Fresh Fig Walnut Cake

My parents have a fig tree in front of their house. This is the time of year when the branches start to get heavy with figs, and we pull out the fig recipes or try to give them away to people who love them. This cake was a great way to use some of them up. It’s a good dessert, and an even better breakfast. It could also be baked as a quick bread in a loaf pan. Adapted from Beth Hensperger’s recipe for Fresh fig walnut quick bread.

1 and 1/2 cups chopped ripe figs
1/4 cup dry sherry
1/2 cup olive oil
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 and 2/3 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt

• Preheat oven to 350.

• Soak figs in sherry for 15 minutes.

• Combine oil and sugar in a bowl. Beat until light-colored. Add eggs and beat again until thick and creamy.

• In another bowl, combine flour, walnuts, baking soda, spices, and salt. Mix into egg mixture. Then gently fold in figs.

• Scrape batter into greased and floured pie dish or cake pan. Sprinkle some cinnamon-sugar over the top.

• Bake in center of oven until top is firm to touch, and cake tester comes out clean, about 45 to 50 minutes (if using loaf pan, bake for 75 minutes).

• Cool 15 minutes, turn out, cool completely and enjoy! Or you can wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill overnight or up to 4 days before serving, or freeze up to 1 month.

Snickerdoodles

Now that it’s fall, I’m craving the taste of cinnamon. Snickerdoodles are Dustin’s favorite cookie. Since today was his first day at his new job (YEA!) I decided to make these to congratulate him! It’s also important to note that these are the first cookies that I’ve baked in my new kitchen in Santa Cruz, using my wedding gift bowls, cookie sheets, and utensils! And you may remember my little Japanese oven from before. Now I’m almost overwhelmed by the size of American ovens!

Snickerdoodles:
(From an old Holiday Martha Stewart Magazine that’s been laying around – except I always use salted butter)

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. coarse salt
1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups plus 2 TBS. sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. ground cinnamon

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

• Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

• In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Stir in eggs one at a time. Gradually add the flour mixture.

• In a small bowl, stir together the remaining 2 TBS. sugar and the cinnamon.

• Shape dough into 1-inch balls, and roll in cinnamon sugar mixture.

• Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

• Bake 12-15 minutes or until edges are golden.

Hi Jonas! 

Endless Summer: Yogurt Panna Cotta with Watermelon

Let’s stretch summer out as long as possible, shall we? This is a great panna cotta recipe that uses yogurt so it has a nice tang to it. While watermelon was refreshing, my family preferred the nectarines that we enjoyed over the leftover panna cotta the next day. But after tasting this recipe, you may not have any leftovers. This recipe is adapted from the one in the July 2008 Gourmet that is accompanied by lemon-thyme peaches.

1 1/4 tsp. unflavored gelatin (from a 1/4-ounce envelope)
2 TBS. water
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 cup plain whole milk yogurt
1/4 cup mild honey
1/8 tsp. vanilla extract
sliced fresh, seasonal fruit of your choice

• Sprinkle gelatin over water in a small heavy saucepan and let stand 1 minute to soften. Stir in cream and 1/8 teaspoon salt, then heat gently over medium-low heat, stirring, until gelatin has dissolved.

• Whisk together yogurt, honey, and vanilla extract, then whisk in cream mixture.

• Pour mixture into 4 ramekins and chill, covered, until set, at least 8 hours.

• Turn out of the mold first or simply top with the fruit and serve in the ramekin. (The panna cotta can be chilled for up to 3 days).

Cool off with Azuki Snowcones

This is the Osakan summer we remember. Mid-90s. 80% humidity. It’s really grand. But anyway, last week we went not once, but twice to a little shop that sells the best yakisoba on the planet. (Yakisoba means “fried noodles” and is just that; soba noodles stir fried with cabbage and a deliciously tangy brown sauce similar to Worcestershire). Their desserts are just as good, especially this one.

All you need is 3 simple ingredients to recreate it at home (well, assuming you have a shaved ice machine):

shaved ice
a can of azuki beans (sweet red beans – can be found at any Asian supermarket)
sweetened condensed milk

• Fill a bowl with shaved ice. Put a scoop of azuki beans on top. Mound with more shaved ice. Drizzle with sweetened condensed milk. Dig in. It’s like a little edible Mt. Fuji!

