Cranberry Chocolate Muffins/cake/squares

It cannot be just me don't know what to do with the leftover cranberry sauce after a holiday!

Ready in: 45 minutes

Ingredients for two:
[Shift in advance]
160g flour
40g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

100g sugar
60g coconut oil+30g butter (or 100g butter)
1 egg
1/2 cup of cranberry sauce or any jam

Required Equipment:
Muffin cups/ cake mold

Step 1: Put sugar and butter/coconut oil in a bowl, mix it well.

Step 2: Add egg, mix it well

Step 3: Add sauce or jam

Step 4: Add shifted powder mix and mix, but not too well

Step 5: Put the mixture in mold

Step 6: Bake it at 350F for 15-25 minutes 

Fuwa Fuwa Hot Keki- Fluffy Pancakes

Apparently, fluffy pancakes are super popular in Japan now days.

I work compressed hours to get a Friday off every other week. It feels so special to have a  slow morning with pancakes knowing that other people are working!!

Ready in: 20 minutes

Ingredients for four pancakes:
1 egg, separate egg yolk and white
10g sugar in egg white
100cc milk
Butter to bake
Fruits and icing suger to garnish
[Prepare in a shifter]
100g flour
5g baking powder

Required Equipment:
Flour shifter
Hand mixer
Towel

Step 1: Prepare ingridients

Step 2: Make meringue

Step 3: Whip egg yolk and add milk and dry ingridients 

Step 4: Add  meringue in to step 3 and lightly mix

Step 5: On the low heat, warm up a pan and prepare a dump cloth. When the pan is warmed up, place the pan on the cloth to cool down a bit. 

Step 6: Put butter and one ladle of batter on the pan and cook at very slowly.

 

 Step 7: Once you see some bubbles on the surface, cover the pan with a lid.

 Step 8: Flip it and cook

Step 9: Enjoy!

Tsuji Ura Senbei- Fortune Cookies with Egg White

I always thought that fortune cookies were from China, but I was wrong! The concept was actually brought from Japan to the U.S.! We have a culture to take a fortune paper at a shrine, and cookies that are in this shape.

I've never liked the taste of fortune cookies, but enjoy reading what it tells me.

Try to make fortune cookies that I like to eat!

My mom makes these cookies whenever she has egg whites to use. We call them "egg white cookies" but they actually have a fancy name "langue de chat". I love these cookies!

Ready in: 40 minutes to make 7 cookies

Ingredients per 1 egg white (makes 7 cookies):
1 egg white
3 tablespoons of sugar
3 tablespoons of flour
3 drops of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of melted butter and 1 tablespoon of water, optional

Required Equipment:
Fortune paper
Baking pan
Parchment paper
Electric hand mixer, or whisk
A mug
Muffin cups

Step 1: Heat up your oven at 375F

Step 2: Put egg white and sugar in a bowl, and whip it

Step 3: Add flour, and whip it

Step 4: Add vanilla essence, butter and water, and ix it well.

Step 5: Scoop the batter with a tablespoon, and spread it onto parchment paper that is on a baking pan. Make sure you only bake 2-3 cookies at the time to be able to fold them while they are still hot, and each cookie is about 3 inch diameter.

Step 6: Bake them for 8-10 minutes, and flip cookies over as soon as you take them out of the oven. Very quickly, you place your message paper and fold it into half.
<Tip> If your cookies crack, add a bit of water into the batter for the next batch.

Step 7: Using the edge of a mug, make it into a fortune cookie shape, and keep it in a muffin cup to hold the shape. 

Samosa

I haven't eaten samosa last 15 years because I ate my life-time worth of them when I was traveling in India for 6 months. People were selling samosas and chai tea on the streets, in parks and rail stations. They were everywhere!

All the sudden, I had a craving for samosas! 

Ready in: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

1/4 carrot, chopped

A handful Edamame or green onions

A handful chicken, chopped

1 potato, chopped

Egg roll wrap or dumpling wrap

2 tablespoons of ketchup

1/2 teaspoons of curry powder (or 1/4 teaspoons of ground cumin &  1/4 teaspoons of turmeric powder)

Salt and pepper

1 clove of garlic, chopped

Frying oil

Step 1: In a pan, put oil and garlic, start cooking veggies and chicken.

Step 2: Add ketchup and spices and mix it well.

Step 3: Wrap it.

Step 4: Deep fry it.

Choco Corone- Spiral Bread with Nutella Filling

My mother makes bread in summer, and pies in winter. She always says that raising bread requires heat, and making a pie requires cold weather not to soften butter.

This year, it looks like we have hot summer in Ottawa!

Ready in: 90 minutes

Ingredients for 12:
Nutella
<In a bread machine>
90cc warm water
200g flour
30g egg, save some to brush on top of bread
24g sugar
30g butter
6g skim milk powder
3g salt
2.4g dry yeast

Equipment:
Cone shape cornets, you can make them with a paper cookie box and aluminium foil
Bread maker for easy steps

Step 1: Make dough either in a bread machine, or by hand.
Step 2: After leaving a ball of dough on the kitchen counter for 10 minutes for the second raise, devide it into 12 small balls. Take a ball, make it long, and  put it around a cone core. Put the spirals on a baking pan.

Step 3:  Cover the whole baking pan with a damp cloth, and leave it for 20 minutes to raise for the last time.

If the room tempreture doesn't reach to 35C, put a bowl of hot water under.

 Step 4:  Set your oven at 350F, and start the pre heat.

Step 5:  Check if the spirals rise again. Brush some beaten eggs on top of the spirals, put the pan in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 315F.

Step 6:  While the baked spirals are still warm, remove the cone.

Step 7: Fill the hole with Nutella.