probably one of the rare occasions i'm baking. i find myself cooking more often nowadays and i make it an effort to cook everyday. i really enjoy experimenting with the different cuisines. baking, not so much. the thought of having to stuff myself with all these sugar-laden treats every single day like in the past just don't appeal to me anymore. i try and not use white refined sugar so much and if i do bake, i try and limit the amount of sugar to 50g or less per attempt. which is to say i find american style desserts like brownies that uses 1 cup sugar or frosting that uses 4 cups powdered sugar very, very shocking. not that i'll actually attempt making those. or even the traditional japanese red bean paste. just saying.

anyway i'm following cotta and cuoca on facebook. both are japanese baking supplies/packaging stores that also have plenty of recipes on their sites. their facebook pages are updated everyday and i always look forward to seeing new recipes and pics! cotta posted this recipe recently and i knew i had to make this soon. it just sounded really good and its been a while since i made madeleines.

i bought some freeze-dried raspberries from iherb.com and thought it would be a great addition to a batch of granola. matcha granola seems to be a hit these days and for a matcha fanatic like me, this was not to be missed. i came across this recipe from a japanese website and honestly, i haven't made much granola to know whether it was good or not. my first and last granola recipe was from joyofbaking and it was soooo good i just stuck with it all these years.

3 years ago i made these and i wasn't happy with it so this is a revisit of my all-time favorite marshmallow recipe. this time i added much more matcha powder and you can probably see from the hue that the matcha flavor is pretty potent. i also added more gelatin so its firm enough to cut without having to dust with starch/powdered sugar. will experiment with other flavors soon, very exciting. i bought a couple of berry powders and will try out the raspberry one to see if it works.

recently, i've been making chiffon-based cakes really often. i don't just make the actual chiffon per se, i realized they're actually pretty good made into roll cake, sheet cake base for entremets/verrines or even into cupcakes. they yield much better results (soft even upon refrigeration) and simpler to make compared to a dry hard genoise. genoise requires warming the eggs and sugar to body temp and then whisked until ribbon stage which i think is too much work.

the first half of 2014 went by in a blur. i felt that i haven't been baking much but looking back, i actually made tons of stuff. some of them were uploaded on flickr and forgotten but most of the time, i didn't bother using my DSLR so i just took some shots with my phone and uploaded them on instagram. here are some of the stuff i made + orders i took as well.


i had a couple of orders for japanese-inspired macarons. this is my first year making sakura ones and according to my customers, they were pretty well received. i guess the saltiness of the sakura flowers and leaves offset the sweetness of the macarons. i also experimented with jasmine flavored macarons. jasmine tea is dirt cheap so i had no qualms in dumping a whole lot of leaves in the cream. yay to pronounced jasmine flavor!

i've neglected my blog for so long, sorry about that. i just haven't had much time on hand. macaron orders aside, i'm also working on something (which i will reveal later here!). meanwhile, i made few days ago. having made croissants and had considerably successful results, i'm now more confident in laminating dough so i thought i wanted to give this a try. my first attempt at marbled bread looked horrible and to think of it, it was pretty embarrassing. i thought this attempt was way better, in terms of height, swirl pattern and texture. the only problem was letting my mind wander off and i actually made 4 bookturns instead of 3 so the swirls weren't that distinctive.

the first time i made croissants was two years ago. i took a random recipe off a blog and it turned out very badly - leaking butter, layers not distinctive, blisters on the surface after baking. i wasn't sure if it were due to my lack of skill or what but after that i was pretty scarred i felt i just wasn't cut out to make laminated dough of any sort. i've been getting my fix from paul and maison kayser and recently, JOHAN, a japanese bakery inside isetan. since japanese recipes all worked out for me somehow and never once had i failed from it, i decided to try out once more. japanese are damn good at making artisan breads by the way, their standard is on par with the european counterparts, if not better.

i hope its not too early to start on some springtime sweets! ukishima translates as "floating island" which is one of the simpler wagashis to make. its a steamed cake made of anko (or shiro-an, in this case) and is usually done in two or three layers. basically it symbolizes the arrival of spring, with its soil layer in brown, followed by a white layer which represents snow, then green (sprouts) and pink (flowers). i made only two layers since i really like the combination of matcha and sakura.

happy new year, guys! as you can see, i made this during christmas so its an overdue post. i wasn't planning on making something christmassy like a buche but i thought this looked like a tree so it was quite apt too! i also had these slanted-side tart tins for sometime now which i wanted to use for hidemi sugino's fig tart but i couldn't find any figs but i'm glad these had been put into good use.