Almond White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

In search of something different from the usual chocolate chip, I saw this recipe on the nest and was immediately drawn to it. I have to bring something to a potluck tomorrow and the old Japanese ladies are always clamoring for “American style” cookies, so I thought I’d give these a try. As usual, we couldn’t get one of the ingredients – almond extract – so I just used vanilla instead. Even though they’re less “almondy” than they should be, they turned out great! I’ll definitely be using this recipe again.

2 1⁄4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (230 grams) butter, softened
1 1⁄2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1⁄2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces white baking chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 1⁄3 cups slivered almonds

• Mix flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl; set aside.

• Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat until well blended.

• Gradually beat in flour mixture until well mixed. Stir in chocolate and almonds.

• Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet.

• Bake in preheated 375°F (190 C) oven for 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned (12 minutes in a Japanese oven).

• Cool on baking sheet 1 minute. Remove to wire racks; cool completely.

Have you ever seen a Japanese oven? It doesn’t look like an oven, does it. Well, this is what I have to work with. It’s actually a microwave too! I don’t really like this oven. It’s small (I can only bake 9 cookies at a time), the buttons are hard to read, and it doesn’t brown things very well. I always have to add more minutes to the cooking time!

Yeah, it took me a while to figure all that out. It appears to have special settings for potato croquettes, milk and tempura shrimp. How specific!

And here’s the teeny tiny Oishii kitchen! Can you believe that’s our stove in the far left corner!?

‘Tis the Season for Gingerbread Men

Decorating gingerbread men is one of my favorite childhood memories. I spent 3 days last week baking these little guys for our English school Christmas party. For many of our students, it was the first time to decorate and eat a gingerbread cookie. This is the recipe I used both this year and last, and it makes a delicious cookie that’s a tad bit spicy. It originally came from a Martha Stewart Living Holiday Cookie issue from a few years ago, but I don’t make the gigantic snowflakes she suggests. The recipe makes a dense population of gingerbread men (or women); about 90.

6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks or 240 grams) butter (for more delicious cookies, use salted)
1 cup packed brown sugar
4 tsp. ground ginger
4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. finely ground pepper
1 1/2 tsp. coarse salt
2 eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses

• Sift together flour, baking soda, and baking powder into a large bowl. Set aside.

• Beat butter and brown sugar together with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses.

• Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined.

• Divide dough into thirds, flatten slightly, and wrap each in plastic wrap. Chill for 1 hour or up to a few days.

• When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees (180 C). Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to desired thickness (a 1/4 inch or less. I like pretty thin gingerbread men. You can eat more that way). Cut into shapes with cookie cutter and place on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

• Bake for 12-13 minutes until crisp, but not dark.

• When cool, decorate!

Here are a few of my students meticulously decorating:

This girl appeared to favor quantity over quality:

“I spy with my little eye…a kitten trying to steal a gingerbread man.”

This is the royal icing we made for our students to decorate their cookies. Feel free to add food coloring if you’re feeling extra festive.

Royal Icing

4 grade A egg whites (or use pasteurized egg whites)
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

• Beat egg whites in large bowl with mixer at high speed until foamy.

• Gradually add sugar and vanilla extract.

• Beat at high speed until thickened.

• Spoon into small Ziplock bags and refrigerate until ready to use. Cut the tip off one of the corners of the bag and use to decorate your cookies.

Full of Thanks

Things I’m thankful for (in no particular order):

1. My kitten
2. German Shepherds
3. My family
4. My husband
5. Forgiveness
6. Good wine

The hardest time to live abroad is over the holidays, especially a year when your birthday and Thanksgiving finally fall on the same day. This was our second Thanksgiving without family or turkeys (the latter are about as common in Japan as English speakers. Ok, not really. Even rarer). But regardless, we’re still very thankful for each other and our small Thanksgiving feast sans the bird. Actually, we had part of a bird. We roasted some chicken breasts with lemon slices, garlic, and thyme under the skin. They turned out really moist and delicious, but there are no pictures to do them justice because our silly Japanese-style oven/microwave thing didn’t crisp up the skin to our liking! So sorry! Anyway, these are some of the highlights from our Thanksgiving sides and dessert:

Mixed Greens, Apples & Candied Pecans with Red Wine Vinaigrette:

I made a mistake and included celery in this recipe (I had a leftover stalk from the stuffing), and it turns out Dustin doesn’t like raw celery. Only in soup. Oops. So he had to pick his out. We’ve only been married 2 years. Give me a break.

