Super Easy Mikan (mandarin) Rice

So again, this isn't actually baking. But it does involve food, and that's what matters right?

I get email newsletters from a Japanese health food company called Yomeishu Seizo, and this month they did a feature on mandarins (mikan in Japanese), including some novel "cooking challenges." Namely, oven roasted mandarin and mandarin rice. The mandarin rice looked so easy that I had to try it! 

You literally just put rice and water in your rice cooker as usual (I was my usual lazy self and didn't even rinse the rice), sit a peeled mikan on top of the rice, and press go (or whatever you usually do to make your rice cooker work).

By the time the rice is cooked the mikan gets soft enough that it's easy to break up and mix through.

The original post (here, in Japanese - scroll down to "Challenge 2" for their photos) suggests 2 cups of rice with 1 mikan, but I tried 1 cup with one mikan and the flavour was good. Subtler than I was expecting actually, but good.

So there's one super easy way to add some vitamin C to your dinner!

Big Cake, Small Oven

My little Japanese oven can handle cupcakes quite well, although they tend to rise more evenly if I turn the tray part-way through baking.

The first time I cooked a larger cake was a learning experience. Fruit is pretty expensive here, but I can still buy peaches in a can so I decided to try making my fruit and cinnamon cake recipe (also delicious with apple, but apples are pricey in Japan!).

Peach!

I put it in to bake and all seemed well. I thought I was done. I let the cake cool a bit and then went to remove it from the pan... but alas, it wasn't cooked through and collapsed all over the place! Not to be defeated by a rebellious cake, I squeezed it back into the tin and put it back in the oven.

A bit of icing sugar helped to disguise its disfigurement and it still tasted good. Next time I bake a big cake in a small oven I'll be watching it a bit more carefully!

Baking Supplies in Japan

Wow. I just realised how long it's been since I last posted anything. Time to bake has been scarce, and time to blog about baking has been even scarcer!

When we arrived in Japan about 6 months ago I had to start my baking supplies from scratch. Japanese kitchens don't typically have a built-in oven, but a lovely lady who'd already been here a few years very kindly loaned me the cute little oven that she hadn't been using. An excellent start to my collecting!

We don't live too far from a Costco, and they stock decent amounts of flour, cinnamon and vanilla essence.

I tracked down powdered food colouring - not something I'd used before, but worth a try. I also got some cute measuring cups, cupcake liners, some spices, and some sakura (cherry blossom) essence to try out one day when I'm feeling adventurous.

My main annoyance was that I couldn't find cocoa powder or icing sugar in any decent quantity at regular stores, so I continued to search different places looking for options. Seriously, what are you going to do with 40 grams of cocoa?

I made these lists quite a while back when I was obviously feeling a bit nerdy...

Cocoa

• 40g for 228 yen at local supermarket --> 6 yen/gram
• 40g for 221 yen at foreign food store near Kobe station --> 6 yen/gram
• 226g of Hershey's cocoa for 647 yen at Jupiter foreign food store --> 3 yen/gram

Hershey's to the rescue!

Icing sugar

• 70g for 135 yen at local supermarket --> 2 yen/gram
• 250g for 336 yen at Tokyu Hands --> 1.5 yen/gram
• 200g for 221 yen at foreign food store near Kobe station --> 1 yen/gram
• 300g for 287 yen at Jupiter foreign food store --> just under 1 yen/gram

Looks like Jupiter wins for both! There are, of course, also some ingredients available here that wouldn't be so common at home. These powders, for example.

Anyway, fear not! I haven't totally abandoned my baking. And when I finally made my first batch of cupcakes they turned out pretty well :)