Sucky Sweet Life

Chinese green bean soup is my favorite sweet soup. It is refreshing either eat it in cold or warm. We usually eat this in summer time as it "cools" you down. Ingredients: Green beans 1 cup Water 9 cups White sugars 3~4 Tbsp Step 1: Wash the green beans and add water Step 2: Add 1.5 cups of water in outer pot (about 40 min). Once done, steam it for 20 minutes. Then, add sugars.

Sun Cake is Taiwanese traditional sweets - sugar syrup inside layered pastry.Whenever I go back to Taiwan, I will get a box of this thing. Although it's not as flaky as the one sold in the store, homemade sun cake is pretty tasty too. Preparation takes a long time but it is not that difficult to make! Step 0 - Prepare all the ingredients. Ingredients for skin (油皮): Mix them all lightly and rest for 15 minutes. Once done, kneel it again to make it a ball about 15g each (12).  All purpose flour (filter) 190g Powered sugar (filter) 20g Water 85g Oil (I use coconut oil) 30g Unsalted butter 45g     Ingredients for inner skin (油酥): Mix them all and make it a ball about 15g each (12). Cake flour 100g Unsalted butter 75g    Ingredients for inner sweets (内陷): Mix them all and refrigerate it until it becomes firm. Then, make it a ball about 15g each (12). Powered sugar 80g Cake flour 30g Powered milk 20g Salt 1/4 tsp Molten sug...

Have you had a Japanese traditional sweets Dorayaki ? People from western Japan call it Mikasa as well. I usually add red bean paste and mochi inside Dorayaki. This is my kids' favorite. I will introduce you how to make your own red bean paste / mochi in another time. Ingredients for Dorayaki shell  (Makes about 8) Egg 3 Cane sugar 150g Honey 1 tbsp Mirin 1 tbsp Baking powder 1tsp + Water 50cc ... (A) Cake flour 180g Water 50cc ... (B) Step 1 - Prepare all the ingredients Step 2 - Whip egg and sugar until it falls like a ribbon shape and the trace disappears Step 3 - Add below into the mix in the order Add honey and Mirin and mix Add solution A and mix Step 4 - Add the cake flour using spatula. When you mix. mix it like by cutting Step 5 - Refrigerate it for 30 minutes Step 6 - Take it out from the refrigerator. Add water (B) and mix it well. Step 7 - Fry it in non-stick pan in low heat. I usually use ladle and drop the mix from a hig...

One of my favorite classic snacks by Lotte is "Choco Pie" Chocolate Cream Sandwich. There's cream between two soft sponge cake dipped in chocolate. It's sweeter than usual Japanese chocolate snacks. I've tried tried many kind of "Choco Pie" (like this one ) but I like the Japanese kind the best. How to describe this... ? It's like eating your favorite snacks in another country. Something is slightly different! (Have you tried Lay's potato chips? Cola cola? It tastes slightly different!) My little girl likes "Choco Pie" too. Yummy! Now, I also want to introduce a similar snack  Havanna Alfajores  from Argentina. This snack is the same concept and has caramel inside ("dolce de leche"). It is super duper sweet. I got this pictured alfajores from a colleague last year. Mini size is my favorite because I can never finish the regular size by myself. Make sure to eat with unsweetened black tea or coffee! 

BURUBON is a famous Japanese food company. One of my favorite snacks (among many!) from this company is "Gato- Raisin" (ガトーレーズン). It is probably French: Gateau Raisin, maybe? I don't know if I spelled this correctly :P There is raisin and cream between the soft buttery cookies. The package of this snack hasn't changed much. It is purple like below and with picture of these yummy cookies. Like lots of Japanese snacks, this snack isn't too sweet. Sweetness of this, based on how I feel, is raisin > cookie > cream . A Japanese / Asian grocery store near you should sell this snack (it has to!) but if you don't find one, I found this Amazon link for you. Enjoy!

Have you ever tried sticky rice (glutenous rice) with mango in Thai restaurant? Isn't it delicious? I'm not from Thailand so I don't know the authentic recipe for this dessert. However, I reverse engineered and here's my super simple recipe for how to make it. You need the following. Sticky rice (sweet rice)  1 cup Coconut milk 4 tbsp Cane sugar 1 ~ 2 tbsp (depends your preference) Fresh mango 1 count  Step 1: Soak sticky rice with water for couple hours. I usually do it overnight. Step 2: Cook sticky rice in rice cooker (1 cup rice = water little below 1 cup line) Step 3: Once rice is cooked, add 1 ~ 2 tbsp of sugar and 4 tbsp of coconut milk. Mix it. Step 4: Let it cool. My family likes it to be warm. Step 5: At the same time, slice your fresh mango by peeling the skin off. Put mango slice on top of the sticky rice. Enjoy and you are welcome!

Bonjour! It has been a week since I last updated my blog. My life keeps being "sucky" with annoying corporate job. It is even worse when I get sick - ouch! Today, I finally regained a little bit energy to write about my favorite rice cracker - "Yukinoyado" 雪の宿  . "Yukinoyado" translates to snow lodge. Rice cracker is light weight, crunchy Asian cracker made of rice. You can absolutely taste rice in these snacks. It is also very very crunchy so it makes a very loud sound when you bite into it. There are variety of flavors available for rice cracker such as sweet soy sauce flavor, salt flavor, seaweed flavor. My absolute favorite since kid is "Yukinoyado". There's milky sugar candy (resemble snow fall) coated on top of lightly salted rice cracker. When you put it into your mouth, you taste strong sweetness with salty flavor. After you start munching on the cracker part, you taste mix of saltiness and sweetness evenly. Since rice cracker i...