Family visit and Halloween

It has been a while since the last post. In October, my family came to visit us in NY. It was very short and I felt really really sad when they left. I couldn't stop crying at the airpot but luckily my son kept me busy and thing get back to normal quickly.

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been if I stayed in Japan. It was my decision to come to the U.S. and stay here and I am very happy with my choice however I would love to have families around somewhere close by. Then, I also think about those people who live in Japan but do not see their family often. When I think about it, I spend weeks with them when I go back and I think maybe we don't spend that much time together at once if we live in Japan. So maybe overall the amount of time we spend together are same or more then average. I just wish I could see them more often :-)


While they were here, I didn't cook much but my mom made Japanese breakfast for us everyday so I definitely enjoyed having someone cook Japanese breakfast for me everyday :-)

There was a Halloween Party with my son's friends while they were here so I took them to the party. They enjoyed little kids dressing up and enjoying the party.

Everybody brought some food and enjoyed the day together. I am so thankful to have such wonderful friends to share those moments with! My son is growing up so fast! I am trying to enjoy every events, every moments and every conversation with him.

While my family is here, I tried to make Red Snapper Rice (Taimeshi) with my mom. She never made this so this was first time for both of us. We got a nice big red snapper from Korean supermarket.

I think it came out pretty good but since I never had this before I was not sure how it is supposed to taste. For me, it was lacking some flavor but I guess it shouldn't have strong flavor. My aunt and uncle told me that this is how it supposed to taste so I guess we did it right. Since I LOVE ginger. I added extra ginger.

And this is a cake we ate together. It was from Whole Food. My son was so happy to see this cake but at the same time he was scared of it.

It went by so fast but I really really enjoyed the stay of my family. My son was so happy to have many people to play with. I guess this was how the family used to be. With many people in the family or more close with your neighbors and so on. Nowadays, it is rare to have such a big family but I think it might be a good environment for kids to grow up in :-)

I would love to have my family here again. I just wish the flight was shorter. I am excited for their next visit already!

Strawberry Cake for Christmas

We went to visit our friends in Manhattan on Christmas Eve and spent a night there. They said they are going to ake Turkey for the night so I wanted to bring some dessert.

In Japan, it is pretty popular to have a Strawberry cake like this one above for Birthday or Christmas and I love these simple cake with strawberry and whipped cream so I decided to bake it and bring it with us.

Well, the sponge cake didn't come out right. It was so flat and hard. I didn't know what to do.

I didn't have any energy and time to bake another one so I decided to bake another one. This time Black Forest Cake since I made this about a month ago with my friend from Germany. I baked it...... BUT this came out also flat and hard.

I brushed some apricot syrup to the sponge cake which I made first and decorated with whipped cream and strawberry. I looked beautiful. But I decided not to bring the cake to our friends because I know it will going to be hard inside and not very good.

Well, the Christmas with our friends were wonderful. We had such a wonderful time. Our son was so happy to be with everybody and his favorite is their puppy. He loves their puppy and he was playing with her the whole time we were there. He even woke up in the middle of the night and cried because he wanted to play with the puppy :-)

On Christmas day, we came back home and tried this cake which I left in the fridge. To my surprise, it tasted really good and the cake was moist and soft. I think leaving it with syrup and cream made the cake moist and soft. I regretted not bring it with me. Oh well. My husband enjoyed it so at least it didn't go waste.

It seems like when I try to make round cake like this, it often ended up flat. I was thinking maybe I will just use my mom's pound cake recipe to make these round cake.

I think my decoration skill is improved since I bought this turntable and decoration kit for cake decoration. It is all about practice and I hope I will be able to practice more this year. That means we will be eating more cake this year. Oh I miss my neighbors which I can give my cakes to every time I baked. I need to find a new neighbor whom I can share my baked products with. Otherwise, we will be gaining lots of weight this year...

By the way, NY is -15C (5F) today plus is is so windy. I head that it is dangerously cold to stay outside. I never had such a cold weather in my life! I went outside to fix something on the balcony and I couldn't stay even for 1 mins. My hands got so cold immediately and I couldn't stand it. It is nice and sunny but it is too cold and windy. I hope this weather will go away soon. I need warm weather!!!

