70 recipes. Page 1 of 3
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In Miyazaki, chicken breast fried in an egg coating is dipped into warm, sweet-sour nanban vinegar and then topped with cold tartar sauce. Unlike ordinary fried chicken, the coating ends up moist rather than crisp. The tartar sauce has chopped boiled egg, cucumber and onion in it, enough to give it some crunch.
No butter, no oil, no yolks: this tall white ring cake rises entirely on whipped egg whites folded with cake flour and sugar. It likely appeared in late 19th-century America as a way to use whites left over from custard making. The top has a slight marshmallow chew over a cloud-light crumb. The pan goes upside down the moment it leaves the oven, because cooling right side up lets the delicate foam sink under its own weight. Fresh berries and whipped cream are the traditional companions.
Baked in a fish-shaped mold, bungeoppang have a thin golden shell, a crisp tail made of batter alone, and red bean paste in the belly. The batter is kept a little thinner than pancake batter, thin enough to run into every corner of the tail and belly pattern. Keeping the bean paste in the center of the belly, away from the edges, stops it from leaking when the mold closes.
More than twenty thin crepes, each with a layer of cream, stack into a cake whose cut face shows fine, tight stripes. It needs only a frying pan, no oven, and it tastes of egg, butter and dairy more than the sugar and flour of a sponge. Press a fork in and the layers slide gently apart.
In this Kansai style, cabbage and batter go in at close to equal amounts. The mixture is piled thick, the top is never pressed, and pork belly is simply laid across it. Pressing would squeeze out the air and moisture between the cabbage strands that keep the center soft. If the flip feels risky, cover it with a plate and turn it over in one go.
Thin beef on a bamboo skewer, dipped in light batter and fine panko and fried hot, makes up the Osaka street snack of the Shinsekai district. One story traces it to the late Taisho and early Showa years, when laborers needed a cheap, fast meal and tough cuts were sliced thin and given a thick coat. At the counter, the shared sauce pot comes with one rule: dip once, never twice.
Cocoa sponge is layered with cherry compote and whipped cream, then coated thinly in cream and topped with grated dark chocolate. There is no butter in the sponge; it rises only on eggs and sugar whipped to about three times their volume.
Crisp waffles are spread on one half with strawberry jam and whipped cream, then folded over to eat by hand. Each one is filled and served right away, before the warm waffle softens the whipped cream.
Sweet potato cubes jut from the surface like an ogre's horns or iron club, which is said to be where the name oni manju comes from. In Aichi it stood in for rice when food ran short during and after the war, and with no bean paste it relies on the potato's own sweetness and a heavy, chewy batter.
Crisp green shiso leaves, fried only long enough to stay deep green, wrap a sweet paste of red miso and chopped walnuts. The snack grew out of Miyagi's Sendai miso tradition; one story ties it to the warlord Date Masamune, another to visitors taking the hot-spring cure at Naruko.
Black rice flour tints these muffins grey-purple inside, and toasted black sesame seeds, left whole, are scattered all through the crumb, popping as you chew.
Each muffin cup gets sweet batter halfway up, a little chopped ham, and a whole egg cracked on top before baking. You see it often on Seoul streets in winter, and paper muffin cups give the same shape without a special pan.
Small balls of stiff, egg-rich dough sink in fairly low oil, rise after 20 to 30 seconds, then roll over on their own as one side splits open like a tulip. Okinawa's doughnut is thought to draw on Chinese fried sweets such as kaikou xiao. Because it keeps relatively well in a hot climate, it became both an everyday snack and a fixture at important Ryukyu ceremonies.
The batter here is more than three parts dashi to one part flour, thin enough to pour like water. It goes into the pan until each hollow overflows, octopus, green onion, tenkasu, and red pickled ginger drop in, and once the edges set, a skewer turns each one over and over into a ball. The shell cooks thin while the inside stays soft.
A 15-minute rest in the fridge before baking helps the batter rise into the madeleine's raised hump. Black rice flour gives the crumb a purple cast, and coarsely chopped walnuts turn up here and there.
Thin batter baked in a walnut-shaped mold wraps around sweet red bean paste and a toasted walnut half, leaving a lightly browned shell and a moist center. Toasting the walnuts at 160 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes beforehand gives the finished cakes a noticeably stronger nutty aroma. The snack began as a specialty of Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province and is now sold at highway rest stops and traditional markets across Korea.
Baking soda puffs the white, tender skin of these Utsunomiya buns, which is why they also go by tansan manju. Wheat thrived in Tochigi's double-cropping fields, and households steamed them with the new flour for Obon, weddings, funerals, and other yearly observances. On Kamafuta Tsuitachi, the first day of the seventh lunar month, families offered them so ancestors traveling home from the other world would not go hungry.
Shrimp, sweet potato, eggplant, and shishito peppers share the same oil but not the same timing, and each piece comes out as soon as it is done. The batter is cold water and egg with cake flour, stirred only a few times with chopsticks and used while small lumps remain.
A generous amount of black sesame paste bakes the loaf a deep grey-brown, and while it is in the oven the kitchen smells of toasting sesame. Only a little baking powder goes in, so it rises modestly and the crumb stays tight. The sesame flavor deepens if you wait until the next day to eat it.
Split one by hand while it is still warm and a strong roasted sesame smell rises from the grey crumb. Black sesame powder is mixed into the flour, and the dough is brought together with cream and egg instead of milk, then pressed into a 2.5cm round without kneading.
Despite the name, there is no pastry anywhere. It is a round sponge split in half, filled with a thick layer of custard and covered with dark chocolate glaze. Most of the time it takes goes into chilling the sponge and the custard separately.
Only yolks and only powdered sugar go into the dough, so it is fine-textured and the butter comes through first. They are baked pale, just until the tips of the piped star ridges turn light gold.
A thin, deep caramel-colored crust crackles when bitten, giving way to a soft custard center scented with vanilla and dark rum. This is a bake to plan ahead: batter for these small Bordeaux cakes needs at least a full day of resting in the fridge.
Made with vegetable oil rather than butter, this cake stays soft even straight out of the fridge. Finely grated carrot gives off moisture as it bakes and keeps the crumb moist, alongside cinnamon, nutmeg and coarsely chopped walnuts. A tangy cream cheese frosting goes on top.