1 Fuji apple peeled and sliced
1 stalk of celery, sliced
2 big handfuls of mixed greens
candied pecans (or nut of your choice)
1/2 shallot, chopped
olive oil & red wine vinegar
salt & pepper

• Combine the olive oil and vinegar to taste in a small bowl (I like my salad’s fairly vinegary). Season with salt & pepper.

• Stir in the shallot, celery and apple slices. Toss with greens, and throw in a handful of broken glazed pecans before serving.

Creamed Onions with Thyme & Sage:

We saw this in Food & Wine and wanted to try it. My mom always uses pearl onions in this dish, but the regular onions tasted great and were easier to find in Japan. The recipe serves 12, so we quartered the recipe below (Although he did the math. Fractions have never been my friends).

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 large onions (about 2 pounds), cut into 1-inch dice
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped sage
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper (we used black)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Salt

• In a large skillet, melt the butter. Add the onions and cook over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 30 minutes.

• Add the thyme, sage, nutmeg and white pepper and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

• Add the cream and bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 5 minutes.

• Season with salt, transfer to a bowl and serve. (The onions can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. Reheat gently).

Pumpkin Sheet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting:

(From Ashley of Delish. You can find the original mouth-watering recipe here)

For the Cake:

4 eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups pumpkin
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

For the Icing:

8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

• Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, apple sauce and pumpkin until light and fluffy.

• In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda.

• Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13×10″ baking pan.

• Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.

• To make the icing: Using an electric mixer in a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on cooled cake.

This cake was the perfect ending to a day of cooking and eating. Since September I’d been saving one lone can of pumpkin that I found at the import store, and was waiting for just the perfect recipe inspiration to come along. A few days ahead of time, I made my own apple sauce for the cake. This was a great recipe from Allrecipes.com that made lots of leftovers.

Apple Sauce:

4 apples – peeled, cored and chopped
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• In a saucepan, combine apples, water, sugar, and cinnamon. Cover, and cook over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until apples are soft. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher.

"American Taste" Lemon Bars

Last year we threw together a Friday-night English Coffee House event at our church for all of our English students. They enjoyed listening to some live music, mingling and conversing (in Japanese, as much as we had hoped that they might want to take advantage of the English-theme of the night) while drinking freshly brewed coffee and eating these lemon bars. Several students less-than-fluently exclaimed, “This have American taste! Oishii!” I’ll take that as a compliment. This recipe has never let us down with its buttery shortbread bottom and tangy lemony top. It comes from the cookbook Gourmet’s Casual Entertaining.

First, make the shortbread base:

1 1/2 sticks (170g) butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 cups flour
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees (180 C). Process all ingredients in a food processor (I don’t have one, so I just picked up the bits of butter, and rubbed them with the flour between my fingers) until mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle into a 13- by 9- by 2-inch baking pan and press evenly onto bottom with a metal spatula. Bake shortbread in middle of oven until golden, about 20 minutes.

• While the shortbread is baking, prepare the lemon topping:

4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (3-4 lemons)
1/3 cup flour

• Whisk together eggs and sugar in a bowl, then stir in lemon juice and flour.

• Pour lemon topping over hot shortbread when it comes out of the oven. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees (150 C) and bake in middle of oven until set, about 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan and cut into 24 bars.

• Sift confectioners sugar over bars before serving. These can keep for 3 days, covered and chilled.

I’ll leave you with a current picture of Arius …

My Great-Great-Grandma Selma’s Best Oatmeal Cookies

Okay, it’s about time I shared my (and my family’s) favorite cookie recipe. It came from my Great-Great-Grandma’s recipe files, and my mom has been baking these for as long as I can remember. This is a damn fine recipe, and the cookies taste like my childhood (and my mom’s, and her Dad’s!)