German Black Forest Cake

We had a visitor from Germany and we had so much fun! We did lots of shopping and enjoyed spending time. Our son LOVED having her with us so he as all over her which means I was able to relax a lot ;-)

One of the things we did while she was here was making a cake called Black Forest Cake.

I tried to make this cake before by myself but the result was not great. I bought cherry liquor from a local liquor store and used it for the cake. This liquor was so strong that the cake only tasted like the liquor.

This time, I made it with my friend whose grandma make this cake all the time. She told me that she actually never made it but I was sure she knows how it taste like and how it should look.

So We baked.

First of all, making batter was quite easy. Then, we baked. The cake came out very flat and we were not sure how it will turn out but we proceed with the rest of process.

We cut the cake then brushed with cherry preserve. Then, add whipped cream, then, canned cherry.

Then more whipped cream. In my book, there is no such a thing as too much whipped cream.

Then cover with the other half of the cake. Cover with more whipped cream then topped with canned cherry. I bought this cake decoration turn table while ago. I didn't have a chance to use it till this day but I was happy to use it. It is much easier to decorate cake with this turn table. I know I need more practice but I think this looks OK.

Then sprinkle with shaved chocolate.

So, I don't have a picture of inside but the color of cake looked little grayish. So next time, I think I will try to add more cocoa power into the batter. Despite the cake color, the taste was super good!

I didn't put too much cherry liquor this time because my husband and my son would eat also.

It was really fun making this cake with her. I like cooking with my friends. She came to visit us in California and I remember we baked brownie that time together. If we live close to each other, we will be baking together all the time.

It was great to have her and I miss her already. She is such a good friends and I feel so comfortable with her. I feel like I don't need to pretend anything. I am glad that I met her through my husband and I am happy that we became good friends!

I am curious what we will be baking when she come visit us next time :-)

Apple Picking and Apple Pie

I love going to Apple picking in fall. A few weeks ago, we went to NJ for apple picking. This year, it was our son's first apple picking so we prepared him by explaining what it is and how to pick an apple.

I am not sure if he understood completely but he was mimicking us how to pick an apple from a tree and put it in a basket. He also learned a letter A for an apple and he found an apple tree in a book and saying "apple picking! Apple picking!" so he was absolutely excited about it.

In the past, we went to upstate NY for apple picking but this time we tried going to NJ. We went to this orchard called Sun High Orchard and we absolutely love it there.

The orchard was not too big and was actually perfect size for us and they had homemade apple cider, apple cider doughnuts, ice cream etc.

The owner of the orchard came to talk to us and told us about the orchard and which apple is the best right now. He was very friendly and I really liked that.

They also had some animals like this.

Our son enjoyed apple picking so much! The tree was not too tall and there were many apples on the lower part of the tree so my 2 year old son could easily pick them by himself.

So we got lots of apples in different kinds.

It was also Halloween season so there were many pumpkins there. Big pumpkins were bit pricy for us so we bought 4 small ones and those were very very reasonable price. And they are so cute! We gave one to our friend.

Our son likes apple so he eats apple if I peel them but since we have a lot of them, we decided to bake apple pie. Apple pie is also one of my favorite fall thing. When I smell apple pie, it makes me feel very happy and cozy. Since I am not good with making pie crust or any kind of dough, I decided to cheat and use frozen one. It came out perfectly!

We ate hot apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It seems like our son enjoyed ice cream more than apple pie but he also ate some apple pie and was very excited that it came from the apple he actually picked himself.

I am very happy that we took him for apple picking. I didn't think he would enjoy this much!

So I can check off the apple pie from the list of what I want to make in fall. Next is pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup! Well, actually I already made pumpkin soup so it is only pumpkin pie! Wish me luck!

Blueberry Scone

When it is raining outside, I often feel like baking. This was one of those days which rained all day and we couldn't do any outside activity because it was pouring all day long.

So, in order to keep myself and my son busy, I decided to bake something. I had two package of blueberries in my fridge so I made Blueberry Scones which are not too sweet so my son can have some also.

I used the recipe which I found on a website called "All Recipe". If you are interested in this Blueberry Scone recipe, click here to go to All Recipe website.

It is fairly easy to make blueberry scones.

Mix dry ingredients.

And also liquid ingredients.

Mix them both and make some dough. Actually, I made a mistake with the amont of half and half so my dough came out to be too soft and sticky. So I added some more flour to make it manageable.

Then shape it and put in the oven.

