Turtle Fail

Last week I got a crazy cold that had me in bed each night with the boys - at 7pm. This week I am feeling much better, but I am still quite exhausted and also trying to catch up on everything I didn't do last week. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it on the blog, but we are going to be moving to the US for a few years. Y put in for a transfer and got it! We will probably head out in May, which gives us a bit of time to go through our entire place, throw stuff out, and organize for the move. As a result, I probably won't be doing too much for the blog in the coming weeks. The good news is that I have a lot of projects that I have done and just not yet blogged about. So, hopefully I can stay up on posting twice a week, but I might slide every once in a while.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, K's school took a field trip to the aquarium. K was very excited about this! They got to take an onigiri for lunch and some snack. I asked K if he wanted to go to the grocery store to pick something out, but he requested that I make bread that looks like a fish. Hmmmm...I had no idea if this was something he had seen before or had just come up with, but my breadmaker book has a recipe for sweet turtle breads (カメロンパン - kame melon pan）. I decided this would be the easiest route. I started with the dough in the breadmaker. Once the dough was ready, I divided it into quarters and then chopped the tops off of each triangle.

I divided the top half into five little balls and put them on a lined cookie sheet.

I streched the balls so that they slightly resembled a head, a tail, arms and legs. Then I rolled the top and put the turtle's back on the body parts.

The next step was to make the top cookie part of the bread. I mixed butter and sugar with some egg.

Then added flour and mixed until it looked like batter. Kind of.

I divided that into quarters, rolled each quarter out, and put a shell on the turtle.

Then I scored the cookie so it would look more like a shell. This was not in the instructions in the book - I just thought it would look cute. This could be the start of where everything went awry.

I let them rest so they could rise and when I checked back on them I was so sad. They turned into little blobs. Not the cute little turtles I was hoping for.

From the side they don't look too bad, but this was prior to baking, mind you.

When they were baked, they didn't look like turtles at all. Luckily I made them on a Tuesday night and the field trip wasn't until Thursday. We still had time to go buy something else for K to take. In the morning I showed him the blobs and told him that it was no problem if he wanted to go to the grocery store to get something else to take. He looked me in the eye and with the sweetest little voice said, "But mama, I love them." My heart exploded. I didn't know if he was just saying that to be nice to me, but Y told me that K told him how excited he was about his kame melon pan that mama made. I love him.

The final obstacle was to find something to put the turtle in so that K could throw it in his backpack without crumbling it. I found this bento box at the 100 yen store and it was the biggest one I could find. I had to squish the turtle in there, but he fit and K took him on the field trip. He only had a few bites of the turtle, but that was just fine by me.

 

 

Curry Rolls (Curry Pan)

In Japan, curry rolls (curry pan) are a standard. Oddly enough, however, after nine years living here, I still had never tasted one - to be honest, they just didn't sound too appetizing to me. For my birthday, Y gave me a juicer and I love it. But, as you probably know, when you juice fruits and veggies, all of the fiber is taken out and it ends up coming out the side of the juicer. It always seems so wasteful to just throw it away, so I looked online and many people put it in soups or curry. The more I thought about this, the better of an idea it sounded. So much so, that even curry pan started to sound good to me.

I started by getting a simple dough started in my bread maker. Then I got working on the curry. I took some of the apple and carrot juice leftovers, and also chopped up some more carrots, onions and potatoes.

I cooked those up in a tad bit of oil and then added water to cook them a bit more.

Then I added the curry roux and boiled it down so that there was hardly and liquid left.

Once the bread was ready, I divided it up, put some curry in, rolled it closed and then heated up the oil for frying - did I mention curry pan is almost always fried? Maybe that's why it didn't sound good to me - like a curry doughnut of sorts. Yikes. I fried them all up, the whole time being about 15% grossed out.

Once they cooled down a bit, however, I bit into one and kind of kicked myself for not trying one earlier. Turns out curry pan is pretty tasty. That being said, I should probably be a tad bit careful in terms of how much curry-stuffed fried bread I shove down my throat. Either way, I am a convert. Curry pan wins!!

Maple Marble Bread

One of the moms that I meet at the bus stop when K goes to kindergarten, like me, loves her sweets. She, however, is more of a bread-maker than a cake-maker. We decided that when we make something, we would share with one another. The other day she made some chocolate marble bread that was fantastic. She went back to the shop to get more of the chocolate for the marbling, but they were out. Instead she got maple-flavored and gave half of it to me. Today I had a Canadian friend come over, so I figured it would be a great time to bake up these mini breads.

I started with a sweet dough in my breadmaker. Once it rested, I rolled it out a bit and put the maple "stuff" on top.

Then I folded it up to envelope it.

The folding step, as well as the following is the same as making crossaints - roll it out, fold one end over a third of the way and then the opposite end over that, roll it out again, fold it in thirds again, but this time the opposite way.

Do that a few times and soon you have a marbled mess.

This is where crossaints differ. For the marble bread, roll it into a log.

Slice it; the recipe said into eight or 10 slices. I opted for 10 so I could have more of them.

The recipe said to put them in foil baking cups, but I had these adorable paper cups that one of my mom's best friends had sent to me, so I opted to use those instead.

Then bake them and admire your work. The look quite impressive, but were super simple to make.

I've most certainly had my fair share.

They are just so soft, squishy, sweet and delicious - I can't stop myself!

Banana Nutella Muffins - Part 2

Ages ago I posted about some Banana Nutella Mini-Breads that I baked up. They were delicious, but as I mentioned in the post, I totally regretted not swirling Nutella on top. This time I did it and it was definitely worth it!

