#oven baked kakimochi

[la-quarantine-bakery]

Cookie galore: week of 1/18/21

A pretty good week of cookie making (and eating).

Baked oatmeal with cherries

Grade: A

I basically love this recipe and the only downside is that it takes a while to make and will need to be reheated before eating. But the texture! And the flavors! Using sourdough to replace the banana or applesauce binder was perfect. Used up the rest of the frozen cherries. I feel like buying more frozen fruits just for this recipe.

Recipe: 1-bowl baked oatmeal from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Sourdough earl grey chocolate chip cookies

Grade: A-

My favorite bakery sells earl grey infused cookies and banana bread, so I got the idea of trying this out myself given I need to use up my sourdough discard every week. It went well with this recipe: since I have to melt the butter anyway, I melted it on the stovetop and steeped it with around 1 teaspoon of earl grey tea leaves (for a half recipe with 150 grams of flour). I probably could’ve steeped it for longer for a stronger flavor, but I was in a hurry.

The only mistake was that I added too many chocolate chips - 40 grams too many. Oops. Volume to weight conversion doesn’t always work out for me. So freshly baked cookies tasted like regular chocolate chip cookies because the chocolate was overwhelming.

Fortunately, refrigerating the cookies brought out and intensified the earl grey tea flavor, so they tasted amazing after a few days. Next time I’ll try to age the cookie dough and reduce the chocolate chips so we can have this strong flavor from the beginning.

Recipe:  soft sourdough chocolate chip cookies from Home Grown Happiness

Sourdough pork floss pull apart bread

Grade: B+

I was disappointed with my bake last week so this was my redemption. This time Puffy rose the dough nicely on its own and puffed up nicely in the oven (without tearing).

The flavor of pork floss with the scallion wasn’t as great as I was expecting. I think I still prefer furikake. The texture of the bread is also still not perfect - a bit too doughy still - so I’ll keep practicing this recipe. 

Recipes:

Flavor from pork sung buns from the Woks of Life

Dough from sourdough Hokkaido milk loaf from Make it Dough

Coconut macaroons

Grade: A-

I was surprised by how good this recipe came out with regular shredded unsweetened coconuts, as I just baked on a whim to fill up a cookie bucket for my cousin. They look so legit and I didn’t even really whip the egg whites because I’m lazy (even though it’s supposed to give more volume).

I already finished all the ones I didn’t give away...must definitely make another batch for family.

Recipe: coconut macaroons from Just One Cookbook

(Oven baked) kinako cookies

Grade: B

Last time, I “baked” them on the stovetop. This time, I baked them in the oven. Texture wasn’t too different, nor was the flavor. A good solid cookie that was quick to make.

Recipe: easy quick & luxurious kinako cookies from Cookpad

(Oven baked) kakimochi

Grade: B+

I happened to see kirimochi on sale at my local Asian grocery store so gave this a try. I didn’t want to air dry the mochi and didn’t want to deep fry either, so here is my oven-baked version. Less crunchy, but nice a chewy, and the furikake flavor was great.

Recipe: rice cracker recipe from Just One Cookbook