Holiday classics with a twist

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!  Mine featured plenty of delicious food, spending time with members from both sides of my extended family and truly a lot to be thankful for.  November 28th was also the 3rd anniversary (birthday?) of "Two Betsu Bara," and it couldn't have fallen on a more fitting holiday!

As in previous years, I had two opportunities to try out Thanksgiving recipes.  The first was the potluck at work the week before the actual day; wanting something simple and easy to tote to work on my bicycle, I made homemade cranberry sauce.

The recipe I used (from an old issue of Family Circle magazine; I can't seem to find it online) called for chunks of apple and ginger in addition to cranberries and gelatin.  Everything was boiled together in a sauce pot for while and made my whole apartment smell amazing.  There ended up being an abundance of cranberry sauce at the luncheon, but mine was the only homemade one.  While I enjoyed mine and I liked the different textures and addition of the ginger, I don't think I would go to trouble of making it again if I were also responsible for the rest of the meal.  The canned stuff is pretty good, and one less thing to worry about!


For the actual holiday, I got started the weekend before by cooking down my old Halloween pumpkin.  I had never cooked down a pumpkin before, and was a little intimidated by the prospect.  I followed the instructions from The Pioneer Woman and the process ended up being easier than I thought.  The most difficult part was getting it smooth in my blender.  I am sure a real food processor would make the task even easier.



My pumpkin was about 8" in diameter and cooked down to about 3 cups of pumpkin puree.  I used half of it in the pumpkin cheesecake I brought with me to dinner at my aunt and uncle's house.  I made the same recipe last year, and was afraid I might not be let in the door without it this year!  Using homemade pumpkin puree changed the texture (less firm) and flavor (less pumpkin-y) a little bit--note all the fibrous bits stuck to the mixer above--but this year's cheesecake was also well received.  I have one piece left in my fridge; tomorrow's breakfast perhaps?

My uncle also put a twist on one of his holiday classics:  before filling the crust of one of his pecan pies, he added a layer of chocolate chips.  Probably the best pecan pie I've ever had!

A Story about Scones

Once upon a time, I set out to make some birthday treats for a classmate. I started by lining up the ingredients for a group shot, a idea I got here.

My, what a big can of pumpkin you have! The best part, it's only can #2 of 4. I have two more of the same size waiting in the cupboard, and will probably buy at least one more when I open the next one.

Following this recipe for the most part, I got started on the scones. Since it was my first time making scones, I actually followed the instructions that said to mix wet and dry separately before combining. I think it was a good call.

Once combined, I separated the dough in half and squashed it into two circles. The recipe called for one circle, but I wanted to get more than 8 giant scones out of all my "hard work."

I cut the circles into wedges and transferred them to a baking sheet, gave them a quick egg wash and sprinkled with a bit of white sugar.

The gooey before...

...and browned delicious after.

Once cool, I mixed up some quick cream cheese frosting, thinned it with a little water for drizzling and packed up the scones to take to school...

...where they were eaten. Not exactly happily ever after for the scones, but I didn't hear anyone protesting on their behalf.

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.