Right after it was baked, I tried it. It was good but was not sweet enough for my taste. This is perfect for my son because we try not to give him something too sweet.

As I have guessed, my son looooooved this scone. He took a bite and made a big big smile on his face and said "Mama, this is yummy!!!!". Then he asked "Who is this?" Well, he is supposed to say "What is this?" but he still makes mistakes and ask me "Who is this" when he is talking about some object.

I told him about 10 times that this is called "Scone". After asking me "Who is this?" for 10 times, he finally said "Mama, I LOOOOOOVE SCONE!!!!"

I think those moment makes it worth putting an effort for cooking. I love hearing someone say "This is Yummy." when I cook something.

My mom also loved when my son tells her "This is yummy." She said that she cooks every single day but nobody tells her that they are yummy. So she loved cooking and feeding our son. He makes my mom so happy :-)

He is starting to talk quite a lot. He also started to throw a fit and sometimes it is very difficult to talk to him or calm him down. I get frustrated and get upset sometimes but then he does something funny to makes me laugh and I can not be mad at him.

OK. Back to Scone. My husband also liked this scone. I think this is a great snack for everybody. Though it is getting hotter and I don't think I will be using oven quite often till fall, I think I will keep this recipe in mind so I can make this again when the weather get little cooler like in Oct or so.

By the way, don't you love this plate? I fell in love and bought 4 of them at Ikea. It was $2.99 each!
It looks very elegant and classy. I think this is a perfect plate for dessert!

Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing

Our friend from California came to visit us on Sunday and I made this cake which I found in a baking book I borrowed from library.

The cake is called Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing.

And the book is called "Vintage Cakes" by Julie Richardson

I tried to make Chiffon cake before and it did not come out as I hoped so I was a bit nervous about making this cake but this one cake out wonderful.

The cake has maple syrup and toasted chopped pecan and icing have browned butter and vanilla.

In Japan, cake normally have whipped cream instead of icing or frosting and when I first move to the U.S., I didn't like icing or frosting but after living here for 15 years, I started to like icing and frosting.

This icing is very rich and tasty and goes great with maple pecan flavor.

This is how the cake looked before icing.

This is how it looks when you cut it.

This is a slice.

Our friend liked the cake and so did I and my husband. i am glad it came out well.

This book has many recipes which I would like to try. It also explains some history behind those cakes and it is very interesting to just read those little stories.

Since it is getting cooler now, I would love to bake more cakes but if I keep baking those huge cakes and keep eating, my weight will definitely increase. This cake was also very big so I shared some with my neighbor. It is great to have neighbors who like sweets :-)

By the way, I am carrying a pedometer with me lately wherever I go. It is quite popular device in Japan. I always had this pedometer but I just started to use it recently. In Japan, we say that recommended steps a day is 10,000. However average steps a day is not eve near 10,000.

I read that an average Japanese woman take 6,000 steps a day. I am not even take 6,000 a day. I need to walk more.

Anyways, my yoga class started again for the fall season and I am enjoying my yoga class.

Sometimes, I do my yoga posed at home to release some tension and my 20 months old son try to copy me and do some yoga poses with me. It is super cute!

Well, I would love to be a better baker but I am also afraid that practicing baking skills make me gain weight. I guess our neighbors has to eat lots of cakes for me :-)

Ellie Krieger's Sesame Chicken & Mini Cheese Cake

Using this book again, I made Sesame Chicken and Mini Cheese Cake! Sesame Chicken is my husbands' favorite dish when we order in Chinese food. Normally, it is battered and fried and coated with sweet and sour sauce with lots of sesame. This Ellie Krieger's version is not deep fried but more like stir fried which makes this dish little bit healthier and lighter.

I cooked broccoli too long so the color of broccoli is not great but this sesame chicken was great. It is not exactly like the sesame chicken we order from Chinese restaurant but this one is good substitute when you make it at home. You don't have to deep fry your chicken and it was quite tasty. The sauce has quite strong taste so I end up eating lots of rice....

I like it with lots of sesame and lots of green onions. 

 Also, I tried making this mini cheese cake. It is cupcake size and perfect for little dessert. 

However, when I dissolved gelatine powder, I guess I didn't dissolve it well so when we ate the cheesecake, there were chunks of gelatine in it. It was not pleasant texture and we couldn't eat it. 

