no matter where i'm at or how busy i've gotten, i always make it a point to make spring desserts. i love desserts associated with spring because of the beautiful colors and combinations. here i revisit a recipe that i made 4 years ago, the sakura white chocolate rare cheese dessert, with some slight tweaks. i remember this one being really popular with my readers and i got tons of people telling me how good it was. i wanted to go big initially ie. make an 8 inch one, or go real small. decided on the latter as i really wanted to use these cute square cups i bought recently. i think they look better than the round ones to be honest!


i also need to mention how much i love shopping at the dollar store recently. they've got tons of confections, snacks and chocolates not available at the mainstream grocery stores. in there i found tons of stuff, such as the bounty coconut chocolate, creme brulee and purple sweet potato kit kat, mint m&ms as well as these cheesecake flavored digestive/graham biscuits. i'm not usually a fan of grocery store cookies (i hate oreos), and the only kind i would eat are the lotus biscoff/speculoos, stroopwafels or the high end ones from marks & spencer, harrods or crabtree & evelyn so i was surprised i really liked these. the strawberry cheesecake flavored ones were pretty good, and i thought it would be great if i made the crust using these, cream and all. best decision i made so far. these were amazing! if you're familiar with japanese desserts rolled out during spring time, strawberry and sakura seem to be one of the more popular pairings - such as the sakura strawberry mont blanc so i'm not surprised it worked beautifully.


the dessert itself is as good as i remembered. even though this is a non-baked cheesecake, the use of egg yolk and white chocolate made it denser than the usual non-baked versions. some can be rather light on the palate, like the tofu cheesecake, but this is as close as you can get to a baked cheesecake, without the hassle of baking. the strawberry flavor from the crust is also quite prominent. and since i added the cream filling from the cookie as well, i only used half the butter. i also added slightly less sugar overall. since these cookies are smaller than the usual digestives, they're also easier to break apart so its win win situation all around.

for the recipe, head over to my entry from 2012, i linked it to the original recipe from cookpad.

i bought a bunch of stuff from rakuten like monaka (wafer) shells, wax papers, mousse rings, financier tins and sakura leaf powder. these are stuff i would never be able to find locally. i was very excited to use the financier tins because i have the silicon version and didn't like it one bit. cakes baked using silicon molds always give me this weird glossy surface which i find very annoying. gloss on a mirror glaze - yes, but on a freshly baked cake - no! anyway i love financiers but i don't like the long chilling time for the batter. having to wait 12-24 hours is not my thing so when i came across this recipe from cotta that didn't require any chilling i was like, hell yea! i wanted to see if there's any difference to chilling the batter vs. baking immediately. do you think it would make a difference?


honestly, i don't think so. the financiers tasted virtually no difference when baked immediately so i don't think chilling was necessary. in fact, i don't even know what it does. probably to "relax" the batter but for what? i know madeleines develop their distinct humps when the batter is chilled thoroughly but i probably wouldn't chill my financier batter (very much) from now on. these turned out very very good btw. i loved them!! probably the best financier i've ever made. the recipe uses sakura powder which i believe it should be pickled sakura powder but since i didn't have it, i used sakura leaf powder instead. it made the batter slightly darker and with a greenish tinge but flavor wise, really awesome. it tasted like a cross between cinnamon and ume plum. sweet, yet a tad salty.


financier tins and sakura leaf powder, from rakuten. i really like the tins because they're really lightweight. there are 2 kinds of powders in this range, the sakura flower powder, which is pink and supposed to be used in this recipe, as well as the leaf powder. the flower one was sold out unfortunately but i would use the leaf powder again because it imparts a really nice aroma.


i made 6 of these and i only ate 1 because hubby brought 5 to work! i wasn't expecting him to like this since he thinks sakura is such a weird flavor but i was surprised he LOVED these. recipe wise, i couldn't find it in the translation on when the ground almonds were supposed to be added, but i could be wrong since i can't read japanese at all. so i referred to dorie greenspan's financier recipe and it says the almonds were supposed to be cooked together with the sugar and egg whites so i did just that. this is a keeper million times over and i would make them again.

recipe from here.

