This Viennese chocolate cake, heavy on dark chocolate and butter, is split and spread with apricot jam, then covered all over with a glaze of chocolate melted into cream. Pour the glaze in one go; that is what leaves a mirror-smooth top. Once it sets, slice with a knife dipped in hot water so the thin line of jam shows cleanly through the dark crumb.
In Toyama, glutinous rice dough tinted green with mugwort is pressed into flat rounds, griddled, and brushed while hot with a thin layer of sweet sesame miso. The miso is made by grinding toasted sesame until its oil just begins to show, then mixing in miso and sugar, which leaves a little texture from the seeds.
Caramel made from 40 g of melted sugar loosened with cream goes into a brown-sugar butter dough, along with a tablespoon of sieved doenjang, Korean fermented soybean paste. At roughly 1 to 2 percent of the dough, the doenjang stays behind the sweetness and leaves just a salty, fermented edge at the finish. Pressing the centers lightly right out of the oven makes them chewier.
Hand-stretched wheat dough becomes long, flat ribbons that are boiled and rolled generously in kinako and sugar. Furuno in Yufu, Oita, is regarded as its birthplace, and it is still offered during Obon and Tanabata. Each ribbon is thinnest in the middle and slightly thicker at the ends, and one piece chews differently from end to end. The dough rests twice, once as a ball and again as short sticks, and that is what lets it stretch past 20cm without tearing.
These Swedish buns are scented with cardamom; their tops are cut off, the crumb is scooped out and mixed with almond paste, and the hollow is refilled before a tall swirl of whipped cream goes on. The dense almond filling and light cream arrive in the same bite, and the lid goes back on under a dusting of powdered sugar that looks like fresh snow. Serve them right after assembly.
Every slice reveals a pattern built from green aonori, black sesame, black soybeans, and a red-tinted dough worked into rice-flour mochi. In Nagano it was offered at home altars and temples for Nehan-e on February 15 and then shared with children. Strands of each colored dough are laid side by side, wrapped into a long roll, and creased with chopsticks into ridges and petals, and the order of the strands decides the final design. Cotton thread cuts the soft roll without squashing that pattern. Fresh slices are tender; pieces that firm up in the fridge are good toasted.
A stiff flour-and-water dough, rolled very thin, brushed with butter and wound into a tight log, gives this Neapolitan pastry its layers. Slices of the log are pushed open into shells and filled with ricotta, sugar, cinnamon and orange zest. In the oven the butter separates the layers so the outside shatters like glass. Cut the chilled log with one straight-down stroke so the layers on the cut face are not crushed.
Grated yuzu zest and juice, fresh ginger, and miso go into the sweet rice dough, so each piece tastes salty and citrusy as well as sweet. The rice flours are added all at once to the hot yuzu-miso liquid, which cooks them into a dough right in the pot. Each of the 15 portions is wrapped in a food-grade bamboo sheath and steamed. Pieces that firm up soften again when unwrapped and warmed in the microwave or a pan.
The butter stays cold and is mixed only briefly with powdered sugar, and the cake flour and 30 g of rice flour go in before it can turn glossy. Once the dough is pressed together, it is not kneaded any further. Fresh from the oven the cookies break easily, so they stay on the tray until completely cool.
Wheat flour, shiratamako, and warm cooked rice are worked together with boiling water, and the rice is what keeps these flat dumplings soft after they cool. In Saga, where farmers often grew wheat after the rice harvest, both flours were on hand, and yudedago served as a fieldwork snack or a supplement when a meal ran short. The name is a local shortening of yude dango, and some call it hiradago. Brown sugar never enters the dough but is showered on with kinako while the dumplings are hot, leaving a melting sweet surface over a plain center.
Despite the name, no choux pastry is involved. Cold custard is wrapped in a soft milk-and-butter yeast dough, the seam pinched tightly shut, and the cream bakes sealed inside the bun. Because of the custard, the buns go into an airtight container in the fridge within 2 hours of cooling and should be eaten within 2 days.
Glutinous rice dough mixed with makgeolli, a cloudy rice wine, is cut into sticks, dried for at least two hours, and fried twice, first low and then hot, until it balloons into a hollow puff that shatters at the first bite. A coat of rice syrup and honey holds puffed rice to the outside. Yugwa sits on the ancestral rites table at Seollal and Chuseok and is often given as a holiday gift.
The faint tang in a snickerdoodle comes from cream of tartar, which goes in alongside the baking soda. Each ball of dough is rolled all over in cinnamon sugar before baking, so cinnamon is the first thing you taste.
Chestnuts boiled soft and pushed through a fine sieve become a smooth paste seasoned only with honey and cinnamon, so the sweetness stays restrained and the chestnut itself leads. Sieving while the chestnuts are still warm is what removes every grainy bit. Each small round is rolled in ground pine nuts and topped with a slice of jujube.
Soft milk-and-egg buns are topped with soboro, a crumbly streusel of cake flour, almond flour, sugar and cold butter that cracks and browns in the oven. The sugar and butter are each split between dough and topping, and weighing out the topping portion first keeps the two from getting mixed up.
Egg yolks, sugar and Marsala are whisked over steam until they swell to two or three times their volume, and the warm foam is spooned straight over strawberries and blueberries. The heating is brief and a fair amount of the wine's alcohol and aroma stays; if that is too much, half the Marsala can be orange juice. Yolks scramble easily, and this recipe takes the bowl off the heat by the thermometer, at 71°C, not by how the foam looks.
Rice flour and almond flour make up the dough, and the bars break apart lightly in the mouth, with bits of chopped walnut throughout. For more crunch, turn the oven off once they are baked and leave them inside with the door ajar for another 5 minutes. Cutting before they have cooled completely breaks the bars.
Mugwort powder and whole red beans are a pairing anyone who has been to a Korean rice cake shop will know; here they go into a muffin batter. The beans are folded in last with just a few strokes, so a split muffin shows them whole in the pale green crumb.
Chopped dates soaked at least 10 minutes in boiling water with baking soda are stirred into the batter liquid and all. The fruit and its soaking water make this British sponge moist and sweet. The brown-sugar toffee sauce is warmed again just before serving and poured over the pudding, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream sets cold cream against it.
In Germany this is the bread you slice a little at a time through the Christmas season, so it isn't eaten the day it's baked: it gets a thick coat of powdered sugar, is sealed, and rests at least a day first. Raisins soaked in rum or juice and almonds are packed into the buttery dough, and every slice shows a slightly different mix.
This is the shortcake you see in Japanese bakeries: three layers of airy sponge, raised only by whipped eggs, filled with cream and sliced strawberries. Pick out the best-looking berries for the top before you slice the rest.
Steamed sweet potatoes vary in how much water they hold, so part of the 90 ml of milk is held back and added 10 ml at a time until the batter drops slowly from the spatula. The fat is plain oil, which means no butter to melt or cream.
No tart pan is used: the dough is rolled into a round, topped with the filling, and its bare 4 cm border folded up over the edge. The filling combines steamed sweet potato, cream cheese, honey and cinnamon. A drier, chestnut-type sweet potato keeps the base from going soggy and bakes up crisper.
Cold, pea-size butter crumbs scattered over a moist sweet potato batter give this loaf its crunchy top. Keep the streusel chilled and sprinkle it on without pressing, so the clumps survive baking. The loaf bakes for 48-50 minutes and the top color runs ahead of the center, so a skewer that comes out free of wet batter is the better signal.