Matcha Green Tea & Meyer Lemon Mochi Cake

Dear DfB readers,

It has been so long! I've missed wishing you a Happy 2015, and an entire month has already flown by of this new year, faster than we can even inhale a piece of cake. It's February already. Goodness gracious.

You guys, tenure track is no joke. It's always so funny to hear that undergrads think that our jobs just involve showing up to lecture and teaching them. Maybe holding some office hours, too. Bwahahaha. Allow me to set the record straight right now. Teaching is about, like, 20% of our jobs. The other 80% is filled with research, grant-writing (and grant-crying when you get rejected), service to run the department, the university, other teaching duties like proposing and evaluating new classes, majors, minors, degree programs. Oh, did I mention the research? That's what really matters. Publish or perish, folks. It's real.

So yeah, sorry, blog. Any energies to write and think have largely been sucked into academic writing. Hours and days are now measured by the yardstick of, "is this time that I would make a cake better spent writing a few pages of that overdue paper?" The answer is... nearly invariably, yes.

But, let's not talk about all that for today. Let's talk about fun, yummy news today! Let's take a brief reprieve from the crush of tenure track and academia, and talk about beautiful, delicious, happy moments of sugar and fruit. Of friends and tea. For you all today, I have some extraordinarily exciting news: a cookbook shot by yours truly and written by Annelies Zijderveld all about cooking with tea is coming to a bookstore near you!!! STEEPED: Recipes infused with tea is coming in April!!!

^ There it is! The physical, advanced copy of STEEPED. In all of its beautiful, printed glory. During the summer, between moving cities, and ending grad school, and starting professor-hood, Annelies and I hunkered down in my old studio space for one final hurrah there. Over the course of three weeks, Annelies cooked up a storm downstairs in my kitchen with her wondrously creative recipes using tea in all different ways, and I snapped away upstairs, styling food, dipping my fingers in everything to try, wading through a room full of props (more linens and plates and forks than Downton Abbey likely has), racing sun and light ... to produce the photos for her book. I'm so thankful to Annelies for her amazingly collaborative spirit, entrusting me with the huge job of translating her mind's eye vision in her words to the visual world, making her recipes come alive on the page. I hope I did her food justice. And, if I may sound ever so proud, the final book is quite gorgeous. ^^

When our advance copies of the book arrived in the mail, Annelies and I got together for an afternoon to celebrate (and to make some promo photos). Upon hearing that I'd basically been shut up in my ivory tower headspace for the past several months, Annelies insisted that I take the afternoon and make a cake. I've been so obsessed with matcha lately--ever since shooting the book, and also since going to this cafe in Portland, which specializes in matcha tea lattes--and have been fantasizing about making a matcha mochi cake for the upcoming Chinese New Years'. At the same time, my meyer lemon tree has been bursting with fruit, and stares at me forlornly through the window every day because I haven't had time to go harvest it. So, I at last picked off some of the lemons for some matcha cake.

The result: a matcha green tea and meyer lemon mochi cake, which I like thinking of as a preview of the spring!, embodied in cake form. The luminous candied meyer lemons--just ever-so-slightly carmelized on the edges from baking--meld into this earthy, chewy, layer of grassy matcha mochi cake. It's a cake with such a satisfying, toothsome texture. There's nothing crumbly or fluffy here. Instead, it's dense mochi that seems almost paradoxically light-hearted from the brightness of the matcha and meyer lemon flavors.

I know things have been too quiet on this blog lately, but at least, thanks to Annelies, I have this wonderful news about the book to share, and a cake recipe for you, just in time to wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year! See? I didn't miss New Year's after all.

GO PRE-ORDER STEEPED!

More sneak previews from the book coming soon, I promise.

Read on for recipe...

(mis)Fortune Cookies: Matcha-Orange Flower and Brown Butter

A good deal of ink has been spilt chronicling the trials and tribulations of being a graduate student. And with good reason, since said trials are many: the long hours, the miniscule (if any) pay, the annoying ridicule we're subject to from grumpy old professors who don't see the point of the modern probability theory revolution .... ahem and eye roll. And we graduate students undertake all of this knowing full well that only very few of us will make it into academia in the long run (we just really, really hope it's us!).