It tasted pretty good so if you follow the recipe well and if you dissolve gelatine well, the result must have been much much better. Oh well, I will be more careful next time.....

Even though it did not come out well I think it is a great idea to have such a small cupcake size mini cheese cakes. It looked really cute. I think I should try this again.....

Lemon Pound Cake Again!

Pound Cake has a special place in my heart. My mom always made pound cake so when I eat pound cake, my memories of childhood come back to me. Well actually, when I smell pound cake in the oven, I alway feel at home filled with happiness with my family.

Anyways, if you are interested in my mom's pound cake recipe, click here. It is super easy recipe and always delicious.

But lately, I am making lemon pound cake more. One of the reason is lemon flavor is more refreshing in summer. Other reasons are my husband and my new bundt pan. (my husband loves lemon and I like making lemon glazing for my bundt cake.)

For this lemon pound cake, I use this recipe. Click here for the recipe from Land O Lake website.

This time, glaze was better and it looks prettier. Actually, my husband drizzle the glaze this time.

Last time, the glaze was bit too loose and it didn't come out as pretty as this time. If you are interested in how it looked my last lemon pound cake, click here.  You will find the picture of lemon pound cake almost at the end of the post.

This time it looked better and the cake was moist and very good. Since this is a huge cake, we gave some to our neighbor and my husband also brought some to his office.

It is quite hot right now in NY so I don't bake too much lately but if I am baking something, I tend to bake something with lemon or lime which is very refreshing in how summer weather!

Ricotta Cheesecake

It has been quite hot these last few days in NY but how is everybody doing? Mausi family is doing great. Enjoying summer!!

Anyway, the other day we went to this Italian deli/pizzeria close to our place. This place has really good pizza and they also make fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheese.

We had small pizza (which is big) with mushroom and onion. What I love about this pizza is the crust is thin. I like thin crust pizza!

At deli section, they have different kind of fresh meat and cheese. One of my neighbor told me that their Mozzarella cheese and Ricotta cheese are really good so I bought those cheese.

I didn't take pictures of these cheese but we had Mozzarella for salad. Ricotta cheese was creamy and sweet and I could just eat it as is but since we had lots of them, I decided to make ricotta cheesecake.

This cake is not too sweet and have lots of ricotta and egg with little bit of flour.

The recipe I used was the one I found in All Recipes. Click here if you would like to jump to the recipe. 

It said Sicilian ricotta cheesecake so the recipe muse be from Sicily. This is very different from American cheesecake. It was light and bit dry. My husband loved it. I liked it but I think I prefer something little bit sweeter and creamer.

It was very easy to make and tasted great. Maybe I will add little bit more sugar next time ;-)

It was really hot when I baked this cake so we couldn't stay in the house. My son and I played in front of the house while the cake is baked.

I think cheesecake is great for summer because you can eat it cool!

Well, if you like light cheesecake, try this one!

Pineapple Upside down Cake

We had another cooking/Play date the other day. This time we tried pineapple upside down cake. I know about this cake but I never thought about making it. But one of my mom friend wanted to try so we decided to give it a try!

This is how it came out.

Isn't it beautiful? It came out better than I thought. It was not too difficult and also tasted great. I think this will be a great cake when we have some guest.

First, we made caramel and put pineapple and cherry.

Then we added cake batter and bake.

You flip it over and that's how you get upside down.

I think the most difficult part is to flip the cake. I was too scared to flip it so I asked my friend to do it. She did an excellent job.

We used recipe from this website called "Joy of Baking". I have used this website before and she has so many great recipes. For this recipe, she also had a video which helped us a lot.

I am so happy that we tried this cake. If my friend didn't suggest this, I had never tried this cake. This is the great thing about cooking with your friends, you try something new and you learn a lot.

I tend to make something similar all the time so it is great for me to try something different.

By the way, my mom friends gave me early birthday gift at one of the play date since I will be in Japan on my birthday. It was very nice of them to think of my birthday and get me gifts. They are very considerate and kind people. I am very happy that I met them.

More cooking/play date to come!

Homemade Christmas Stollen

In Germany, People eat Stollen for Christmas. It has some dried fruits and nuts in it. Some of them even have marzipan in it. It is more like a sweet bread.

I normally don't like fruit cake too much but I love Stollen. When I eat this, I start feel like it is Christmas. You can buy some stollen at regular supermarket here but once you eat the real stollen from Germany, it is difficult to beat the original.

