Western style sweets

[Sobaicecream]

That is a beautiful cake!  Did you take a look at the recipe she used?  It's more like mine, though mine calls for whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks and hers calls for soft peaks (as you did for your second try).

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I did see the recipe, but I wanted to stick to mine beause it doesn't require cornstarch. I only have katakuriko--can cornstarch and katakuriko be used interchangeably in baking?

One thing to consider, as well, is the temperature of your oven.  Too hot an oven will cause cracks.  My ovens in Japan have always run hot and, since I now have a gas convection oven, I have to really watch the temperature (here's a picture of what happened to my first cheesecake in my new oven, using the original temperature and time).  I just picked up an oven thermometer in Singapore, so I'm going to be testing temperatures more carefully. 

Maybe you could try covering the cake fairly early in the baking process?

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I've noticed my oven in Japan always makes the tops of my baked goods turn much darker, compared with ovens in other countries. But my oven is one of those electric dial-up kinds, so can't I trust that the temperature is what I set it at? If not, I will definitely get an oven thermometer!

Kristin, the first cake I baked was done at 180 and the second at 160, and both cracked badly.

Maybe my water bath was still too hot. Or, if my oven really is on the hot side, perhaps I should try baking at 150...

[prasantrin]

I've noticed my oven in Japan always makes the tops of my baked goods turn much darker, compared with ovens in other countries. But my oven is one of those electric dial-up kinds, so can't I trust that the temperature is what I set it at? If not, I will definitely get an oven thermometer!

Kristin, the first cake I baked was done at 180 and the second at 160, and both cracked badly.

Maybe my water bath was still too hot. Or, if my oven really is on the hot side, perhaps I should try baking at 150...

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Ovens often vary in temperatures and need to be calibrated. My grandparents' oven back in Canada was, for a time, as much as 50C too hot. It was a pain in the a** to use until they calibrated it.

Also, recipes require different temperatures depending on the type of oven used. For example, I recently began taking a baking class and the recipe I was given said 180C for 30 minutes for a regular oven, 170C for 25 minutes in a gas oven, and 180C for 30 minutes for an internet oven (which is what they have at the school). This is a Japanese recipe made for Japanese ovens, so I would guess that a Canadian (or American) non-convection electric oven would also require a different temperature.

I still think covering the cake for at leat part of the time would help. I would cover it fairly early, since I know my cake splits pretty early in the baking process.

[Sobaicecream]

Wow, an "internet" oven? Never heard of that before!

I'd like to take your advice and cover the cake, but wouldn't opening the oven door in the middle of baking cause the cake to deflate?

[Syrah]

I can never answer your questions, but corn flour = corn starch?  I don't think so.

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If I am not mistaken cornstarch is the word used in the US and corn flour is used in the UK.

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Correct!! It appears to be a commonwealth thing.

[prasantrin]

Wow, an "internet" oven? Never heard of that before!

I'd like to take your advice and cover the cake, but wouldn't opening the oven door in the middle of baking cause the cake to deflate?

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I haven't noticed a problem with deflating. But I just loosely cover it with parchment so the opening/closing thing happens very quickly (and lightly).

The internet oven was a very nice oven--I'd love one, as an oven, anyway. According to my teacher, no one has ever used the internet part of the oven at that school . It's pretty neat, though. You insert a memory card into a slot and you can call-up recipes onto the display screen. You can see the oven here.

[rcarter]

I did a quick internet search and found a recipe and beautiful photo. There are also comments from people who have tried to make it - that might help.

http://www.kyokoskitchen.com/recipes/recip...esecake〈=en

The photo looks exactly like the cheesecake I use to get at Cozy Corner and other bakeries in Tokyo years ago. I will have to try to make it soon.

[Sobaicecream]

The internet oven was a very nice oven--I'd love one, as an oven, anyway.  According to my teacher, no one has ever used the internet part of the oven at that school .  It's pretty neat, though.  You insert a memory card into a slot and you can call-up recipes onto the display screen.  You can see the oven here.

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That's pretty neat. But I'm afraid if I had an Internet oven, I'd probably be inseparable from the damn thing. I think the two things that command my attention the most are my computer (because I work from home) and my oven (because I love to bake), and if the two were combined... I guess I'd be permanently camped out in the kitchen.

I realize things probably haven't advanced that far, but wouldn't it be crazy if the oven door was also the computer screen (or is it?), and you could actually work on a Word file *and* keep an eye on a baking cake at the same time?!

