When I first saw this, i thought “I didn’t know the cereals came in drink form too”. Cheerio was a household favorite for a while in my home but the only form i know of is Cheerio the cereal, not Cheerio the drink.

Anyway, the similarities that these two share is uncanny in a way. Cheerios comes in a variety of color and this Japanese drink, Cheerio comes in a multitude of colors as well. The drink comes in multiple flavors, and was introduced in 1963. The drinks used to be sold in glass bottles, similar to those used for Ramune. In recent years, with the proliferation of steel and aluminum cans and PET bottles, Cheerio (grape and orange only) in glass bottles is only available in the Chūbu region south of Tokyo, as well as three vending units in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Has any of you tried Cheerio, the drink before?

Source: Wikipedia

Japanese LOOOOVE their cakes. And cheesecake is without an exception one of their favorite. The Japanese even have a day where they dedicate it to eating cakes called Kurisumasu. Cakes are pretty much the same in Japan and in Western countries, with exception to weird flavors like cherry blossom, wasabi, green tea just to name a few. I tried green tea cake with pistachios once and MAN IT WAS AWESOME – perfect blend of the bitter macha powder and sweet. It’s da bomb.

Strawberry Reduction Cheesecake

Anyway, I have a cheesecake recipe to share with you – I wish i made that green tea cake but I bought it from a specialty shop back home. The cheesecake is very simple lemony one with a chocolate base that you can just top with whatever you want. I topped mine with a strawberry reduction sauce, made from fresh strawberries and some sugar. It’s delicious.

Here’s the recipe.

Base:
1 cup chocolate cookies crumbs
2 tablespoon brown sugar
4 tablespoon butter

Cheese filling:
250g cream cheese of any kind (i.e. philadephia cheese), room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 whole egg
1 yolk
1 egg white, beaten still stiff
rind of 1/2 lemon
1.5 tablespoon of lemon juice

Strawberry Reduction topping:
1 cup of fresh strawberries, halved and cored
1/4 cup of sugar
5 tablespoons of water
1 teaspoon lemon rind

Making the base:
1. Preheat oven to 375F. Coat your 8 inch cake pan with butter and dust with flour – shaking of the excess.
2. Make the base first by combining the cookie crumbs, butter and sugar. Mix with your fingers until the crumbs can hold together when you take some in your hands and squeeze it. It’s still crumbly but you can shape it.
3. Press the crumbs into the base of your cake pan and on the sides. Bake in the oven for 8 minutes.
4. After 8 minutes, take out your base to let it cool and reduce the oven temperature to 350F for later.

Making the cheese filling:
1. Beat the cheese until it’s light and fluffy. It takes about 7 mins.
2. Add sugar in gradually and keep beating until it is well combine.
3. Add 1 egg and egg yolk in, and beat until all is mixed in well. Beat for one minute on medium speed.
4. Now take out your spatula/wooden spoon and FOLD in your egg whites gently until well combined. Do not over mix, it’s alright if you can see lumps in your batter.
5. Pour cheese mixture into the base in the cake pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F and then another 30 mins in 300F.
6. After it’s done, take it out and let it cool. The cheese cake will sink a little bit, but that’s okay. It creates a proper crater for the strawberry reduction sauce ontop after :)

Making strawberry reduction:
1. Put strawberries, sugar and water in the pan and bring to boil. Stirring until strawberries mushed up and melt into a sauce.
2. Add in your lemon rind and let the mixture cook for about 10 more minutes under medium heat until it’s thick and reduced to about 3/4 of its original portion.
3. Plunge the pot in cold water to let the strawberry reduction cool, while stirring at the same time. Make sure no water gets in.
4. Pour the strawberry mixture ontop of the cheesecake and spread evenly.

Let you cheesecake cook completely before cutting :) Remember you can stop it with whatever fresh fruits you want. Sliced canned peaches and fresh strawberries would be awesome here too and then u can just top it off with a glaze. Cool. Serve. Pat your tummy :)

Soy Sauce Ice Cream

I never thought I’d see the day where soy sauce is made into ice cream. I have one question- WHY? I’ve seen many weird stuff being made into ice cream, even stuff like asparagus but soy sauce is just weird. I can understand the salty factor which a little of it do enhances flavors but to make a whole tub of soy sauce ice cream is just weird and beyond me.

