Making various Japanese style desserts

[aznsailorboi]

thnks for the link sanrensho, but I'm not sure if i can find that kind readily available here in the US, i was hoping they sell online. i'm gonna check my japanese and korean stores here in chicago.

[ComeUndone]

Lucky for you, Choya does have a US distributor so purchasing online shouldn't be much of an issue.

See http://www.choya.com/overseas/america.html#usa

Edited March 10, 2006 by ComeUndone (log)

[sanrensho]

Lucky for you, Choya does have a US distributor so purchasing online shouldn't be much of an issue.

See http://www.choya.com/overseas/america.html#usa

Ditto, a quick Google search also brought up a number of online sources.

[aznsailorboi]

I totally forgot about Mitsuwa, hehehe so I called last night and they said they have it. Dunno when I'd be able to get it since its like and hour away from me.

Any other Japanese ingredient-inspired cakes and pastries that you guys know that are worth trying to make? and/or any other that you dont usually see in pastry shops but everybody knows what it is.

[Hiroyuki]

Jizake cake (Japanese rice wine cake) such as these

Jizake actually means locally-brewed sake.

Don't ask me how to make it 'cause I don't know.

I did a google search but couldn't find any recipe.

The type of jizake cake I know is sponge cake moistened with jizake.

[NickLam]

Hi,

My friend's mom asked me to make a special dessert for her upcoming anniversary dinner and as she is Japanese......was thinking of making something with a Japanese slant. A majority of the people attending will be Thais so hopefully...people will appreciate it.

Anyway, I've been looking for recipes for making plum wine jelly but can't really find something 'trustworthy'.

I've seen plum wine and dark chocolate paired before somewhere and am looking to make something like this.

(1) White chocolate mousse shell

(2) Liquid matcha cream centre that will ooze out

(3) Ogura layer

(4) 'Kasutera' sponge moistened with umesho

(5) Decoration will be small little cubes of plum wine jelly scattered around the dessert.

Hence.....my search for a jelly recipe and help on making a special treat for my mate's mom's guests.

Thanks!

[SuzySushi]

Here's a recipe for slightly fancy variation of Plum Wine Jelly. If you want to cut it into cubes, just pour the gelatin mixture into a single shallow mold, omit the grapes, and let it set completely the first time around.

Can't help you with the rest of your proposed dessert.

Plum Wine Jelly

Serves 6-8 (small portions)

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

1/4 cup water

1-1/2 cups plum wine

3 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

6 or 8 large seedless red grapes

Sprinkle gelatin over water and let stand 2 minutes until softened.

Heat the wine in a nonreactive saucepan. Add the sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin mixture. Cook, stirring, until sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved. Remove from heat.

Pour about half the gelatin mixture into 6 or 8 small containers, such as porcelain teacups. Chill briefly until partly set. Embed a grape in the center of each portion and top with remaining gelatin mixture (reheat mixture to liquefy, if necessary). Chill until firm. Unmold to serve (loosen sides by dipping cup briefly in hot water).

For a fancy variation, you can line the cups with a square of food-grade cellophane or colored plastic wrap, spoon in the wine jelly and grape, then twist the wrapper closed and secure with a twist-tie. Chill in the cup until set, then remove from the cup and replace the twist-tie with a ribbon or gold cord to serve.

[sanrensho]

(1) White chocolate mousse shell

(2) Liquid matcha cream centre that will ooze out

(3) Ogura layer

(4) 'Kasutera' sponge moistened with umesho

(5) Decoration will be small little cubes of plum wine jelly scattered around the dessert.

This sounds fantastic. I can't help you on the gelee front, but you could also chop the plums from the umeshu (Choya brand) to use for textural contrast.

[NickLam]

Thanks SuzySushi! I'll be getting some Choya or Umesho to try it. Ahaha hope it ends up tasting like the ones I've had from Toraya and Kitchoan

And Sanrensho, thanks for the great tips, though I think the plums may not be enough for the number of guests. Sigh, if only I was back in Australia, a wild plum tree grew next to the bedroom window of my old house out in the suburbs. My neighbour pickles them and I always had to fight with the possums from eating the ones outside my 2nd floor window.

