Mitarashi Dango

Dango is one of my favorite Japanese sweets!  I love the chewy texture.  Sanshoku-dango (three-color-dango) and mitarashi-dango are must item for me for 3PM tea time, and always get one or two while I’m in Japan.

Dango is made from rice flour, but there are actually few kinds of rice flour in Japan, called dangoko, joshinko and shiratamako.  It’s bit confusing and many people don’t know if there are any differences between them.  They are all made from rice.  Differences are the process of making each flour and also a kind of rice.  Dangoko is made from a combination of mochi rice and uruchi rice. Joshinko is made from uruchi rice.  Shiratamako is made from white mochi rice.  Dango made from dangoko are chewer than those made from joshinko or shiratamako.  Shiratamako gives soft texture and chewiness to dango and it doesn’t go hard when it’s cold.  Joshinko is mainly used to make most kinds of Japanese sweets (eg: mitarashi-dango, kashiwa-mochi etc)

I happened to have joshinko at home, and made mitarashi-dango using a recipe from my grandma!

<Mitarashi Dango> makes about 15

• 70g joshin-ko or rice flour
• 35g corn flour
• 10g sugar
• 170cc water

1. To make dango, blend all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add water and mix until smooth.
2. Place the mixture in a sauce pan, and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thicken and the color is almost transparent.  Remove from the heat, and cool.
3. Meanwhile, prepare a steamer.  Start boiling water, and line baking sheet on the bottom of the steamer tray.
4. When the mixture is cool enough to handle, shape into small balls by hands.  You can use corn flour if the mixture keeps sticking to your hands.
5. Arrange the dango on the baking sheet, and steam for 20 minutes.
6. To make sauce: place water, sugar and soy sauce in a small sauce pan, and simmer until the sugar dissolves.
7. Mix corn flour with 1 tbs water.  Gradually add the cornflour mixture into the sugar water, stirling constantly, to thicken the sauce.
8. Pour the sauce over dango and serve.  If you like better flavour, grill dango slightly and caramelize the sauce over the heat.

Cherry Pancake

Here is the recipe of cherry pancake I made on Christmas day.  You can prepare the mixture ahead and keep in the fridge until needed.  Try adding different fruits instead of cherries for a variety!

<Cherry Pancake>  makes about 6 

• 1 handful of cherries, pitted
• 1 egg
• 25g sugar
• 150ml milk
• 30g butter, melted
• few drops of vanilla extract
• 150g plain flour
• 5g baking powder

Cookies for a Christmas Tree

Baking cookies is one of the fun activities you can do for Christmas!  You can create them in any shapes, and decorate with your favorite color.

Poke a hole on the cookie dough before baking so that they can be hung on your Christmas tree.    Make sure the hole is big enough as the hole will go smaller after baking.

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<Cookies> makes about 30~40 of 5cm Christmas trees

• 160g butter, unsalted
• 120g sugar
• 1 egg
• 320g plain flour
• a drop of vanilla extract

<Icing>  makes enough for 60 cookies

• 1 tsp vanilla yogurt
• 4~6 icing sugar (adjust the consistency: hard, but soft enough to pipe out)
• coloring 

1. Cream butter in a bowl using a whist or hand mixer until whitish color.  Add sugar, and mix until the butter is fluffy.
2. Add
3. …
4. Mix until the dough comes together.  Wrap in plastic, and rest in the fridge for more than 30 minutes.
5. Roll out the dough into 5mm thick.  Cut the dough into decorative shapes, using cookie cutters.  Arrange cookies on lined oven tray, and bake at 180℃ for about 10 minutes, or until the bottom of the cookies are golden. 
6. Once the cookies are cooled down, mix the ingredients for icing and put it in a small piping bag, or plastic bag.  Make a tiny hole on the tip, and decorate your cookies.
7. Leave until the icing is set.  

Merry Christmas to you all !! (^0^)-☆

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Marzipan Flower

Yesterday was my sister-in-low’s birthday, and she requested a pavlova – one of her favourite sweet.  Although meringue is not really my favourite food, I couldn’t eat it anyway because of the soft marshmallow-like centre.  Parents -in-low are also not permitted to have lots of sugar (especially at night), so only her, another sister and my husband finished most of the cake!

here is the recipe of a pavlova I made last Christmas.  When making meringue, some people wonder what they are going to use the yolks for.  I normally add few yolks to the whole eggs when making omelet, or you can use them to make custard cream.  If you are planning to bake some buns, you can use the egg yolk wash to create the intense shine on the bread.  I’m actually going to use the egg yolks (not all of them) to make tsukune (Japanese chicken meat ball)

Marzipan is one of the option to decorate a cake.  I made a pink flower using homemade marzipan.  This is an instant recipe and there won’t be any left-over or waste when making little amount of marzipan.  You can also make green leaves and some dolls to create a cake with personality!

<Marzipan> about 8cm 1 rose

• 3g egg white
• 20g granulated sugar
• 10g almond meal
• red coloring

Maccha Banana Shake

As I bought lots of banana from a market and they started to turn black already, I decided to finish them up by making a banana drink!

I didn’t have much ingredients to use in the fridge, so I just added milk and honey to taste.  With a dash of maccha green tea powder, it turned out to be delicious

It was little thick, just how I like it.

<Maccha Banana Shake> makes 1 glass

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• 1 monkey banana (or 1/2 normal banana)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp honey
• 1/2 tsp Maccha powder