[Hiroyuki]

Sorry about the confusion.  I had no idea that such a cheesecake is a Japanese-style one.

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Actually, Hiroyuki-san, I should apologize because I don't know if this is officially a "Japanese" cheesecake!

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You need not have apologized.

While browsing through the Japanese version of the website that rcarter provided a link to, I found this:

This type of cheesecake goes by the name of Japanese cheesecake in some parts of the world.

Original:

このタイプのチーズケーキが世界のある所ではJapanese　cheesecakeという名で通っていることを知ったからです。

from here

http://www.kyokoskitchen.com/recipesj/reci...secakej〈=ja

[TurtleMeng]

Hi

I am new, this is my first post.

I looked over my recipe and yours (I have not looked @ the other ones mentioned in the thread). This is a cake that took me 3 or 4 tries before it worked nicely. Mine is similar to yours except two things. I will list my recipe at the end.

(1) no sour cream, but milk instead

(2) proportionally, there are more yolks

I think it would help, because too much whites make it more like a real souffle, which is supposed to collapse. Adding more flour would make it not fluffy. More yolks though, can bind the structure better and keep it nicely moist.

Also, the corn starch is a technique borrowed from making Genoise, French sponge cake. I think it is ok to just use low-gluten flour, a mixture, or just starch, but they taste a little different. I personally used a mixture. Since you want it nice and fluffy, low-gluten (aka "weak" "thin" "cake") flour should be better.

As far as cracking goes, try turning down the oven temp like described in my recipe. Do not open oven while it's baking. I think it helps.

My recipe is as follows

sugar 20 g salt a pinch

milk 100 g

butter 40g

cream cheese 170 g

flour 15 g

corn starch 30 g

lemon juice 10 g

5 eggs yolks

3 1/2 whites (sounds a little crazy, but even 4 was a bit too much for me)

sugar 75 g (to mix with the whites)

cream of tartar a dash

preheat to 350

line 8-inch pan,

mix everything up till yolks over simmering water (smooth the milk/butter/cream cheese first, then sift in dry stuff, then yolks)

beat whites with cream of tartar and sugar. I REALLY think it should be beat till soft peaks, not hard.

Mix the two. I do this very slowly in my KitchenAid and it mixers beautifully. When I tried to do it by hand before it never mixed well (and the cake actually came out with a denser layer on bottom)

I bake in a warm water bath (not boiling water) at 350 for 25 minutes then turn it down to 300 and bake about 20 minutes.

Good luck. I like this cheese cake also. I even went to Taiwan to buy the special oval molds for it.

[torakris]

turtlemeng,

welcome to egullet and the Japan forum!

and what an informative first post!!

[Sobaicecream]

Hiroyuki, but if you've never heard of it, and you are presumably a Japanese living in Japan... maybe this isn't "Japanese" cheesecake? I really wonder where this all originated!

Hi TurtleMeng! Welcome to eGullet and thanks so much for all the great info! I never knew these cheesecakes were originally baked in oval pans--do you have a picture?

I've baked mini test versions of this cake a few times now, and I think I'm finally perfecting the recipe.

Yeah, I changed the recipe from sour cream to 200ml soy milk.

One thing that was really bothering me was the floury taste. I finally stopped using any flour, and have been using 4T of ground almonds instead. The cake is creamier and more fragile, but I think it's better this way.

Okay, will take a look at your recipe and play around with the amount of eggs and the baking temp. But tonight is the LAST TIME I'm making cheesecake for a while. This is starting to get out of hand!

[TurtleMeng]

Hi Sobaicecream (that's interesting...is there such a flavor? I do love soba...)

Don't know where you live. These things are all over the LA area and they are all oval. It's pretty crazy. Some bakeries don't even spend enough attention on them and they are half collapsed. Everytime I see one I frown.

I am a little embarrassed to do this, but you can find a little pic on my "IN CONSTRUCTION AND DEFINITELY NOT PROFESSIONAL" website. trial site (It is a first-time attempt and might even move or disappear soon. I started on it because my friend was whining over the phone about her cake coming out as a pancake. I told her I will build a website for HER. Considering the # of pros roaming on this site, I get sweaty...but I guess baking is fun, not snobby, so I'll relax.) There are other pics but I can't remember off the top of my head which websites.

