I’ve had a lot of time on my hands recently, so I’ve been trying to do some baking. It’s really difficult because I don’t have a North American style oven…only a toaster over. I bought a small one for about ¥2000. It’s a good size, and has served me well for my own personal cooking…but it’s a bit time consuming when there’s more to be done. In terms of quantity by the batches, it takes a while. And it also took a while to figure out the cooking time.
Baking Egg Tarts
Egg Tarts? Yes! Hong Kong style dim-sum Egg Tarts! Because I can’t make any Ha-gao (shrimp dumplings), so this is my attempt to quench the craving. Not to mention that I went to Costco and bought 60 eggs for almost $3…these were meant to be for my Christmas dinner party…until I realized that I don’t have a lot of room in my tiny little fridge. SO, what better way to not let eggs go to waste! ^^ I must say, I did pretty good. They do taste like dim-sum ^^.
Chinese style Egg Tarts
Baking Cookies
In my small toaster oven, I realized two things:
1) If I really downsized the cookies, I can get at least 6-8 cookies on a sheet…they look like mini-bite size cookies. The greatest thing is that Japanese people are really into the “cute” culture, and what’s cuter than mini-cookies? A recipe that would usually bake 25 cookies, I can make almost 50 minis. More practice room for error! 😀
2) Covering cookies with aluminum foil will only need 5 minutes in my small oven.
Baking cookies with a toaster oven.
BC Roll in Japan 