[_john]

My first thought on reading this thread is maybe you should try using agar agar (also known as kanten) to make your jelly.

from this site:

Kanten is a gelatin derived from a seaweed known as "heavenly grass" (tengusa). Unlike Western gelatin which is made from the hoofs and bones of animals, kanten sets without refrigeration (though refrigerating quickens the process), it doesn't melt in hot weather, makes a firmer jelly, and has a neutral taste. Kanten (also known in the West as "agar-agar"), provides fiber and bulk and best of all it has zero calories, making it perfect for dieters! Kanten is sold as a brittle, thick, dry rectangular stick. It is usually clear and translucent but a red variety can be found. Purchase kanten in Asian food markets.

Because it does not melt as easily as animal gelatin I think you should try dipping umeshu jelly in dark chocolate. I think making something similar to the american dark chocolate covered orange jelly candies would be very tasty. Or you could simply dab a bit of gold foil on the umeshu jelly and serve it as it.

[NickLam]

My first thought on reading this thread is maybe you should try using agar agar (also known as kanten) to make your jelly.

from this site:

Kanten is a gelatin derived from a seaweed known as "heavenly grass" (tengusa). Unlike Western gelatin which is made from the hoofs and bones of animals, kanten sets without refrigeration (though refrigerating quickens the process), it doesn't melt in hot weather, makes a firmer jelly, and has a neutral taste. Kanten (also known in the West as "agar-agar"), provides fiber and bulk and best of all it has zero calories, making it perfect for dieters! Kanten is sold as a brittle, thick, dry rectangular stick. It is usually clear and translucent but a red variety can be found. Purchase kanten in Asian food markets.

Because it does not melt as easily as animal gelatin I think you should try dipping umeshu jelly in dark chocolate. I think making something similar to the american dark chocolate covered orange jelly candies would be very tasty. Or you could simply dab a bit of gold foil on the umeshu jelly and serve it as it.

←

Whoa, Umesho jelly dipped in dark chocolate. Something so simple, yet sounds so absolutely deleesh! THanks for the great tip, John. And yeah, I will try using kanten to see how the texture turns out. But I grew up with agar agar desserts in Singapore and its great.

[GlorifiedRice]

Hello,

I have been (unsucessfully) trying to make Konnyaku Jelly for 3 weeks now.

Since it's illegal to sell it here, I've been trying to make it myself. I Googled

konjac powder and initially couldn't find any in bulk. So I went to the healthfood store and bought glucomannan gel caps and emptied them into a little tupperware cup and followed the recipe on the REDMAN Konnyaku Powder Website and it never gelled (I did it 3 times) it just got like a thin pudding.

I tried the recipe on THIS PAGE and nothing happened either.

I then bought a bag of konjac powder from konjacfoods.com and started my quest all over again. This time with the bag konjac powder it got way too thick too soon and never "boiled".

Im at a loss as to what to try next.

I LOVE konnyaku jellies. The FDA or Customs accidently let a shipment of Konnyaku Jelly Sticks into the country and I snapped up 4 bags and I only have one bag left.

What am I doing wrong? Does the Konnyaku Powder sold in Asia have extra ingredients (like calcium) or is Konnyaku always "iffy" to make?

[Hiroyuki]

NO IDEA. I have never thought of making konnyaku jelly.

Here is one recipe:

Ingredients (for approx. 250 cc of finished product)

210 cc water

40 cc juice

5 to 10 g gelatin powder

4 gram konnyaku powder

60 g sugar

Mix juice and water together. Moisten gelatin with the juice-water mixture at a ratio to 1:5.

Put the remaining juice-water mixture and sugar in a pot and put it on the stove.

When the sugar has melted, add gelatin and dissolve it well.

When the liquid has cooled to about 70C, put konnyaku powder and mix well, let it sit for 5 minutes.

Put it in a mold and cool it the fridge.

* 5g gelatin results in soft jelly, while 10 g result in hard.

from here:

http://www.zeitaku.jp/htm/g_tanpin/moto.htm

(Japanese only)

[GlorifiedRice]

BTW anyone who wants a source for Konnyaku Jelly Mix:

http://www.veryasia.com/fisojepo.html

(Choose Strawberry)

Also these ARE Konnyaku Jellies (in spite of the labeling as Seaweed extract!)

http://i9.tinypic.com/6d0hetf.jpg

and they are delicious and if anyone finds the purple yam ones let me know.

[helenjp]

I've been fiddling with recipes for non-wheat, non-dairy, non-egg cakes on and off since one of my kids had a playmate who was extremely allergic to conventional birthday-cake ingredients.