Has anyone tried it yet? I would give it a go, seeing that I’d eat practically anything but I don’t think it’s a very popular flavor here.

Source: MSN Mainichi Daily News

Okay, this is weird…tell me if Shucream isn’t exactly like eclairs or cream puffs? :P To me, it’s exactly the same. And what a coincidence that I should bump into this recipe because I just made some cream puffs last night.

My own Profiteroles/Eclairs/Shucream/Whatchamacallit – i topped it with coconut shavings to make it look pweettty :)

Eclairs or Cream puffs or Shucream they’re all the same, made from the very same choux pastry. The only difference is in shape. While eclairs are deemed to be more elite and is often served in gourmet meals as part of dessert, the cream puff (or sometimes they’re called profiteroles) is just like the eclair’s slightly unrefined cousin from the country side. Pfft…they all taste the same!

Eclairs comes in puffy fingers or I would dearly call them fingerlings, while cream puffs comes in shapes of cutesy round and is puffy. Many places have made them in different shapes, and sizes. I don’t know if they have this in Japan but a chain called Beard Papa sells large sized cream puffs for a few dollars each. Let me just say that if you buy, say, 5 Cream puffs from them, you’ll probably have enough money to make your own choux pastry dough(with all the frills like custard and chocolate chips) that will yield you about 30 cream puffs or 40 eclairs. Yep…they’re cheap to make and easy to do. So really, I don’t care much for paying for them or eating them outside unless they’re free or REALLY cheap.

[EDIT: I just checked, they do have Beard Papa in Japan ..the creator is a Japanese dude too]

So today, I am going to teach you how to make shucream (the japanese version of cream puffs, which is actually cream puffs to begin with), to which if you just manipulate the choux pastry dough’s shape into a fingerlings, you’ll have eclairs! :) All this, in your very own home! I’m going to make this fancier and have a chocolate topping to go along with the custard filling.

You’ll need a medium size pot and a wooden spoon to start off with.

And now for the ingredients of the choux pastry flour:
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
4 eggs

Method:
1. Boil water, salt and butter together until butter melts and the butter+water mixture it is rolling.
2. Dump your flour in carefully as to not scald yourself with hot water. Turn the heat off and start stirring vigoriously!
3. You will get a collected and sorta like a cookie dough at the end.
4. While the dough’s still hot, mix in one egg at a time until it is well incorporated.
5. You will have a soft textured dough which can be easily piped. This is your choux pastry dough.
6. Fill your piping bag with the choux dough and pipe it into circular mounts (for shucream/cream puff) or in 2 inch length strips (for eclairs).
7. Bake in a 425 degree (Fahrenheit) or 220 Degree Celcius oven for 20-25 mins. Once the choux pastry is brown on the top and tripled its size, you have your shucream shells.

How they looked in the oven

p.s: if you don’t have a piping, use a ziplock bag and cut a rather large bit of its corner tip off and you have a homemade disposable piping bag! :)

Filling:
You can buy custard from a store and just put it in OR you’re baking this late at night and all the store’s closed, u can make your own custard like me! :P

3 Egg yolks
3 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup old fashion cream (35% fat cream ++/double cream)
1 and 3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:
1. Mix your sugar, milk and cornstarch until they are well incorporated in a saucepan.
2. Heat the saucepan under medium heat. In the mean time, add in your yolk and whisk till well mixed.
3. Stir constantly (use a whisk) until it starts to boil and thicken. Let it boil for 1 minute and then take it off the heat and let it cool before use.
4. Fill it into a bag with corners, like a ziplock bag and cut a small tip out or use a piping bag if you have one.

Chocolate Topping:
1 cup semisweet chocolate

Method:
Melt the chocolate chip on a double boiler or have a pan over hot water.

All Assembled

Assembly:
Take the shells and pipe in the custard. Once you’re done with that, take each of the eclairs/shucream/cream puffs and dip its top into the melted chocolate and let it cool. Do the same on ALL of them and once you’re done, you can pop them in your mouth right away OR you can chill them abit in the refridgerator for later.

