Green Tea Kasutera

A friend of mine recently gave me matcha green tea powder from Japan, and I've been very careful with what I use it for. It's precious stuff, not to mention expensive! I found a wonderful recipe for kasutera, a Japanese type of bread. It's supposed to have a similar consistency with pound cake, but perhaps not as dense. My cake turned out really light and soft.

I took this recipe and adapted it by replacing 2 grams of flour with green tea powder. The result is a delicate, fluffy bread that my family and I love. I believe kasutera is not supposed to be fluffy, but mine was. It was probably because I didn't have the time/patience to sit there with the eggs and whip 'em up slowly. I'll have to try mixing the eggs a little slower next time. Kasutera is somewhat temperamental, so show it some love, and it'll love you right back.

Ingredients:
8 whole "large" eggs
300g sugar
198g all-purpose
2g matcha green tea powder
1/2 cup milk


Directions adapted from Just Hungry.
I didn't want to write it all out here, so you can just go to the original website and follow their directions. They're pretty thorough!

Individual Cheesecake with raspberry swirls

A friend of mine wanted to bake with me, and so this entry is dedicated to her. Since we both love cheesecake and raspberry-flavored anything, this dessert was a "no brainer." We had our little mishaps in the kitchen. Our first batch turned out fine, but while assembling our second batch, we realized that we had forgotten to put graham cracker crust into the muffin pans. Oh well...that's life. Even though we messed up, the little cheesecakes were still pretty good.

You can follow the step-by-step instructions from Annie's Eats (not affiliated with me!):

Here's a trick for when you want to press graham cracker crumbs into the cupcake pan...use a measuring cup! The 1/4 size cup fits perfectly.


Here is the cream cheese mixture after all the sugar, eggs, and vanilla have been mixed in.


Fill each cupcake liner about 2/3 of the way up.


Add 3 drops of raspberry sauce (I used seedless raspberry jam)


And the final product!

Pumpkin Muffins

Let me just start out by saying that ANY recipe that has 5 stars from 4,609 people will ALWAYS get vote. That's what this pumpkin muffin recipe got, and it is well-deserved. This muffin, which is actually meant to be a loaf, is moist, flavorful, and delicious. Even if you adapt it to your liking, it STILL turns out a winner. So go make this recipe...now.

We start out with the ingredients.


Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately.




Pour the dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet ingredients, and mix until just incorporated. Don't over-mix, but keep going until you don't see any huge clumps of flour. Fill the cups about 2/3 and add any toppings at this point.



I doubled the recipe because I made this the other night, and my dad ate 3...in one sitting. 3. However, doubling a recipe that is already meant for a HUGE batch can lead to some shortages. I only had a cup and a half left of vegetable oil, but the recipe calls for 2 cups, so I substituted apple sauce for the remaining half cup.



Also, to make this muffin a little healthier, I made it with whole white wheat flour instead of the usual all-purpose flour. I love whole white wheat flour because it's much lighter and milder than its friend, the dense whole wheat flour. Use it in your baking! It's very similar to all-purpose...but healthier!

I hope you enjoy this recipe. It's called the Downeast Main Pumpkin Bread, and it's a-mazing! Did I mention that it got 5 stars with over 4,000 reviews?? :)



The directions below are for a loaf, but these can easily be made into muffins. Lower the baking time to 25 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. If making muffins, lower time to 25 minutes. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.