Part of what makes it all live-able, however, is the fact that we are also terribly good at laughing at ourselves and at our own predicaments. Take PhD comics, for instance, or #whatshouldwecallgradschool. Poking fun at grad students is easy. Even Tina Fey does it!

So last week, when I was scheduled to speak at the year's final lab meeting, my linguist-cum-baker partner-in-crime Andréa and I thought we should celebrate the end of the year with some special fortune cookies for the lab. Yes, these fortune cookies were special in that some were matcha and orange flower fortune cookies and others were brown butter and almond fortune cookies (flavors far superior to your normal run-of-the-mill types), but really the special surprises were the misfortunes tucked inside. My favorite? p = 0.06.

A full list of our misfortunes is available here.

The misfortune cookies managed to elicit some great hand-to-forehead-smacking reactions at the lab meeting, which was quite gratifying. But really hidden behind these misfortunes was some optimism for fellow students: grad school might suck every now and then and we might not all make it, but at least cookies, laughs, and some good old reflexive schadenfreude can make everything seem better for now.


Read on for recipe....

TGIF: In the kitchen with Emma

When the lovely and super-talented Emma of Poires Au Chocolat visited California a few months ago, she rented out an absolutely beautiful home in the Berkeley hills so that she could work on recipes for her future book. I managed to convince her to let me tag along while she recipe-tested, mainly so that I could taste the awesome British desserts that came flying out of the kitchen. Let me just say... the girl knows how to make some damn fine desserts! I cannot wait until her book is done. If what I tasted during her visit is any indication, that book is going to be positively amazing. Thanks, Emma, for letting me play kitchen paparazzi for a day while you baked away!

Happy Friday, everyone! Make sure to make some time for tea and scones this weekend!

Announcing sated magazine! and Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and a giveaway!

Grab a cupcake, have it ready, because today is a celebration of a BIG announcement. Okay, are you ready? Because here we go......!

May I proudly announce a project that has been nearly a year in the making....

drum roll please.......

sated magazine!

I am so, so excited to announce, jointly with the wonderful Anita Chu of Dessert First, a new gastronomy publication, sated magazine.

This is the project that I have been hinting at and alluding to all over the place for the past few months on the blog and via twitter/instagram. It's what has taken up all of my life and energy between dissertation-work spurts. There is so much to tell you all about sated that I don't even know where to start, even though I've been dying to reveal the secret for months and months now!

What is sated?
Sated is a quarterly print publication that is dedicated to exploring and appreciating a single food subject at a time in great depth, through a combination of recipes, art, photography, stories, and articles. For me, it is the ultimate culmination of our love, fascination, geeky-ness, and complete obsession with food: where it comes from, its beauty, its stories, the people and places involved.

Where did sated come from?
Many, many months ago now, Anita and I were discussing--over dessert, naturally!--our inspirations and aspirations and frustrations, and in a combination of all these things, we discovered that we had shared dreams and visions about what we want and hope to do in the food world. That's when the concept for sated was born: it was to be our collective dreams about food poured into magazine form. Since then, we've worked so many hours bringing together this first issue (and planning the next ones!), though it wasn't until very, very recently when I could finally believe that this was all happening, that sated was actually going to launch for all to see. :D!

The first, inaugural issue of sated is coming in May and is dedicated to all things dark chocolate. We'll be releasing teasers and revealing more details of the issue in the coming weeks leading up to its launch, but suffice it to say that we've got it all--dark chocolate recipes of your dreams, a behind-the-scenes look into chocolate-making, articles and how-tos about chocolate, and lots and lots and lots of chocolate imagery. Though largely produced by Anita and myself, we have also had a great starting team of contributors working with us, including but not limited to the talented Kamran of the sophisticated gourmet and the ever-fascinating Dan Jurafsky of language of food. Anyways, I can't reveal too much now, but to stay up-to-date on all of the news leading up to the big launch in May, you can follow the sated magazine blog, the official satedmag twitter feed, and sign up for our mailing list!