I didn't take many photos of the actual mixing process because it was the exact same as the previous Banana Nutella post. The recipe was the exact same as well - my trusty Emeril recipe with the odd little adjustment here and there. I froze little Nutella bits for the middle, as I did the last time, and put them in after filling the cup about halfway.

Then I filled the cup up and added a drop of (unfrozen) Nutella to the top.

Then I gave the tops a quick swirl and they were ready to pop in the oven. As you may notice, only half of cupcakes got the Nutella topping. I was running low on Nutella, so I made six like this, then threw some chocolate chips into the batter and did the rest as just banana chocolate chip muffins - also delicious.

I think they looked quite cute once they were baked.

With Nutella in the middle and on the top, you are almost guaranteed a nice Nutella taste in every bite - yum yum!

Pita Bread

On Sunday, we had a few friends over for lunch. It was just a couple (no kiddies), so I was able to make whatever I wanted without thinking of a simpler, kid-friendly variation. The couple are a very sweet Japanese woman and a wonderful American man, whom we have only met one other time. I was planning on making Mexican food, but then I remembered that the man grew up in Florida where there is an abundance of Latin food - what if mine didn't measure up? Instead I settled on a Morrocan chicken dish, couscous, a Morrocan salad, hummus and homemade pita bread.

As per usual, I made the dough in my bread maker and then took it out to make into eight balls. After those sat for a little while, I rolled them out into a shape that kind of resembled a circle drawn by K.

Once they were all rolled out, they had to rise for 40 minutes.

At the end of the 40 minutes, exactly half of them were still quite flat.

And the other half rose to about a centimeter. I was a bit concerned, but figured that there were only to be four of us (plus K who was certainly not going to eat this), so at least we could each have one that rose a bit.

After pulling them out of the oven, however, I was super surprised to see that all of them had puffed up nicely. They looked beautiful! I expected them to fall down so they are flat, but have an opening, like the ones we buy at the grocery store, but that never happened.

 

I made them the night before our guests came and the next day they were still all puffy. Wahoo!!!

 

 

As the guests arrived, I started plating our lunches. The dude looks at the hummus and asks, "is that hummus?" Good, I thought, at least he is somewhat familiar with the food - hopefully he doesn't hate Middle Eastern/North African food. He then tells his girlfriend that I had made hummus and she too seemed quite stoked. Yay! As I plated the couscous and chicken, the dude's face looked even more surprised. Then he asks, "Did you know that I was born in Jordan? I'm half Arabic."

 

Uhhhh, no, I most certainly did not know that. I decided not to do Mexican food as he might be too familiar with it and it might not live up to expectations. Instead I choose to do the cuisine of his mother's home. He must have grown up with all of this. Needless to say, this had me quite nervous. Luckily, either it really was good, or he is extremely kind because he complimented the dishes numerous times. Thank goodness!!

Banana Nutella Mini-Breads

A week or two ago, one of K's friends from school came over. K had a lot of fun and I think it kind of helped with him adjusting to school. Since that boy came over, he has been talking a lot about another boy in his class and how they play together at school. So, on Wednesday we had a second school friend come over to play.

The school recently made a little booklet that has a photo of each kid in the class as well as what the kid likes and a message from the parents. I think this is an ingenious idea! Under this boy's name was the fact that he loves Tomica, basically Japanese Hot Wheels. Ages ago, one of my good friends here gave me a Tomica baking mold. Perfect!

We had some bananas that were getting a tad ripe, so I decided on mini banana breads. I started with Emeril's recipe, as I always do. As per usual, I used half butter and half shortening. To add another little change to the mix, I used about 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar and no macadamia nuts. The main reason for the sugar switch up was so that I wouldn't have to go to the grocery store.

While I figured I would leave the car-shaped banana breads plain and give those to the boys, I decided to spice up the adult ones with Nutella. I love Nutella. I looked online for Nutella cupcakes, but didn't really like what I was seeing. Most of the recipes had either Nutella piped in after baking or in the frosting. As I was making a bread recipe, I didn't think the piping would work and I didn't want to use frosting. Then I came across this recipe that suggesting freezing spoonfuls of Nutella and then putting it inside the batter. She also suggests swirling some on the top - I opted not to do this, but I definitely regret it.

Once my batter was ready and my Nutella frozen, I got to work. I started first with the car molds. I have used this little guy a few times now and I generally have issues with the cooked cake sticking to the bottom of the mold because of all the little grooves and designs. This time, I put a tiny bit of oil into each one and used my finger to spread it around. I figured that would help with the sticking. Then I filled these up and they were ready for baking - although a tad bit boring...

But not these!! These were not boring at all! I put a spoonful of the batter in each cup, then a drop of Nutella and gave the Nutella a little smoosh.

Then I covered them with another spoonful of the batter and they were ready for the oven. I was able to make the four cars, plus 10 regular-sized cupcakes. I baked them for about 20 minutes, although it might have been a tad bit longer than that. I just kept checking that for the tops to get a tad browned.

Once they were out of the oven and slightly cooled, I cut into one. It was exactly what I had wanted. It was delicious!! As above, I do regret not swirling a tad bit more Nutella on the top - I guess I will have to let some more bananas get a bit too ripe ;)

K had a lot of fun playing cars and trains with his friend and they had a good time eating their cars. The mom and I had a good time eating our little breads and just talking. What fun it is to make new friends!!