Have fun!

[Sobaicecream]

Hi Sobaicecream (that's interesting...is there such a flavor?  I do love soba...)

Don't know where you live.  These things are all over the LA area and they are all oval.  It's pretty crazy.  Some bakeries don't even spend enough attention on them and they are half collapsed.  Everytime I see one I frown. 

I am a little embarrassed to do this, but you can find a little pic on my "IN CONSTRUCTION AND DEFINITELY NOT PROFESSIONAL" website.  trial site  (It is a first-time attempt and might even move or disappear soon.  I started on it because my friend was whining over the phone about her cake coming out as a pancake.  I told her I will build a website for HER.  Considering the # of pros roaming on this site, I get sweaty...but I guess baking is fun, not snobby, so I'll relax.)  There are other pics but I can't remember off the top of my head which websites. 

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Hi Turtle!

Yup, there is such a thing as soba ice cream.

I live in Japan, and usually when I see this cake, it's round. But I'm sure there are oval versions out there somewhere.

By the way, your Devil's Food Cake looks soooooo good. I love cakes with lots of layers and just a very thin spread of icing. Yours looks perfect.

[helenjp]

I always assumed that the *only* rice flour was the plain "uruchi" rice flour.

But then I read that somebody else used "mochiko" rice flour in shortbread for a melting texture.

I actually like the grainier type of shortbread rather than the softer "petticoat tails" type, but now I'm curious.

Here in Japan we have very weak flour and any number of options for rice flour...even decent butter if we look hard for it! (I like Yotsuba). Shortbread is probably the easiest western cookie to make successfully here.

..so, what are *your* preferred methods/ingredients? I'm just about to bake a batch for Valentine's Day tomorrow, while everybody thinks I'm working! Going to use my usual plain rice flour, and make another batch with mochiko in a few days' time.

[torakris]

where do you find your rice flour???

I have had a heck of a time trying to find rice flour, specifically mochiko here.

I finally found some rice flour at Tomizawa but it took a while to find it because they called it リ　ファリーヌ　(riz farine)....

I have never been able to find rice flour in my supermarkets.

By the way for shortbread I have always used the Japanese "weak" flour, I had never heard of rice flour in it before. Maybe I will give it a try with my riz farine.

[helenjp]

I just recently found that "riz farine" too.

I've always used the "joushinko" rice flour that's in the dango section of the supermarket. Some smaller supermarkets just stock the mochi type or mixed plain and mochi "dango-ko". If you look at the back, "joushinko" says "uruchi" (plain rice) while shiratama-ko says "mochi-ko".

My mother's shortbread...3 oz sugar, 7 oz butter, 9 oz weak flour, 2 oz ground rice, slow oven. The "riz de farine" is too fine compared to the ground rice that I used to use, and o the shortbread would not mold together properly (my mother's method was to mix slowly with the hands until the crumbly mixture amalgamated with the warmth of the hands). I'll have to try again and see how much of what type of rice flour works - a while since I've made this recipe.

Proportions for slightly richer shortbread with finer texture.

Auntie Pat's Shorties...5 oz sugar, 6 oz butter, 9 oz flour + 1 tsp Baking Powder, 1 egg, slow oven. I think I've made this with 5/7/9 proportions too.

Mrs. Steven's Macaroons...8 oz butter, 8 oz flour + 1 tsp BP, 1 egg, mod. hot oven (but this may be a mistake)

Finally, these Melting Moments have a very fine texture, but I find this a bit tasteless...might work with the fine riz de farine in place of the cornflour though.

Melting Moments...3 oz powdered sugar, 7 oz butter, 4 oz weak flour + 1/2 tsp BP, 4 oz cornflour, mod oven

Edited February 13, 2005 by helenjp (log)

[torakris]

I just recently found that "riz farine" too.

I've always used the "joushinko" rice flour that's in the dango section of the supermarket. Some smaller supermarkets just stock the mochi type or mixed plain and mochi "dango-ko". If you look at the back, "joushinko" says "uruchi" (plain rice) while shiratama-ko says "mochi-ko".

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Ok now I feel like a moron, I have a couple packs of these various flours in my house but for some reason they never clicked as "rice flour" in my head. I guess I think of them as dango flour...

I was always searching for something actually called mochiko like I had seen in the US not really realizing that most mochi and dango are the same thing....

Kristin slowly backs out of the thread.....