Also, to celebrate the big reveal of sated, Anita and I are giving away to two copies of the premier issue of the magazine to readers of our blogs, since without all y'alls continued and enthusiastic support, none of this could ever be happening! There are many chances for you to enter the giveaway:

1. Leave a comment on this post for one entry.
2. Leave a comment on Anita's post for one entry.
3. Follow sated on Twitter and tweet about it (mention @satedmag) for one entry (you do not need to post a comment here; we'll track it through Twitter).
4. Like sated on Facebook and leave a comment on the page for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).
5. Sign up to be on sated's mailing list for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).

That's five chances to win! This giveaway will run on our blogs until 11:59 PM PST on May 18, at which point we'll choose two lucky winners at random to receive a copy of the very first issue of sated magazine! :D! (<- can you tell that I am very, very excited?)

[click on photo for a larger image]

To celebrate, here is my latest dark chocolate obsession: earl grey + dark chocolate. Something about the strong fragrance of the bergamot-scented black tea makes it a robust pairing against the deep, dark roast of dark chocolate. In these earl grey dark chocolate cupcakes, I infused a combination of cream and condensed milk (for some extra sweetness) with earl grey and used it for a whipped ganache frosting that's a bit firm but melts into your mouth as you eat it, just as chocolate should. Topped with a dash of seasalt to enhance the flavors within, these cupcakes are a richly indulgent shot of chocolate. You know, to tie you over until sated is released!

Read on for recipe....

Get Well Soon Cakes

Pinch me, because I cannot believe it's October already!  *rubs eyes*  Outside, we're getting our first serious rain of the season, which I'm loving, and I'm already drinking large amounts of hot tea indoors.

Actually, this weather is a little difficult to believe because last week, we had our first real summer temperatures all summer, hitting 90+ degrees F in San Francisco proper for a few days on end--which is quite the rare happenstance!  Unluckily for me, however, my body decided that it was also the week to give myself a cold and a fever, so there I was, running around between meetings and work, in hot, hot weather, made all that much hotter from burning up from the inside.  (and to make matters even worse, it didn't help that I was wearing a sweater with no option to go home and change for the entire day either! ><)

At least now, the weather has decided to go back to the normal grey San Francisco status quo that I know and love, and I'm nearly 100% recovered from the cold.  Thank goodness.  But, I'm still obsessed with hot tea--and especially for colds, with chamomile tea, a drizzle of sweet honey, and a thin sliver of lemon--to nurse me slowly back to health.  Oh, that, and I've been chugging orange juice like there's no other liquid on earth for as much vitamin C as my body can handle (plus some).  Whatever works, I say!

Thinking about what we usually drink and eat when we're sick got me to thinking about whether or not I could pack the same complimentary flavors into cake form, since cake makes everything better, too.  :-P  (yes, I know I must be slightly delusional here, but let's just blame it on the fever, okay?)  I decided to go with a simple honey and meyer lemon pound cake, coated with a thin, subtle, and ever-so-slightly crunchy chamomile sugar glaze.  It's a cake that's moist and dense and lemony! but not too sweet, even with light flavor of honey wrapped inside. And, the mini bundt molds that I decided to use were so cute that I immediately started feeling better upon taking these cakes out of the oven.  :)  It's the small things!

[click on photo above for a larger image]

Anyways, welcome to October, all!  If it's truly going to be a long fall with rainy days and hot tea (and beautifully diffused light from the clouds), keep this recipe on hand--it's perfect for the occasion.

Oh, and go get your flu shots now!

Edit: My good friend reminds me after reading this post that these honey cakes are actually well-timed for Rosh Hashanah, too, when it's customary to eat honey cakes and the like. I guess so many people had been talking to me about making and eating honey cakes this week that it sort of just sunk into my subconscious!


Read on for recipe....

Green Apple Jasmine Sorbet Sandwiches with Chocolate Snaps

Thank you to everyone who wrote in on the last post with your recommendations for New York and Pittsburgh eats.  I've had the chance to visit quite a few of the places y'alls recommended, and they've definitely been delicious!