Well, this year, I decided to bake one on my own!

My mother-in-law gave me a recipe and sent me some candied orange and lemon.

So, my husband and I were excited to bake this for the first time.

However, we kind of stuck from the very beginning. The recipe calls for fresh yeast but I can not get any fresh yeast around my house so we decided to use dry yeast instead. We searched the conversion rate for fresh yeast and dry yeast but there were just so many versions and we got so confused.

Finally, we trusted one of them and decided to go with it. Even though it seemed like way too much yeast.

Anyhow, this was the dough we managed to make.

It was very sticky dough and we weren't sure if the dough is supposed to be this sticky.

Well, we managed to make a stollen shape out of it. This is how it looked before we put it in the oven. We were kind of surprised how big this stollen was. Maybe we should had made two stollen out of this.

This is how it came out of oven. It got even bigger! Maybe because we had lots of yeast. Well, it was kind of scary big.

We brushed lots of melted butter and sprinkle with lots of powder sugar. Doesn't it look pretty?

It came out pretty good.

The taste was pretty good but the texture was kind of rough. I would like Stollen which is more smooth in texture. Oh well, it is our first try and we think it came out pretty good for our first try.

This Stollen, you can keep it for a while if you leave it in a cold place.

Well, the first time Stollen baking was an adventure. It was fun but quite a lot of work. I am not sure if we will make it again next year. Maybe I will ask my parents-in-laws to send a Stollen from Germany next year :-)

Two days trip to Upstate NY (Hudson Valley Area)

In mid November, we went for one night trip to Hudson Valley area. We went to Hudson Valley last year also. (Click here for the post of last year Hudson Valley visit. Hudson Valley 1. Hudson Valley 2)

We ate lots of great food and enjoyed out trip last year and we also had a great trip this year. I planned this trip and decide where to stay, where to eat and stuff. My husband loved everything I planned so I was very happy :-)

First of all, before we go to the hotel, we stopped at a town called New Paltz and had lunch at this restaurant called "The Village Tearoom".

I ordered smoked salmon salad which was really good.

My husband ordered "Mushroom bread pudding". Ever since he had mushroom bread pudding at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan last year (Click here for that post) he order this dish every chance he gets.

I forgot to take some pictures but they also have many different kind of baked goods and I ordered scone. They also had clotted cream which I have been looking around for a long time. Since I can not find them anywhere, I asked them if they can sell clotted cream. They told me that they can sell it for $8.00 per jar. It is quite expensive but I know I can not find it anywhere so I bought it! Now, I can make scone at home and eat it with clotted cream and have a proper afternoon tea! I am so happy :-)

After the lunch we ordered tea and chocolate cake.

By the way, there was a nice park close to this restaurant. Everything was made of woods and lots of kids and parents were playing. We played there also with our son and had a great time. I wish we had something like this close to our place.

Then, we head to the hotel. The hotel we stayed was a lodge and it had two stories. The bed was in upstairs and there was fireplace downstair. Also there was a river running right in front of our room and it was really nice and relaxing though it was right by a main street. It was quiet and nice.

Next day, we stopped by Culinary Institute of America for lunch. We came here last year also. This is a school where people learn how to cook and be trained. They have many restaurants inside of this school. Since we have a small child, we went to the casual restaurant called "Apple Bakery Cafe".

I ordered hanger stake with leek and potato. It was great. The plate was beautiful.

My husband ordered truffle grilled cheese and kale chips.

I never had kale chips before but this kale chips were super good. We couldn't stop eating this chips.

And, this is our main reason we came here. The truffle french fries.

We had this last time we were here and loved it so we ordered again. Well, it was good but I guess we were more impressed first time around.

I wanted to have dessert here but I was full so I bought a cake to take out.

When we got home at night, I had this cake which I bought. This was HudsonValley Apple Butter Cake. Isn't it pretty?

And it tasted wonderful! I loved it. I wished I bought more than one. I can easily eat 5 of them at once. Well, I guess it was good that I bought only one ;-)

Well, this trip was great. It was just a few hours away from home but we got to experience different things and eat lots of different stuff. My son loved playing in the fallen leaves. We all had a great time. Especially my husband and I was very happy that I was able to make him happy :-) We will definitely do this again!