i experimented with sakura macarons recently. since its not a very common flavor, i have not tried it before hence there wasn't any reference for me. i decided to just keep it simple and made them pink with pickled sakura flowers on top.

making sakuramochi again and using my last stash of pickled sakura leaves. remember the first time i made these i used a german blogger wagashi maniac's recipe. i thought the recipe was a little complicated and time consuming since it involves soaking the sweet (glutinous) rice for 12-24 hours, pounding it followed by steaming. this one is really easy and uses a rice cooker.

has it been 3 months already? my apologies for the lack of posts, guys, and happy new year! i've had a few concerned emails asking if i was ok, and whether i still intend to blog. yes, and yes! its just that there were lots of stuff to keep me occupy during the year end - my birthday, christmas, hubby's birthday and new year celebrations so i forgot about my blog momentarily.

anyway i made baumkuchen (read : bum-ku-hen)! this is a cake of german origin but apparently very popular in japan. i knew about it when i first started buying japanese cookbooks. recipes for baumkuchen are everywhere on those books! soon after i chanced upon juchheim, a japanese shop selling baumkuchen at takashimaya but i didnt buy it cuz it was rather expensive. i did try the one from MUJI though, it was good albeit a little too oily for my liking.

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 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.

its funny how things work sometimes. pickled sakura used to be one of my most sought-after baking ingredients until i managed to find it on rakuten two years back. i thought it was plentiful and could last me awhile and then two of my friends bought me more on their trips to japan (i didn't request for it actually). so now i have too much, 3 big packs in total. i think they would last me another two more years at least. not that i'm complaining, they're so pretty and versatile and lots of spring desserts use them. but i don't wanna make another batch of sakuramochi so i decided on something i've seen but never made before - sakura jam.

its impossible to find shiro-an locally, not to mention sakura-an therefore when i chanced upon a recipe i was really happy. sakura-an is cherry blossom bean paste made with shiro-an (regular white bean paste) and chopped bits of sakura leaves plus pink food coloring. i never thought it was possible to make my own but well, i now can. even though spring has long gone and this post might be somewhat irrelevant, i didn't want to wait until next spring to make these. afterall, using ingredients like pickled cherry leaves, you can make these anytime and freeze until you need them.

i made kanto style sakuramochi over the weekend. as you know, there are two styles of sakuramochi - kansai (western japan) and kanto (tokyo & eastern japan). i made the kansai one before therefore it would be good to try this out as well. kanto style's a crepe-like pancake roll filled with anko red bean paste then wrapped with pickled sakura leaf.

this is a white chocolate cheese dessert and biscuit base with sakura jelly. recipe can be found here.

mushipan or japanese steamed cup bread (actually they taste more cake than bread) seem to be all the rage these days. i've tried them from a few local bakeries and thought they tasted artificially soft and fluffy, as if emulsifiers had been used. the cute shape and endless flavor combinations caught my attention so i bought three books on mushipan just to try out (crazy, i know).

sakura mochi is eaten during the cherry blossom viewing festival as well as hinamatsuri (girls' day) in japan. there are generally two kinds of sakuramochi - the kanto (tokyo) style one where azuki bean paste-filled pancake/crepe is wrapped with pickled sakura leaf and the kansai style's which is made with domyoji-ko, a kind of glutinous rice flour that is steamed and filled with azuki. when a blogger friend asked if i needed anything from her tokyo trip, i jumped at the chance to request for these pickled sakura leaves. she also came back with an additional pack of pickled sakura flowers and some limited edition kitkats for me, so thank you, CY! i really couldn't wait til next spring to make these :p

"you eat with your eyes first" is my belief when it comes to baking so i always aim to make pretty looking (of coz delicious) desserts and cakes. ever since knowing the existence of pickled cherry blossoms and how the japanese use it extensively in their beautiful wagashi and sweets, that came top of my most-wanted baking ingredient. so when i made the shiro-an white bean paste, i actually had this in mind already. this sakura roll uses the shiro-an both in the sponge and mousseline filling which i find it a really novel idea. having made sponges which require the use of almond or pistachio paste, i really liked the taste so i wonder what it'll be like to use white bean paste instead.