I'm still on my business trip, and though I've met wonderful new people and learned so many things so far--and seen so much snow!, I'm utterly exhausted already.  Giving three presentations/talks on three different subjects in the space of four days?  Not easy, and I'm totally talked out!  There are seriously no more words left in me.  So I hope you don't mind if I just show you pictures of what I have waiting in my freezer at home for me.  And I can't wait to get back to it: green apple jasmine sorbet with chocolate snaps = sorbet sandwiches!  I made these before leaving on my trip, and they're going to be the perfect post-conferences detox dessert.  Light, bright, and fresh from the tart green apple and fragrant sweet jasmine tea, combined with just the perfect amount of earthy chocolate, will be exactly what I need after days of traveling airports and eating out.  And yes, I just said "detox dessert."  Because that's how we do it in the dessertsforbreakfast household.

P.S. Watching it snow outside and being outside *in* the snow is like living in a snow globe!  Magical!

Read on for recipe....

Teatime: Pear Buckwheat Cake with Poached Pears

Thank you all so much for your blorgthday/blogiversary wishes last week!  I've had such fun reading about all the little things in life that put a smile on everyone's face--thanks for sharing!  The winner of the giveaway is announced at the bottom of this post before the jump to the recipe.

The weather around here has finally gotten the memo that it should be autumn, and we've been blessed with mornings of cloudy and moody skies, which, as a SF Bay Area native, I absolutely adore.  (Trust me, fog is awesome.)  And finally, finally, we're starting to see the first hints of fall in the farmers' markets too, with apples and pears and pomegranates (though I can't complain about the sweet, late-season berries that are still floating around)!  Ah, love.  Autumn and spring have always been my favorite seasons--times of transition when you can basically have it all, unlike the drastic hots and colds of summer and winter.

Pears have always been one of the fruits I look forward to the most when autumn rolls around.  For some reason, they remind me of my grandfather, though I can't for the life of me pinpoint any specific memory from which this association stems.  I think it's because he always cut sweet, ripe, and soft pears for me to eat, served on an old rectangular plastic microwave-oven plate, and, when I was old enough to wield a knife, was the first one to teach me how to cut pears, slicing the sides and meat off of the core.  (Incidentally, my grandfather was the first one to teach me how to cook--simple things, like the perfect fried egg, different varieties of fried rice, or sweet rice with dried pork.)

The idea for this pear buckwheat cake with tea-poached pears has been floating around in my mind for a while now, but I kept wanting to wait until the weather had just enough crispness to it to enjoy this cake with a steaming cup of black tea in hand, thinking back on the endless mug of oolong tea that my grandfather never failed to have with him.  This cake is inspired by a recipe of David Lebovitz's for buckwheat cake with poached cider apples, though it's been very heavily modified by me.  For a buckwheat cake (that's completely gluten free, too!), it's surprisingly delicate and airy, thanks to the whipped egg whites.  It's also surprisingly moist, from the homemade pear sauce that's added in, which balances out the nuttiness and the texture of the almonds and buckwheat.  The cinnamon and brown sugar lend the cake a perfect hint of spice, and I wouldn't have it without a side of sweet black tea-poached pears that are tender enough to cut through with a fork and work perfectly with the earthy buckwheat cake.  This cake would probably also go really nicely with a dollop of lightly-sweetened whipped cream and macerated strawberries, if you're lucky to be somewhere that still has fresh berries in the markets.  Ah--and a cup of tea on the side.  Don't forget that one.

I should also take a moment to thank my friend, Middy, for kindly allowing me to borrow a few teacups and saucers from her amazing collection to photograph.  When Middy got married this past summer (I made the cake!), she had these tea party bridal showers for which people brought her teacups and saucers from all walks of life.  Ever since then, I've been hankering for an excuse to photograph some of her collection and finally was able to come up with a suitable reason.  :-)  Thanks, Middy!

Now, onto the giveaway winner-- congratulations, Eve!  An email is on its way to you.

Thanks to all for participating.  Make sure to keep your eye out on the blog--there's more fun to come, I promise!

Read on for recipe...