Now that we can buy "riz farine" rice flour designed for baking (very fine grind), baking with rice flour is suddenly more realistic.

So...I tried a few versions using different replacements for eggs, and the best were mashed banana, and dried yama-imo. (Fresh yama-imo would be fine too, but I tried dried first to get absolutely consistent results from batch to batch). The banana version tasted best, and the yama-imo had the most cake-like texture, though both had a certain mochi-like character.

Since I'm a bit allergic to rice and soy myself, I don't really enjoy the taste-test part, so if anybody wants to do some more experimenting and let me know how it turned out, I'd love to know!

This is the current best version (test-batch-size recipe, makes 4 small cupcakes):

80g riz farine rice flour for baking

pinch salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon or 1 tsp cocoa

1/ tsp vanilla essence or 1 tsp finely grated lemon peel if desired

30g sugar

EITHER 1 banana (about 100g), mashed and sieved to make about 70ml

OR 2 x 8g packets dried yama-imo powder, mixed with about 50ml water

1 tsp oil

4-6 tab (60-90ml) soy milk - depends on freshness of banana, and whether fresh or dried yama-imo was used - add until you have a ribbony dropping consistency in the batter.

Sift dry ingredients together.

Beat banana or yama-imo and water till slightly foamy, fold in soymilk, esssence/peel, and finally oil.

Pour liquid into well in dry ingredients, beat well, divide into cupcake molds (grease well, this sticks more than conventional mixture.

180deg. C (moderate) oven , 12-15 minutes.

Points to consider: more oil for springier texture? Would adding 1 tsp. vinegar create more lift? Wetter consistency or drier consistency? Suitable topping for cupcakes (anybody actually like those "tofu cream" things?) or fillling for a roulade?

I'm also considering making a pumpkin version but think it might be too heavy for the already dense texture of rice-flour cake. Will post again after I finish tweaking my mousse-style pumpkin/white chocolate ganache filling...

The particular child I am considering is also allergic to potato, or I would add 1 tab potato starch (katakuri-ko).

Seems there are so many very young children with allergy problems that it would be worth finding a successful "sweet treat/birthday cake" for them, and in Japan, we are blessed with yama-imo, which bakes extremely well (I'm considering increasing the yama-imo and reducing the soymilk, but all yama-imo could well make the texture too coarse).

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

It looks like you have a good working recipe. What you may want to try is to substitute part of the riz farine for starch.

I just looked up a recipe in my old recipe notebook, and the flour blend I used most often was the following ratio...

2 cups riz farine (white rice flour in the US)

2/3 cup potato or corn starch

1/3 cup tapioca starch

You can substitute that 1:1 for wheat flour.

My favorite wheat, egg, milk and soy free cake recipe was Wacky Cake. Wacky Cake is a Depression Era recipe that uses vinegar and baking soda as a leavener. I just used the above mixture, plus xanthan gum (you could use yama imo or gelatin powder instead).

Another decent egg substitute is 2 tbsp of water + 1 tbsp of oil + 1 tsp of baking powder.

I found that a combination of flours definitely made for a better product.

[helenjp]

Thanks Mom of Little Foodies!

I think the riz farine may be finer than western rice flour - certainly finer than what I used to buy outside Japan.

I'm interested that you felt a mix of flours worked best. I think it probably would too, but scratch my head looking for a suitable flour - cornstarch seems an unwise choice in this case, the child whose case spurred me to actually get on and sort this recipe out is allergic to potato/tomato/eggplant, and tapioca flour is rare here. Kinako (toasted soy flour) is an option, but in my experience soy flours are rather heavy in baked goods.

I do have some tapioca flour, so I plan to do one batch with part tapioca flour, one with part sweet potato flour, and another with part buckwheat flour. And another version with a higher proportion of fresh, grated yama-imo. Can't think of any other traditionally available Japanese flours!

The result of yesterday's test was a unanimous vote for the taste and texture of the banana version, and thumbs-up for the texture of the yama-imo version (didn't taste bad, but being a test version I had flavored all batches the same, and so the banana had the fullest flavor.) Personally, I thought the yama-imo version was the winner for texture, and taste can be easily manipulated!.

Banana and yama-imo won hands down over apple puree as an egg substitite - because they can be beaten till they hold air.

[helenjp]

Various combinations of flours and leaveners, with no added liquid...

