Kasutera Update!!!

Hello all!  I'm feeling refreshed and relaxed after three and a half days at grandma's house.  I was down there for my cousin's wedding, but also got a chance to try my hand at this dubious cake again at the request of my auntie Martha.  (You can read the original blog post about my battle with Kasutera here.)

Ok, so making this cake meant I had to hand write the recipe since my grandma's house doesn't have internet.  (Isn't that refreshing?)  As I was writing it down, I noticed a major error in my conversions from grams to cups when I originally made the cake.  It turns out I was using a whole half cup less flour than reqiured.  FAIL.  I was actually pretty happy to find this out because it offered a fairly simple explanation for why all my cakes have fallen.

With this in mind, Martha and I made the cake.  We didn't use green tea powder and tried to stick to the recipe as closely as possible.  We also had my grandma's KitchenAid mixer on our side to do all the hard work so we could make sure that the eggs were good and fluffy.  Here is the revised list of ingredients:

1.6 cups of flour
8 eggs
1.2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons honey

As far as the directions go, those are still the same which can be found on the post which I've included a link to above.  Oh, another thing that was different was we used a rectangular cake pan instead of a loaf pan.

With high hopes, we put the cake in the oven.  It was baked for the exact time and we pulled it out.  Within about 20 minutes it fell a little, which made me sad.  HOWEVER, once we cut into it, it was perfect!  There was no doughieness, just fluffy kasutera-ness.  We had finally done it!  I think maybe increasing the flour another quarter cup will really make it more perfect.

And guess what?  I have no picture because we ate most of it in one sitting.  Big surprise, huh?  My uncle brought over a flat of delicious strawberries so some people ate it with those saying it was the best strawberry shortcake they had eaten in their lives, but my mom and I just enjoyed it plain.  It tasted exactly like the good stuff you get in Japan.  Success feels so good!

Since I was gone for four days, coming back meant noticing a huge difference in the babies.  They have way more feathers now and are literally busting out of their box.  Shawn and I are feeling a little panicked about getting this coop of theirs finished, until I realized how cold it still is outside.  Even if we did get their house finished in the next few days, they'll just freeze in it at night.  So the rushed feeling of getting the coop built has just been replaced with an anxious feeling in hopes that summer will be here soon...

Speaking of summer, here are the ladies sunbathing last summer.  Notice they're still pretty young because their faces aren't red yet.