Kuro Goma Cookies

Kuro goma is Japanese for black sesame.  Here in the US the plain white variety is more familiar, made famous in part by the Big Mac jingle...."blah blah, special sauce on a sesame seed bun!"  This wikipedia article will tell you more than you could ever imagine about sesame seeds.  Betcha you had no idea what the actual plant looked like or that Myanmar was the world's largest exporter.  Japan is the largest importer.

Wait, what am I doing learning all this?  It's summer, and all you and I really need to know is that they taste amazing.  Even (or is it especially?) in cookies.

Not so sure?  Make this recipe--NOW!

It starts out with all the usual suspects.

But then these interlopers are added...

...creating a ridiculously addicting dough, which if you don't eat it all straight from the bowl will produce golden and delicious cookies.

The original recipe from Joy the Baker says to chill the dough for 45 minutes and then roll it into balls by hand and coat with additional black sesame seeds.  This was a messy and time consuming process, and I was afraid the cookies were going to have way too much sesame on the outside.

My fears were unfounded.  Maybe there is no such thing as too much sesame.  But the second (yes, second) time I made this recipe skipped the chilling and sprinkled extra seeds on top of the cookies I scooped using a cookie dropper, which resulted in the beauties below.

I took these to a potluck, where they were deemed an ideal combination between a cookie and a bagel.  But apparently everyone was on Atkins, since there were a bunch left at the end of the night.  Too bad for them, and too bad for my waistline as I have no problem consuming several at one time and repeating throughout the day.

Baking Bonanza

Over the past three weeks, I have made eight batches of Christmas goodies. I started making goody bags for gifts during finals and continued to bake at home in AZ, repeating some of the best recipes.

The first batch was "Foolproof Fudge" and I almost screwed it up because I didn't have as many chocolate chips on hand as I thought. Thankfully, I am a chocoholic, there were other sources available. And as an added bonus, now it's "Triple Chocolate Fudge!"

I also made some white chocolate fudge with cranberries and coconut and attempted nice shapes by pouring it into a heart shaped ice cube mold. It was a bit difficult to remove, hence the lack of photos.

Next up, "Peanut Butter Blossoms" These are some of my favorite holiday cookies, although it occurred to me while I was making them that there is really no reason I couldn't make them all year round. But that would make them less special.

On the back of the Hershey's Kisses bag was a recipe for "Chocolate Snowball Cookies" and the idea of baking a whole kiss inside of a cookie really intrigued me. I wanted to use mint Kisses, but when I went to the drug store, they didn't have any. I added some peppermint extract to the dough instead. I liked them so much, I made them at again at home.

I also repeated the PB Blossoms dough recipe at home, because I needed a yummy base for these awesome "Reindeer Cookies." I saw this idea somewhere on the vast internet probably sometime in late summer and was really excited to try it out.

Tip: the pretzels need to be applied right away when the cookies are taken out of the oven. Next time I will stagger the timing of the two sheets so that the second one stays hot and melts the chocolate on the pretzels. It also helps to have an extra pair of hands to help you!

I also made a batch of Double Chocolate M&M Cookies using a box of brownie mix and holiday M&Ms. They tasted fine, but came out looking like cow pies. My first ever brownie mix cookies came out great, but my subsequent attempts have all been seriously lacking in the presentation category.

And finally, the last treat I made was "Magic Bars" which were delicious as usual. My crust was a tad crumbly, but I don't think the thick topping to thin crust ratio prevented anyone from eating them.

Me want cookie!

Yeah, what else is new?

Sunday night, when I probably should have been re-vamping a power point and practicing a presentation, I decided to empty my cupboards instead to make a massive batch of Quaker Oats' Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies. A bold choice that did wonders for my sanity at the time and feelings of accomplishment for the weekend. Unfortunately, I don't have the same positive remarks for the presentation :-/

Most of the ingredients. I can't believe I forgot to feature the oats. Duh.

1 3/4 sticks of butter plus 1 1/4 cups of sugar. We're off to a great start!

Who needs a mixer? Look at that creaminess, achieved with only a mini spatula and a mild arm workout. Next the eggs and vanilla get added.

Once the wet is combined, in goes the dry. 1 1/2 cups of flour and 3 cups of oats. Almost needed a bigger bowl, but somehow managed to get it all mixed with same mini spatula and minimal spillage.

And now the fun part! The original recipe calls for raisins. As if by only adding dried fruit, the nearly 2 sticks of butter at the beginning don't exist. These are cookies, and cookies = dessert, so I added my mix-ins accordingly: semi-sweet chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, shredded coconut (I did go with unsweetened here,) Craisins and pecans.

I used a heaping teaspoon to parcel the dough out onto the cookie sheets and ended up with about 60 cookies.

Although by the time I went to bed, there were only about 55. Quality control is an essential step that I take very seriously.

At least when my less than stellar grade comes back later this week, I will have sufficient sweets to drown my sorrows with.

Mmmmmmmocha Chip Cookies

After a super lazy Tuesday involving little more than a marathon of Law and Order after work, last Wednesday was by necessity a very productive day. I worked from 8 to 3:30, stopped by the bank, went to a pilates class and got everything ready to leave town for the weekend. This involved printing out confirmations and directions, packing (which always stresses me out more than it should,) and preparing something yummy for the people hosting me.