Selma’s Best Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 beaten egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups oats
3/4 cup finely crushed nuts (we  usually skip this)
1 tsp. vanilla

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees (180 C).

• Cream together butter (Selma used shortening, but we’re so over that), sugar, brown sugar, and egg.

• In another bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to creamed mixture.

• Add oats, nuts (if using), and vanilla.

• Next, Selma says to chill the dough for 1 hour, and put walnut sized pieces on a baking sheet. Then butter the bottom of a small glass and dip it in sugar, and flatten each cookie with the glass. (This is the cookie my mom says she grew up on, and they make excellent ice cream sandwiches). But we do something a little different:  Add a 12-ounce package of bittersweet chocolate chips (or some good quality chopped chocolate), spoon onto baking sheet, and skip the sugared glass.

• Bake for 12-14 minutes or until golden brown.The result is a thin, crispy, and very flavorful oatmeal cookie!

2nd Anniversary Apple Raspberry Crisp

I surprised Dustin with one of his favorite desserts tonight. It’s the least I could do after he (secretly) planned a wonderful Anniversary trip to Universal Studios Japan last weekend! This recipe makes 1 small apple crisp, just enough for two:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees (190 C). Butter a small baking dish.

• To make the topping, combine about 1/4 cup flour,1/4 cup brown sugar, a few dashes of cinnamon & nutmeg, a dash of salt, and 1/4 cup of oatmeal.

• Cut 30 grams (just over 2 TBS.) of cold butter into bits and combine with the dry ingredients with your fingers until mixture becomes crumbly. Set aside.

• Core and peel 1 large apple and cut into 1-inch pieces. Throw into a small bowl. Add the zest of 1 lemon and about a tsp. of lemon juice. Add the raspberries and a small handful of brown sugar. Mix together and pour into baking dish.

• Sprinkle topping evenly over the fruit. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until the top is golden. Let cool for at least 20 min. before serving.

Here are some pictures from our little trip:

We stayed 1 night at the Hyatt Osaka on the club floor! One of the perks was free champagne and appetizers. We especially enjoyed these giant corn nuts! When my family came to Japan for Christmas last year, we ate corn nuts like these at our hotel. One of the servers, a girl in her 20s, refilled our corn nut dish so often that every time she brought them to our table she would say, “nuts again!” We never caught the young girl’s name so she is now referred to as “nuts again girl.”

Here is Dustin enjoying his champagne.

We treated ourselves to a nice Italian Dinner at a restaurant inside the hotel called Basilico. I ate a blue crab salad with cabbage and lemony mayonnaise, followed by gnocchi with handmade pancetta and creamy fontina sauce. Dustin had king crab bisque and then bucatini with tomato sauce, onions, pancetta, and a dollop of ricotta cheese. We split a crispy margarita pizza, and then finished off our meal with creme brulee with berries!

On Sunday we went to Universal Studios, which was really fun and also a little humorous because all of the attractions (of course) were in Japanese! For example, before the ride “E.T.”, Steven Spielberg came up on the screen to give an introduction. Something didn’t quite fit when he opened up his mouth it was dubbed in Japanese!

Our favorite ride was a new roller coaster called “Hollywood dream.” We were impressed that each person can select what kind of music he or she wants to listen to while the ride is going! I went with hop hop and Dustin chose J-Pop (Japanese Pop)

Thank You, Dustin!

Poached Asian Pear

This dessert, featuring Asian pears (which are in abundance right now at our market), was an experiment (his words) conducted by my husband. The result? Delicious! When we were in Santa Cruz in August, we enjoyed dinner on the patio of Gabriella with my parents. Dustin ordered a poached pear for dessert and has been talking about it ever since. This is what he did, and what I got to eat along with a glass of champagne (lucky me!)

• Fill a medium sauce pan with enough water to cover the Asian pear, and put it over high heat.

• Add about 2 cups of sugar, and bring it to a boil.

• Turn the heat down to simmer and add 1 cinnamon stick, 2 glugs of spiced rum, and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

• Peel the pear (leaving the stem intact), lower it into the liquid, and simmer gently for about 20 minutes (or longer), checking it until it’s soft.

• Ladle some of the liquid into another pan and reduce it until it’s thick and syrupy.