MMmH!

Source: A Series of Kitchen Experiments

When I was a little girl, I want to eat dorayaki so much that I begged my mom to find it for me. At the time, I was a big fan of the comic Doraemon. And Dorayaki is Doraemon’s favorite food! The comic’s translated from Japanese, of course. I love Doraemon, the cute little robotic cat that doesn’t look like a cat because its ears got eaten by mice, hence it explains Doraemon’s eternal fear for rodents.

Dorayaki

Anyway, about Dorayaki, it looked absolutely delicious in the comic book – i used to imagine how it’d taste like. Little did i know that dorayaki’s actually made out of two pancakes sandwiching red adzuki bean paste (or just simply red bean paste). Red bean paste is used in both Chinese and Japanese cuisine for desserts, mostly.

Red Beans/Adzuki Beans

It’s been years since I craved dorayaki after I knew what it’s made of. I could roughly imagine how it’d taste like. I like red bean paste, I have had them in Chinese pancakes, mooncakes and such. But with pancakes? I rather stick to my maple syrup and butter :)

Here’s a simple recipe of Dorayaki from About.com:

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 cup flour
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 3 tbsps water
* 3 eggs
* 3/4 pound anko (sweet azuki beans)
* *vegetable oil for frying

PREPARATION:
Put eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk very well. Dissolve baking soda in water. Add the water in the egg mixture. Add sifted flour in the egg mixture gradually. Heat a frying pan and lightly oil it. Pour a scoop of the batter in the pan and make a small pancake (*about 4 inches in diameter.).

Turn over when bubbles appear on the surface. Repeat this process to make 8-10 pancakes. Cool the pancakes. Make pairs of pancakes and put a scoop of sweet red bean paste (also called anko red bean) between them like a sandwich.

*Makes 4 servings.

Well, I think I am gonna try this out and see how it goes. First, I’ll need to make my own red bean paste. If any of your have tried them out, do let me know how they’re turn out. :)

Source: Wikipedia; Go Japan

Black Black Gum

It says on its package: “Hi Technical Taste”….whatever that means. Anyway, this gum is loaded with all the caffiene goodies that will jolt you right up when you need it. It contains, Vitamin B-3, ginseng and oolong tea. Now how about that for a triple shot? The ads for this gum is real funny too with Jean Claude Van Damme hyping it up with his kungfu kicks and moves. The most I saw of a commercial for a gum was two people chewing their teeth off and grinning like nuts.

The flavor for both is intensely minty. Ingredients in Black Black Gum are: sugar, starch syrup, grape sugar, erisuritol, oolong tea extract, gingko extract, chrysanthemum flower extract, gum base, flavorings, coloring agents (cacao, gardenia), caffeine, niacinamide.

Get some of those gums today if you can – I can safely promise that it will not be like any gum you’ve tasted before. Promise.

:P

Source: ThinkGeek

Yet another iced coffee on the market for this summer. Nescafe introduces their “Shake” version of the little refreshing Java… First impression is very good, because the bottle is in glasse, it is fat, curvy, and totally shrinkwrapped. In other words, the complete opposite from what you usually see, especially in the canned coffee section. Because it is in glass, the bottle is also heavier, which usually is a good trick to make the consumer feel like it is a better quality product. But if you have read this column before, you know I just can’t resist a new food item when I see one in the convenience store, especially a new drink, let alone iced coffee.

Well, it’s not bad, but I don’t like it. To be honest, I’m glad I tried, but I don’t think I’ll buy it again. The shake thing is really cool. The milky coffee inside gets all frothy and pretty think, and when drunk very cold, the thinkness makes it very enjoyable — think melted ice cream. But the taste of the coffee (or is it the sweetener?) are not really satisfactory. I mean, it feels like home made but tastes like industrial. I wish I was in the tasting panel for this one, because that would have made a killing if the coffee taste was higher quality… Plus, again, it’s a glass bottle!

Found on an englishman in osaka (he’s english, he’s a man, and he’s in osaka): God comes from the Kilimanjaro and is available for 110 yen. I have never seen it, but it could be that God loves Osaka and hates Tokyo.

