Umami Mart

My most recent obsession is making anko (sweet bean paste) from scratch. As I wrote in my strawberry daifuku post a couple of weeks ago, using bean paste as dessert doesn’t really exist in the west. But I am trying to find ways to mix this into my future baking. After all, it’s gluten-free, and […]

Not that I’ve ever beaten anyone up, but I think macaron-making is somewhat similar to the mentality of a wifebeater’s wife. You get so fed up with the multiple failures, from all the physical and mental abuse, and you want to leave him, but when you are about to say goodbye for good, he becomes […]

Japan is filled with weird desserts. A lot of influence comes from the west, but we somehow incorporate Japan-ness into western desserts. For example, castella came from Portugal and somehow the recipe changed a bit and one of the ingredients now is mirin (sweet sake). Or choux filled with red bean/whipped cream mix. Ichigo daifuku […]

Chestnuts signify the presence of winter in many cultures. Although I’ve never actually tried chestnuts roasted by an open fire, I have tried the Japanese version of chestnuts simmered in simple syrup, or kuri no kanroni. However, I had never taken the initiative to prepare a chestnut dish because the task of peeling always seemed […]

In honor of this last day of Hanukkah, I made sufganiyot (jelly donuts). Believe it or not, this is a Hanukkah tradition, right along with latkes (potato pancakes). This was the first time I’d made them so I used Martha Stewart’s recipe. They came out great! *This post first appeared on Erin Gleeson’s website Forest Feast […]

By Kenji Miura I celebrated Christmas in Japan by making wagashi, or traditional Japanese sweets. Santa is shaped out of shiro-an (white bean paste). The holly is made out of ogura tsubu-an (red beans boiled with sugar, skin-on). The tree is comprised of shiro-an and kanten (agar agar). The kinton (mashed substance, in this case the […]

There’s a big financial crisis pillaging through the poor, run down viking villages of Denmark. It’s the revisiting ghost from 2008. Even though we’re still doing better than many of the South European countries, a lot of people are being laid off work and therefore no one’s shopping. At all. All my self-employed friends who […]

Brownies come many a kind — I like these particular ones because they’re very light and discrete in flavour which means you can eat the whole cake and not feel overstuffed (even though you most certainly will be). To me, brownies should be heavy, soggy, small bricks of chocolate. This is a recipe I’ve been playing […]

As I’ve written in a post some years ago, Iceland is a nation of candy addicts. Especially if the candy is chocolate mixed with liquorice. It’s crazy how much candy the Icelandic people eat – but since there’s no fresh ice cream tradition like in Italy or warm, salty pretzels like in Germany – I […]

Before I start this week’s post, let’s congratulate Kayoko and the crew for revamping the Umamimart site to a whole new level. Orange is my favorite color, so this is cool, and soon enough, we will be FAMOUS bloggers!! Hooray. As you’ve seen from my past posts, I’ve made cakes for basically all of my […]