• Cut the Asian pear in half and drizzle with syrup. (We served the pear alongside of some baked puff pastry. It soaked up the extra syrup and tasted sort of like baklava. Yum!)

Brown Sugar & Apple Pastries

This was a spur-of-the-moment dessert to welcome in the beginning of fall. Apples sautéed in butter with brown sugar create a lovely gooey topping for either vanilla ice cream or crispy puff pastry. Last spring I tried a recipe for Brown Sugar Apple Pastries in the Reader’s Quick Recipes section of Bon Appetit. The original recipe says to blend butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl and spread over the puff pastry before baking. But when I tried this, the mixture bubbled over as the pastry rose, coating my baking sheet more than the tops of the pastry. In my version, I add some extra butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon directly to the apples and skip the mess in the oven. I also cut its serving size from 6 to 2, perfect for you and yours tonight!

1 Apple (Fujis are our favorite)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 TBS. butter
some zest of a lemon
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 sheet puff pastry, divided into 2 rectangles

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Bake the puff pastry for about 15 minutes. If needed, deflate with a fork after 10 minutes and continue baking for another 5, until puffed up and flaky.

• In the meantime, peel, core, and cut the the apple into evenly-sized pieces.

• Melt the butter in a nonstick frying pan. When melted, add the apple and cook over medium heat until just beginning to brown.

• Add the brown sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and cinnamon and stir until the mixture thickens and the apples soften.

• Spoon apples over the puff pastry (or try ice cream too!) and drizzle any syrup that’s left in the pan.

• Pop open a bottle of sparkling wine and say sayonara to summer!

Are you feeling “Peppi”? Pizza for Dinner & Dessert

Our all-time favorite pizza comes from Engfer Pizza Works in Santa Cruz. It’s wood-fired and tastes amazing, especially with a pitcher of Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing IPA. My family eats at Engfer’s every Friday night (and has for 20-something years), and it’s also the place where we had our rehearsal dinner and more recently, a baby shower! Enough reminiscing. Let’s get to dinner. One of our favorite Engfer’s pizzas is called “Peppi-Tom” (pepperoni, tomatoes, feta, pesto, and garlic). This is our own version of Peppi-Tom. Of course our tiny Japanese oven doesn’t even come close to a wood-fired taste, but it’ll have to do until we come back to California. We used the recipe for Giada’s Pizza dough in my March issue of Bon Appetit. Gotta love Giada!

For the Dough (makes 2 medium pizza crusts)

3/4 cup warm water
1 envelope active dry yeast
2 cups (plus more) all purpose flour
1 tsp. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
3 TBS. olive oil

The Toppings:

1/4 cup pizza sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
pesto
cherry tomatoes, halved
feta cheese, crumbled
pepperoni or salami

• Preheat oven to 475 F (that’s as hot as ours gets)

• Pour 3/4 cup warm water into a small bowl. Stir in yeast and let stand about 5 minutes.

• Brush a large bowl with olive oil.

• In another bowl (or food processor, which I didn’t have) mix 2 cups flour, sugar, and salt. Add yeast mixture and 3 TBS olive oil and mix until it forms a sticky dough.

• Transfer dough to lightly floured surface, and knead until it’s smooth and doesn’t stick to your hands (add more flour by the tablespoon, if necessary).

• Transfer dough to prepared bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm draft-free area until doubled.

• Punch the dough down. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to about a 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch rectangle. Transfer to a baking sheet.

• Spread sauce over the pizza, leaving 1/2 inch border. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese, then pepperoni, tomatoes, pesto and feta. Bake for about 15 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and the crust is as brown as you like it. A Japanese oven doesn’t really brown things, but an American will! 

But it didn’t end there. We still had another pizza crust to use, so we made a dessert pizza!

Cinnamon & Sugar Dessert Pizza with Icing

• After rolling out the dough and transferring it to a baking sheet, brush the top with melted butter.

• Combine about 1/4 cup sugar with 2 tsp. (or more) of ground cinnamon. Sprinkle pizza generously with sugar and cinnamon. Bake for about 15 minutes.

