Bread like a cake…
A creamy rye bread dough (2/3 bread flour, 1/3 white flour), plus cane sugar, plus lots of cinnamon, plus sesame, plus cocoa mass (100%) chips, plus dry apricots…
Topped with almond slices, cinnamon, sugar.
I’ve let raise too much before baking, but only the shape is affected.
It’s even better the next days… if there is some left.
A delicious fresh dessert for all the lovers of sour sweetness.
Why zu zu zu ?
Zu or su, is sourness. Many acidic ingredients have this sound in Japanese. Today :
Anzu : Apricot.
Yuzu : yuzu citrus.
Kuzu : kudzu is a root resembling arrow-root and similarly used as a jelly starch.
About 1 volume of dry apricot for two of oat meal in the blender, then just a little water. Put in the mold, dried in the oven.
Yuzu. I’ve really discovered something here : yuzu and apricot are one of those rare matches made in even. Paired they become something else, a richer fruit flavor.
Kudzu as it is sold. It is 本葛 Honkuzu, pure kuzu. There exist others (explanation here).
For more : kudzu recipes.
I mixed the kuzu powder with the juice and zest of a yuzu, a little yellow cane sugar, enough water (as suggested on the package of kuzu) and cooked while stirring, till it became transparent.
Filled the crust. Let cool a few hours. Garnished with whipped coconut cream, toasted sesame seeds and yellow cane sugar.
Apricot and chocolate thin pie. Ready in a few minutes, baked in the oven-toaster.
Dried apricots. Rehydrated in tea and apricot liquor.
A simple dough (flour, oil, hot water, salt), coconut cream, black sugar. That’s all.
That’s not obvious from the photo but I pre-baked the dough till it was hard, before garnishing, and re-baking.
100% cocoa chocolate chips, placed on the hot tarte. They melt in 3 minutes.
Serve immediately with coffee.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm !
The Kirschtorte (cherry cake) revisited.
It’s the sister of this :
choco-carob raspberry cake
The recipe is roughly the same. It takes 10 minutes, no baking involved. It’s gluten-free and nearly vegan-dairy free (it can be if you have veg’ white chocolate).
The crust is made of these 2 ingredients (one cup of sesame powdered, 1/2 apricot pasted), combined and wet with a little apricot liquor. I added a drop of almond flavor.
Frozen… well thawed cherries.
The ganache. Wait a day.
Decorate.
Nama choco. That’s a ganache, a melty creamed chocolate.
Yes, I’m covering you with chocolate. It’s the season. We have no Christmas nor Easter chocolates in Japan, that’s all for Valentine. Read here about the local tradition and the shopping party…
Nama means “raw”, but nama choco is not raw chocolate. That’s because these ganaches are made with cream (nama cream > raw cream) and also because in Japan, like anywhere, you can buy 2 types of cakes/sweets, some are dry and can be kept a while in a cupboard, some are fresh and should be eaten in a few days or hours. They are called higashi (dry sweets) second type are called namagashi (fresh sweets). So we have this fresh chocolate.
These square ones are called ishidatami choco and sometimes we can see the French name “pavés au chocolat”. Both mean chocolate sett/cobblestones. But, but… when I speak in French, a “pavé au chocolat” is a small cake like a brownie.
Normal recipe : Heat one cup of full cream at about 80 degrees. Then mix in 1.5 cup of grated dark chocolate, stir till it becomes a velvet sauce. Add in flavoring syrup, sugar (or for a pro finish glucose gel). Pour on baking sheet. Let 30 minutes. Then 30 minutes in the fridge. Cut squares and roll them in cocoa. Store up to 5 days in the fridge.
Bwa ha ha… Fugly ! That’s why people buy them, to get them so perfectly shaped. Well, no with the normal recipe, they can easily be perfect.
What happened :
I made them vegan. I didn’t have to, just an idea like that.
I had no cream in stock, no chocolate (I keep only chocolate mass… because of mice, you know). And I had some coconut cream to use or lose. Also, I have trouble digesting raw cream so I thought coconut cream would make the easier on the stomach… well it didn’t.
So I took 1 cup coconut cream with a little almond oil + 1.5 cup of cocoa mass. Both ingredients react differently from dairy cream and chocolate. Cocoa mass is less fat than chocolate, it contains more solids, less fat. They didn’t mix in, the fat was floating over… So I have made a sort of mousse with the hand-mixer and I had to spread it while it was already hardened. They are irregular and they had some stains of white on the top (imperfectly blended fat) that I could scrap away.
Bottom line : don’t do that. Use either normal cream or normal chocolate and your life will be easier.
But they are great in taste !
Really delicious like those from the best chocolatiers ? No, much better !
Flavoring is a subtle mix of apricot liquor, bitter almond and coffee. That adds to the coconut and sweet almond oil used as cream. They are very light in sugar.
Let’s decorate them :
With snow. Well, icing sugar.
Girly. With sweet potato powder.
Sparkling. With sweet cinnamon and shiny sugar.
Mosaic.
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 