These shell-shaped cakes are best eaten within 30 minutes of leaving the oven, while the edges are still crisp, with black tea or coffee alongside. A generous amount of melted butter browns those edges deep gold, and honey in place of part of the sugar gives a rounder, faintly floral sweetness that granulated sugar alone does not.
Misugaru, a roasted multigrain powder, is whisked smooth into milk, folded with whipped cream and frozen, and at a full 100g it gives the ice cream a heavy, nutty grain flavor. The freezer does not do all the work: the surface has to be scraped with a fork once an hour, three times, to break up the ice crystals, which makes this one for a day spent at home. Black bean misugaru makes it nuttier still.
Pressed in a waffle iron, frozen croissant dough gets heat from both plates at once, and the outside turns far crisper than an oven-baked croissant while buttery layers stay inside. Honey and condensed milk go on in thin lines, and just before serving, roasted soybean powder (the nutty coating on injeolmi rice cakes) mixed with a pinch of salt is sifted over the top.
Boiled rice-flour dumplings go onto skewers and roll around a dry pan until they pick up pale brown spots, then get a glossy coat of soy sauce and sugar thickened with cornstarch. Sweet and salty arrive in the same bite, and under the toasted surface the dumplings stay springy. They firm up as they cool, so the glaze goes on just before serving, while they are still warm.
Sweet rice flour in a dense cheesecake batter gives it a faint mochi-like chew. Only part of the roasted soybean powder, the coating on injeolmi rice cakes, goes into the batter; the rest is rubbed with melted butter into a crumble that bakes crisp on top, putting the nutty flavor in two separate layers. After a full day in the fridge, the soybean aroma comes through more clearly.
Steamed in sake-cup molds, each clear, chilled shell shows a round of red bean paste inside. The sweet comes from Ogaki in Gifu, a city so rich in groundwater that vegetables and fruit were kept cold in it, and it is said to date from the Meiji era. Kuzu starch alone dissolves easily in water and firms up when chilled, and adding warabi starch gives a chewier wrapper that holds up in water. Wells once did the chilling; at home, ice water made from drinking water does the job, with the molds only half submerged.
Despite the name, there is no separate crumble mixture. The batter, heavy with roasted soybean powder, is left rough on top and dusted with more powder, and those craggy peaks bake up crisp. Inside, small mochi cubes, cut and separated before going in, give pockets of chew.
The sweet rice dough cooks in the microwave in a few short rounds instead of a steamer, and once it turns glossy and stretches long, it gets wrapped around balls of red bean paste. Shaping happens on a generous bed of starch, which keeps the tacky dough from clinging to your hands and leaves the finished daifuku dry to the touch. Dough straight from the microwave tears easily, so it cools just until it can be handled.
With glutinous rice flour in place of all the wheat flour, the fudgy density of a brownie comes with a mochi-like spring. Toasted soybean powder is scattered through the middle layer and over the top. Straight from the fridge the squares are firm; at room temperature they turn soft and stretchy.
Each square of grid-shaped cereal gets its own coat of chocolate and peanut butter, then a dusting of powdered sugar, so the mix stays loose instead of pressing into a bar. There is no oven; the coating sets as it cools. The melted chocolate rests for about two minutes before it goes on, because poured too hot it softens the cereal and melts the sugar away.
The rice cake is optional. Small pieces of it soften in the oven into chewy pockets, but even without them, the toasted soybean powder in the dough carries the injeolmi flavor all the way through, with a warm, nutty smell plain-flour scones lack.
In Nagasaki this milkshake gets eaten with a spoon, far thicker than anything you would drink through a straw. It is said to have started between the late Taisho and early Showa periods at Tsuruchan, regarded as Kyushu's first tearoom, as relief from the city's summer heat. Once sold only in the warm months, it is now a year-round local specialty. Condensed milk and egg yolk give it a soft custard flavor, with fine shards of ice still crunching through it. Stopping the blender while some ice remains keeps it from turning watery, and a canned cherry goes on top.