• While the pizza is baking, mix together 1/4 cup powdered sugar, 1 TBS melted butter, 1/8 tsp. vanilla, and 1-2 TBS milk. Adjust the amount of sugar and milk until you get the consistency you want. Cut the pizza and drizzle with the icing.

Azuki: it’s what’s for dessert

Japan isn’t that big on dessert. You can’t expect much after a meal except some fresh fruit (not that there’s anything disappointing about fresh fruit. It’s always perfect here!) But for dessert connoisseurs, this is not the place to find chocolate torte or apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Instead, you may find yourself eating a small piece of steamed sweet potato cake with your green tea. Or a little scoop of green tea ice cream (which I’m actually not a fan of, unfortunately. I’ve given it many chances, but I just can’t stand the stuff). Or maybe you’ll be served several cubes of clear jello (called kanten jelly) with a square of sweet red bean paste inside. Yep, beans for dessert!

Although it might sound a little bizarre to a Western palate (and especially in California where we associate beans with really good Mexican food), sweet red azuki beans are growing on us (no, not literally), and have become one of our favorite desserts in Japan. You can buy cans of them at every grocery store here. Azuki beans have lots of starch, protein, fiber and vitamin B1. These are some tempting ideas that we’ve seen here:

In the summer, they buy these cool shaved-ice machines (usually they’re shaped like cartoon characters like Snoopy, or an animal like an elephant, so the shaved ice falls out of his trunk or something along those lines). Then they pour sweetened condensed milk over a bowl of shaved ice and top with sweet Azuki beans. Japanese kids love it, and so do I.

They also make a paste out of the beans and spread it on little pancakes.

And there’s a special traditional New Years dessert called zenzai, slow-cooked Azuki beans sweetened with sugar and served with little dumplings made from glutinous rice (called mochi).

We simply simmered the beans with water, a little sugar and salt and enjoyed them by themselves. If you can find canned Azuki beans at an Asian food store, it’s worth trying them out. And you can prove to your diners that beans are a perfectly acceptable dessert.

1 can of red Azuki beans
200 cc water (a little less than 1 cup)
1/4 tsp. salt
sugar to taste (the beans from the can are already pretty sweet)

• Simmer for 10-15 minutes until thick, and cool before serving.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

There’s something about ice cream sandwiches that make you feel like a kid again, chasing after the neighborhood ice cream truck. I decided to bake cookies this afternoon, because it was a rainy day (and that’s just what I do). It was also a very hot and humid day, so we made a unanimous decision to turn these cookies into ice cream sandwiches. Vanilla for him, coffee for me. These cookies are so good, I could have eaten the dough by itself. This cookie recipe (which came from an old Holiday Martha Stewart Cookie Magazine) makes 3 dozen, but I halved it because it’s dangerous to have 3 dozen cookies lying around the apartment.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) salted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
your favorite Ice cream (about 1/3 cup for each sandwich)

• Preheat oven to 350 F. Stir together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

• Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and eggs, one at a time. Add flour mixture and combine. Stir in chocolate chips.

• Bake tablespoon-sized balls of dough for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. When cool, put them in the freezer for about an hour.

• Take the ice cream out of the freezer to soften a little before assembling the ice cream sandwiches. Wrap sandwiches and put back in freezer to harden.

Simple Peaches Baked in Puff Pastry

The funny thing about shopping in a Japanese grocery store as a foreigner is that you tend to buy stuff just because you recognize it – for example, puff pastry is the most familiar item among random Japanese frozen food entrées, so of course we had to pick it up (never mind the fact that we didn’t really have a plan). Luckily things came together quickly. At home I noticed a white peach sitting on the counter that was nearing the end of its lifetime. It was so simple to make these little tarts, and they got the husband’s approval, which is always a good thing. I think next time I’ll use yellow peaches, but the white ones did have a nice subtle, sweet flavor!

1 sheet of puff pastry, defrosted
1 peach, cut into 8 slices
cinnamon
brown sugar
butter
milk

• Cut the puff pastry in half, and flatten each half a little with the palm of your hand.

• Place 4 peach slices in the middle of each half, dot with butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar.

• Fold up the edges of the pastry around the peaches, brush them with a little milk and pinch them in place to create something that resembles a tart.

• Bake at 375 for about 15-20 minutes, or whenever they look golden and lovely.