Cutting out the soy milk and using only banana or yama-imo removed the "mochi-like" texture problem

Rice flour (riz farine alone): Eliminating the soy milk also eliminated the "mochi-like" texture. Banana alone gives a fine cake texture and good rise; fresh yama-imo gives a very fluffy but even texture, faint buit acceptable yama-imo texture still present

Buckwheat flour/Rice flour equal parts: equal parts of banana and yama-imo gave the best texture while avoiding excessive "slipperiness" from the yama-imo".

1/3 Purple sweet potato flour/ 2/3rice flour: Yama-imo alone gave the prettiest color and the most cake-like texture, no "slippery" texture.

Wa-Wa Cupcakes Makes 3 large or 6 small cupcakes

80g rice flour (riz de farine alone or combination of other flours)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tab sugar, add 1 more tab if using yama-imo alone

3 tab oil

200g banana OR 200g finely grated fresh yama-imo, OR 100g each of banana and yama-imo

Preheat oven to 180deg, Bake 15-20 minutes depending on size

[Hiroyuki]

Photos, please, even if they are taken with your cell-phone!

[helenjp]

Sorry, I didn't bother to even out the stiff purple batter, so these are very unphotogenic. However, if I served these up, you would think "cake" and not "what on earth is this stuff?!". I doubt if a wheat flour - yama-imo combination would have worked as well as the yama-imo/low gluten specialty flours combinations did.

All the yama-imo versions had a more open texture than the banana versions.

With the buckwheat version, a little miso and some shreds of yuzu would work well.

Using fresh yama-imo created more color and texture than the powdered dry yama-imo, which when combined with white rice flour, made an extremely white cake (good with a salted cherry blossom on top probably).

TOP L>R

all banana/rice flour all banana/ rice & buckwheat all banana/ rice & imo

MIDDLE L>R

banana & imo/ rice flour banana & imo/ rice & buckwheat banana &l imo/ rice & imo

BOTTOM L > R

all imo/ rice flour all imo/ rice & buckwheat all imo/ rice & imo

The banana/buckwheat combo was too wet, though pretty tasty! Banana killed the metallic aftertaste of buckwheat. Just needs more flour etc.

These photos show equal parts of rice flour and purple sweet potato flour - but reducing purple sweet potato flour to 1/3 is a better color. With the dark banana, it looked dark enough to be chocolate! The visual cue is so strong you might even think it WAS a cocoa cake.

On the other hand, using half each of purple sweet potato flour and rice was effective with the all imo version - the purple flour needs a LOT of moisture, so it prevented the imo batter from developing a slimy texture even when baked.

The bottom row (all imo) shows clearly that the imo texture is "weaker" than when banana is used. The banana/imo makes for a good texture in most cases. The all-rice flour (middle row, left) actually had a bit too much flour in, it would have been softer I think (measurement error).

Ingedients react to create surprising colors sometimes! Banana and buckwheat both have a purplish tinge, and combining pure banana with buckwheat creates quite an odd blackish purple. One reason why I didn't list combination in that in my first post. For some reason, rice flour and pure yama-imo develops tiny flecks of green!

Edited October 10, 2007 by helenjp (log)

[prasantrin]

I don't know if this helps, but Tengu/Alishan has quinoa, kamut, soy, and spelt flours. For the soy flour, the website doesn't say it's kinako, so I would assume it's regular soy flour. They're not exactly cheap, but if you're in the mood to experiment...

They also have a bread made from rice and rye flours, under the baked goods section (called "ryce" bread). Can your son's friend eat rye? It might be something his parents might be interested in trying.

ETA: I recently read that you can use ground flax seed mixed with water as a substitute for eggs in baking recipes. I'm sure it doesn't work well with all recipes, but at least it gives another option.

Edited October 12, 2007 by prasantrin (log)

[helenjp]

I thought I'd try first with flours and products that can be easily found in local shops in most of Japan. My son's friend has grown out of the worst of her allergies, so it's actually another small child's cake I'm working on now!

Raw soy flour isn't all that readily available in Japan! From memory, it tends to taste raw even when baked, so I'm keen to try kinako.

I think flax seed would work well, much like dried yama-imo.

The photos weren't beautiful, because I was just slopping stuff into little containers, but the rice flour/banana, and the rice/buckwheat/banana/yamaimo versions worked very well. I'll make some "properly" and take photos of texture!