I cut the recipe for these cookies off the back of a brownie mix not too long ago, and it was the perfect thing to try on day when time was of the essence. They were a cinch to make, and all of the ingredients were already on hand.

Start with a box of brownie mix.

In a large bowl, combine mix with 1 egg, 2 Tbsp of instant coffee dissolved in 3 Tbsp of hot water, 3 Tbsp of vegetable oil and a dash of cinnamon. Stirring it all together was quite the upper body work out!

Lastly, fold in 1 and 1/2 cups of chocolate and/or white chocolate chips (nuts would also be a tasty addition)

Drop by teaspoonfuls on lightly greased cookie sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes at 350 F.

Let cool a few minutes and remove cookies from cookie sheets and place on cooling racks. They taste really good all warm and gooey.

Later in the evening I boxed up the cookies for my hosts and left a few behind for my parents, but I really should have packed some for myself to eat on the plane. There was no trace of the cookies that I had left behind when I returned. I guess I will just have to make some more--shucks ;-)

Pumpkin Cookies

Don't let the simple title of this post fool you. These are no ordinary cookies. I truly believe they are in part responsible for keeping Keizo and me together while we lived a vast ocean apart. I first made them at home in October 2009, as a special Halloween treat to send to Japan. Since then, they have become frequently requested and somewhat well known; Keizo, the generous guy that he is has shared them with his teammates, friends and family. Even people who have never met me have eaten my pumpkin cookies.

The basic recipe is from allrecipes.com and starts with a cup of shortening, followed by two cups of sugar. How bad can they be?

Then you add a can of pumpkin puree (not so easy to find in Japan, but given the importance of these cookies, we made it a top priority) flour, baking soda and other cookie ingredients. You could throw in the chocolate chips and call it a day, but I prefer to add a whole bunch of yummy things. This particular batch included coconut, raisins (dried cranberries are better, but I didn't feel like searching for them,) chopped almonds and milk chocolate chunks.

Mix together and drop by teaspoonful onto a cookie sheet. I had some left over pumpkin seeds from the Sweet Pumpkin cookie mix so I decorated a few of them before baking.

The full recipe makes around 6 dozen cookies, but not wanting to stay up all night transferring batches into the oven, I cut it in half. I wrapped some up to give to Keizo's sister to show my appreciation for showing me around Tokushima before and after his game there last weekend. She was pretty excited when she saw them; Keizo and I are excited that there are still some left for us.

Let's Baking!

Confoundingly for a blog with betsu bara in the title, there is nary a dessert entry to be found. Let's change that.

First though, I want to brag about the microwave. The microwave not only changes to an oven at the touch of a button, it gets use almost daily as our toaster. Just turn the nob to #12, which is the toast setting and then with another twist, input the number of slices you wish to have toasted. Yeah, you have to manually flip the bread over if you want both sides golden brown, but it seems like a small price to pay. There is a drink button and a magical "warming" button that with one push heats whatever you have placed inside to a steamy 70 degrees Celsius! Japanese technology can be truly wonderful.

But what about Japanese desserts? Not too shabby, especially if you like sweetened azuki bean paste and matcha. I like both just fine, but don't really ever crave either after a meal. Usually I am a chocolate or don't even bother kind of girl, but neither of the following have any chocolate in them. Instead they are autumn inspired, SWEET PUMPKIN COOKIES from Muji, and GINGER PEAR TARTS which I concocted with a nashi that was way too mushy to eat.

The pumpkin cookies came from a box of mix I bought at Muji. They looked so cute on the box I couldn't resist. They turned out to be one of the more challenging mixes I have ever put together (Betty Crocker and I go way back too!) The dough was really sticky and not so conducive to rolling into pumpkin shapes, but Keizo did the best he could. Then brushing them with egg whites and not getting the egg white all over the baking sheet was another challenge. I ended up with a bunch of nice crusted on egg whites at the end. Lovely. The cookies were good, very dense, and cute to look at, even if they were a bit lumpy.

If you have read this far, there should be no doubt in your mind that Keizo and I love food. Our fridge is quite full at the moment, although not quite as full as it was right after our trip to Costco and upon the receipt of the generous farm box from his parents. Sometimes though we have more than even we can handle. Such was the case with a nashi (Asian pear) that was left over from shopping more than a week ago. It got a little lost in the shuffle and by the time I got it out to slice up for breakfast on Tuesday, it was pretty mealy. Not wanting to waste it (fruit in Japan is not cheap!) I thought it would be perfect to add to some kind of pastry crust. With Keizo at work and it pouring rain outside, I wanted to make do with what I had on hand. So I found a recipe for "Kart Wheels" (jam tarts) in my Gold Medal Flour Alpha-Bakery Children's Cookbook(copyright 1987!) and looked at allrecipes.com for some kind of pear pie filling. Since I only had one mushy pear, cutting the recipe down to size was a bit of challenge, so I used it as more of a guide. And while the end result was awfully pale, they won high praises from Keizo and were utterly delicious hot with vanilla ice cream.