Generous apple brioche

A delicious brioche sweet bread, ideal fruity treat for the season.

It’s garnished with one of these superb akibae apples.

To get a delicious fluffy dough, the main ingredient is time.
One day, you mix yeast, sugar, water and flour to make a sponge. The next day, you make a dough. Two days later you bake it. The net day you enjoy the delight.
300 g bread flour
1/2 cup of yeast “sponge”.
40 g sugar
80 g butter
1 egg + 1 white
about a cup of milk

It’s filled with cubes of apple, many. Also, cocoa chips, Grand-Marnier soaked raisins, cinnamon.

On top, sliced almonds, sugar, cinnamon.

Really, be patient, as it gets so much better a whole day after baking.

Nonnettes et flocons de neige, fluffy December sweets

Double dessert, but so light that they could fly…

Plain nonnettes, the soft ginger bread. (recipe here).
These are not filled, only glazed in a syrup of kurozato black sugar.

Mini Flockensahne tortes, topped with sesame seed streusel. It’s light low-fat plant based cream and vanilla for the whip.

Confiture d’aubergine à la cannelle (cinnamon eggplant jam)

There are many types of aubergine jam from all the countries around the Mediterranean sea. Some are more or less chunky, differently flavored.

Aubergines take a fruity “plum” flavor, nothing bizarre at all. You can have it on your breakfast toasts.

Mine is chunky, soft and not overly sweet.

Low-sugar jam :

-cut in cubes 2 whole Japanese aubergines, cover with 4 tbs of sugar, water, a stick of sweet cinnamon and 1/5 ts of alum (optional)*. Heat slightly, make sure everything is dissolved.
-Let a few hours. Re-heat a little and turn the chunks. Let overnight. The next day, the cubes should be all colored.
-Simmer and stir till the aubergine gets the softness you want. Add sugar to taste. Complete with water to bring the liquid to one 1 cup in volume. Add “instant agar powder”, the dose to make jelly for 1/2 cup, bring to boil. Take away the cinnamon.
-Transfer to cleaned jars.
It can be stored a few days in the fridge.

Note : Alum, called “yaki myouban” is sold in any supermarket here in Japan). The alum serves to acidify and retain the blue color. If you don’t use it you can replace by lemon juice. But don’t add acid to the alum or you lose the blue. How I know ? I tried another time.

Kakicannelle or percinnamon ?

When a cinnamon marries persimmon, you get delicious cake-puddings. Really these 2 flavors go together so well and that tastes like a new type of fruit.
I remember a Malaysian recipe associating them in small cakes, with some brown sugar or caramel. That’s a vague memory. That was too sweet for me in the original version. I made them randomly… and yeah ! The texture and taste were just like that.

Ooops this one was a little too young. That’s one of my “hung persimmon” (read here).
So I had had to cook or lose it.

I added the paste to a basic muffin dough, and some lemon juice (a little) and zest. That gives heaviness to the mix and they won’t dry and stay. Even if they go up…they fall down.