[helenjp]

Made a batch with the "riz de farine"...worked beautifully, baked to a nice slightly gritty texture... BUT I absent-mindedly sprinkled them with salt instead of sugar .

I brushed most of the salt off and sprinkled some sugar on. The slightly salty buttery flavor was actually pretty good.

I'll report on the mochi-ko version later. With or without salt.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

When my oldest son was allergic to wheat, I did a lot of baking with rice flour. Regular rice flour (riz de farine) is much grittier than mochiko. I often found myself running riz de farine through the food processor to get it finer.

[helenjp]

Grittier is just what I wanted! It tastes just like the shortbread of my youth now - I used to be in charge of making the family shortbread when I was a teenager, which I now realize was a big concession for my mother to make, since she rather prided herself on her shortbread!

I'll have to run a check just to be sure, but my impression is that this riz de farine is grittier than the normal "joushinko" that I've used in shortbread in the past.

I used half rice flour, half wheat flour.

Hope your son is outgrowing his allergies...

[helenjp]

Step two...I made another batch, using 1 part each of ordinary joushinko plain rice flour and Hokkaido weak wheat flour, to 2 parts of butter.

I normally use less butter, but with the Riz de Farine, I ended up trying equal quantities of butter and flours, and I think the ideal is probably just a little less butter than total flour by weight.

Anyway, I would normally use close to 2:3 or 5:7 when using joushinko, but this time kept the proportions the same as in my previous experiment. Wooah! Very soft and crumbly! The mouth feel was not hugely different, but obviously the finer riz de farine absorbed more butter than the larger particles of the joushinko.

So far, then, I would recommend the riz de farine above the joushinko. I have yet to find myself some pure mochiko such as that used for gyuuhi confectionary for the final experiment (the dango-ko that I have is a mix of uruchi and mochi flours).

[Kiem Hwa]

But here is a picture of a home baker's attempt at "Japanese" cheesecake, and look how perfect and smooth her cake's top is:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/luvkdogg/det...4&.dnm=95b8.jpg

Oh, I wish my cake would look like this!

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That is a beautiful cake! Did you take a look at the recipe she used? It's more like mine, though mine calls for whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks and hers calls for soft peaks (as you did for your second try).

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I tried this recipe out myself, Here is my result:

No cracking, and it didn't look like it was going to, but the bottom is quite dense, while the top is somewhat lighter, but the picture in the recipe shows it is consistently light through her whole cake. It still tasted good though, but how to get the bottom to lighten up?? Maybe whip my egg whites more? She doesn't specify in the recipe how gentle I need to be with the egg whites either...

[TurtleMeng]

No cracking, and it didn't look like it was going to, but the bottom is quite dense, while the top is somewhat lighter, but the picture in the recipe shows it is consistently light through her whole cake.  It still tasted good though, but how to get the bottom to lighten up??  Maybe whip my egg whites more?  She doesn't specify in the recipe how gentle I need to be with the egg whites either...

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Yours was not mixed well enough. It happened to me at least 3 times.

The key is actually NOT to whip the whites more. It is harder to fold it in that way. Only soft peaks.

My experience.

[helenjp]

Finally found some 100% mochi rice flour that was not clumpy like shiratama-ko but loose like wheaten flour, and made the third batch of shortbread. This was the whole point of the experiment, since I read a recommendation for using mochi flour.

I used exactly the same proportions, type of wheatflour and oven temperatures. I can now say that I will never use mochi rice flour in shortbread again.

Cooked to the barely-brown stage, the shortbread had an unmistakably raw taste, and they didn't taste cooked until thoroughly browned.

They were almost rubbery at the barely-brown stage, and when thoroughly cooked, were hard without being crisp.

However, the mochi rice flour appeared to be more finely ground than the plain rice flour (joushinko).

Conclusion: the new Riz Farine (with an equal amount of plain wheatflour) was the most successful, almost certainly because of the fine grind. It cooked to a perfect short, crisp texture, partly because the fine grind made it possible to incorporate a higher proportion of butter than when using joushinko. With joushinko, the same proportion of butter produced an impossibly crumbly texture.

Mochiko might be useful for the Melting Moment type of shortbread, but I think that it produces a rubbery texture rather than the smooth texture obtained by using a mixture of cornstarch and plain wheatflour).

[torakris]

I am sorry to hear that it disn't work..

where did you find the mochiko and what was it called?