Folded meringue lifts the batter, and a slow bake at 150°C in a hot water bath lets it cook gently. The cake dissolves almost weightlessly on the tongue. A slight sink after it leaves the oven is normal, and an overnight rest in the fridge spreads the moisture evenly for a silkier slice.
Pounding the rice completely smooth before adding any sweet potato gives the finished cake mochi's stretch, with the soft, moist body of the potato folded through it. There is twice as much potato as rice by weight, which turns the slab yellow. A layer of kinako underneath and more on top make the very sticky dough possible to press, cut, and pick up. The batch yields 40 pieces.
There is no gelatin in the filling; egg yolks react with the lime's acid and set it to a smooth, custard-like slice. The oven only firms the edges in a short bake, and the fridge does the rest over at least 3 hours, ideally a full day. This Southern American pie was originally made with Florida's small, fragrant key limes.
Roasted soybean powder and green tea powder, bound with honey and rice syrup and pressed into a patterned mold, melt softly on the tongue: nutty soybean first, then a light green tea bitterness. The right dough just holds together when squeezed hard. Too dry, it cracks as it leaves the mold, and too wet, the pattern smears.
Fine strands of kataifi tossed in melted butter bake crisp above and below a layer of mozzarella, which stretches when the knafeh is cut. A thin sugar syrup with a little lemon goes on the moment it leaves the oven, and the hot strands drink it in quickly. It is cut right away, because the pastry softens and the cheese firms as it sits.
Ochirashi flour, ground from roasted barley and glutinous rice, is worked into a hot syrup of sugar and mizuame, a Japanese starch syrup, and set into soft, chewy sticks that taste of toasted grain. Once the mass leaves the pot in one piece it is very hot and sticks to skin, so dividing, rolling and cutting are all done with two heatproof spatulas and a knife, never bare hands. A last roll in more flour keeps the cooled pieces from sticking together.
Two soft cocoa cake rounds, a layer of melted marshmallow, and a thin shell of dark chocolate rebuild Korea's convenience-store snack cake at home. Making it yourself means you pick the chocolate and decide how thick the marshmallow layer gets. The marshmallow, melted over a water bath, cushions the cake and stretches slightly when bitten. Chilled, the chocolate shell firms up with a light snap; at room temperature the whole pie turns softer.
Puffed rice, toasted brown rice, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and black sesame are bound with rice syrup and honey, so each piece mixes grains that shatter lightly with ones that take a firmer chew. The mix has to be pressed into the tin within a minute of adding the syrup for the cut edges to come out even.
Dusted with roasted soybean powder and black sesame, then poked with shallow chopstick holes, these buns look almost exactly like small potatoes. Made mostly of tapioca starch with only a little bread flour, the dough bakes up chewy and stretchy rather than fluffy, and it wraps a generous filling of mashed potato seasoned with a touch of sugar and salt. That starch is also why the buns stay chewy instead of hardening once cool. An air fryer works as well as an oven.
With a few azuki beans in each channel of the lotus root, every round sliced from the finished piece shows a white flower pattern studded with dark red beans. It is a home dish from Ibaraki Prefecture, made with lotus root from around Lake Kasumigaura and locally grown beans. Dry beans swell a great deal as they cook, so each hole is filled only half to two-thirds and left loose. Two to three hours of gentle simmering, then sugar, then cooling completely in the pot: the whole thing takes half a day.
Baked in a fluted ring mold, this Alsatian yeast cake comes out shaped like a crown, with whole almonds from the bottom of the pan sitting on top once it is turned out. Butter and eggs kneaded into the dough give it a soft, brioche-like crumb, and raisins scattered throughout add bursts of sweetness.
Drops of omija liquid hit freezer-cold oil and set at once into tiny frozen beads, each one carrying the tart-sweet taste of schisandra berry syrup. Half the juice stays a clear red, while the other half gets milk and yogurt powder for an opaque pink, so the bowl holds two colors and two flavors. A quick rinse in cold water after straining takes away the oily film that would otherwise coat the tongue.