Has anyone tried this yet?

Meiji is entering the iced coffee arena just in time for Summer and they do it with a clever idea in mind. Instead of making a can with coffee in it just like everybody else, and instead of trying to cover up a really shitty fake coffee taste with some fake milk taste just like everybody else, they take the reversed the problem and approached it the other way around. What would you expect from a company who is famous for their milk? Their ice coffee is NOT iced coffee: it’s “milk and coffee“.

Even if you are craving for a short black, when getting canned coffee in Japan, from a convenience store or a vending machine, hot or cold, well, in every circumstances, NEVER get the ones without milk in them. There are a few available, true, but you should always resist. This is not coffee. It is everything and anything else, but it is not coffee. Not that the other kinds are coffee either, but at least the milk and sugar covers that really strange fake coffee taste and makes the whole experience bearable, sometimes even enjoyable and refreshing…

But that was before Meiji’s creative team pull that twist of their sleeve and introduced the “milk and coffee” concept, where milk is the drink and coffee is the flavour, not the opposite. So how does it taste? Milky and creamy, with a soft taste of coffee (and lotsa sugar as usual). It is fresh and soft, and does not leave that bitter aftertaste most canned coffee have. Good point there.

But there’s more. Canned coffee also have another inconvenient: cans. Sure, the sound when you open it is cool, and I am convinced some marketing people found out Japanese salarymen think it is more manly to drink out of a can rather than a pet bottle, but cans have an aluminium taste, and more importantly, once you opened one, you can’t close it. Pet bottle on the other hand are clean and soft and happy (you can tell I am biased, can’t you?). There are other iced coffee in pet bottles, but it is still not the norm though. Meiji stands out a little more with this packaging. Good point there too.

But there is still more! And the gadgets fans here will appreciate this one. The cap of the bottle has a strange little encarving at the top. and the telescopic straw is pointy on one side. That gives you two options to drink this coffee flavored milk. Either you open the bottle and drink just like with any bottle, or you punch the straw from the little pre-formed hole at the top and drink it through the cap. This is not the first drink which has such a cap, but this system is actually quite rare, and inexistant in the iced coffee range as far as I know. There are so many women who will choose this last option, to drink elegantly and not mess with their make up and their posture, it’s a genius marketing move from Meiji’s part. And a very obvious one too: a quick look at the bottle and you understand who it is targetted for. I am comfortable with my feminine side (one could even say I am a Tokyosexual, but that would be far fetched) and I know what I’m gonna drink this summer.

Now all they need to do is to get them in vending machines…

One of the meanest, hippest AND biggest advertising spots in Tokyo is the Q-Front building, in Shibuya crossing, just opposite the station. That’s where crowds of people come in regular flocks from the various trains and subway lines and wait to cross the street while looking at the ads and videoclips on the giant screens in front of them. Of course, apart from the screens, if you want 100% display time, you can put giant billboards on the side of the building. That is where Nintendo chose to advertise for the DS a while back. It is huge and you better have a lot of money and something really cool to announce if you want to display it here.

Of course, the first and second floor of the Q-Front building is already a big advertisement for Starbucks. They have their worldwide busiest shop there. And big green letters spelling it out for you in case you didn’t get it yet. Well, that was not enough for Starbucks this time: they had something to announce and they wanted to make it loud.

So, ?…

They made their catchcopy even shorter than the “world’s shortest catchcopy ever“. Shorter than anything. Yet, very big, and very appealing for anyone who drinks Starbucks.

So, if you understood so far, on May the 11th, something will be revealed and it is going to be big, and it is from Starbucks, but it is a surprise. Except it isn’t one really. Beacuse just outside the building, on the facade of Starbucks actually, there is a poster that announces the release of Frappuccino Light on May the 11th. So much for the teasing I guess…

If you don’t know about Frappuccino Light, it is a lighter version of the original Frappuccino, and it has been around in the US since June 2004. Apparently, it uses Splenda instead of sugar (can anyone confirm this?) and has 30-40 percent fewer calories than the original Frappuccino series.