other day. I needed the sugar for the custard cream and whipped cream. I had some dark brown sugar so I used that instead. I love making the custard cream in the microwave, its so easy and fast. Since I used brown sugar, the custard didn't really look like custard. It was brown. :(

For the whipped cream, I decided to put condensed milk along with little bit of brown sugar. I love the taste and the texture of custard cream and whipped cream combined. I fold the whipped cream in the custard, and it turns out fluffy and yummy for the cream puffs.

At the end, I didn't have enough cream for two of the puffs. I was not used to having puffs that were so poofy and hollow! Although two puffs are creamless, and I didn't have regular white sugar today, I am happy in the way they turned out. Yay!!

New to the blog

I have been blogging here and there before, but wanted to create something new. This blog here, will be for my hobby of baking. I recently started to come back to baking since I have more time on my hands now, and I enjoy it especially when something turns out great (which does not occur all the time). Also I'm inspired by all the food blogs out there. I lurk around mostly English and Japanese blogs, and hunt for recipes that are mostly posted by amateurs like me. I'm always amazed at people's blogs and the pictures they post of the baked goods. What's more amazing is that they are produced by the bloggers themselves.

So with my new blog, I hope to become better at baking and to go above my expectations. I hope to become so good that I can open my bakery! However, I will likely to become fat by eating all of my test baked products. That's okay, as long as I can make something yummy. I am baking already as I type for this first post! I hope they turn out good. :D