Chocolate Tapioca Decadence

Since giving birth six months ago, I have become a certified chocoholic. Don't get me wrong, I have always liked chocolate, but my love for it now has gotten to the point where it is a bit of a problem.

I used to prefer milk chocolate, and dark chocolate was always a little much for me. But now... now is a different story. I could eat an entire bar of 70% dark in one sitting. No problem. So delicious. I could do it every day. (I also love coffee. Not for the caffeine, for the taste.) The 70% is perfect for my taste buds, but I could eat the darker stuff too. I have discovered that 90% dark chocolate is perfect for s'mores. Try it. It's true.

Anyway, I need chocolate like it's oxygen. It's just something I inherited with Eddy. Naturally, I am always on the lookout for various ways to ingest this new addiction that doesn't look like stealing chocolate chips from my baking stash. (Though in an emergency, that does the trick.)

One of my favorite light(er) desserts that is super easy and quick to make is tapioca pudding. We always have extra eggs and it's super satisfying. Making it yourself allows you to make it fat free and lower in sugar as well. Winning.

So naturally, eventually I was going to make the discovery that I could make tapioca pudding with cocoa powder. Turns out, it's delicious.

Ingredients
1/4 cup small pearl tapioca
1/2 cup water
2 cups milk (moo or almond)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (or more if you need it :))
dash of salt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Soak the tapioca in the half cup of water for a half an hour. Add the milk and dash of salt and slowly bring to just before boiling. In the meantime, mix the sugar and cocoa powder together in a separate bowl. (Side note: here is proof that my addiction is no joke, when adding the cocoa powder, I was super tempted to eat a spoonful. Gross, right?) Add the eggs and whisk together. Once the milk and tapioca mixture is hot, bring the heat down to low and slowly whisk in the egg/sugar mixture. Keep it on the heat until the mixture thickens, stirring often. Turn the heat off, let the pudding cool for a bit, and stir in the vanilla. Enjoy hot or cold. You could garnish with some whipped cream and a little sprinkle of cinnamon if you'd like. So decadent.

You're gonna love it. Try not to eat it all in one sitting.

I didn't have any whipped cream on hand. I know. Shame on me.

French Toast Waffles

Breakfast foods are a big deal around here.  At least one weekend morning, (and occasionally both mornings) we do it real-style: french toast/pancakes/waffles, eggs, sausage, potatoes, yum...  Waffles are the fave, since we use the Snoqualmie Falls waffle mix (super delish) and it's quick with very little cleanup. 

But then one day I thought: what if we combined waffles and french toast?

There are two ways to do this.  You can either french-toast-ify waffles, by battering and frying waffles like regular french toast, OR you can waffle-ize french toast, by putting a battered piece of bread in the waffle iron.  

Both are delicious.  You should try it.

Here is my basic french toast batter recipe in case you don't have one in your head:

2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbs sugar
dash of salt

Whisk the cinnamon in with the eggs first.  This helps prevent the cinnamon from floating to the top and soaking only the first piece of bread leaving none for the rest.  Then add the milk and the rest of the ingredients.  Leaving this overnight in the fridge helps with the flavor if you have the foresight to make it in advance.  Also, depending on the staleness and hardiness of the bread you can leave it to soak in the batter overnight as well, though I haven't done much of that.

Now comes the frying part.  Use a little more oil than you think is necessary and keep the heat on medium.  This makes sure that the inside cooks enough before the outside is too brown, and helps in achieving the crispiness of the outside that is so necessary in french toast.

Top with butter and real maple syrup and you're on your way.  Add fruit, nuts, and whipped cream for a special treat if you deserve it.  I'm sure you do.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Waffled french toast.

Pie Crust Problem Solving

I hate prepping pie crusts.  This is a problem if you bake as much as I do.  I always end up fighting with them and worry about working them too much and making them tough.  I don't like getting pie crusty fingers and the worst is getting it under my nails.  It gives me the heebie jeebies.  They always fall apart on me and the mess that it creates (bowl, rolling pin, bread board, etc.) is just too much.  I usually pass the task off on to my sister since she doesn't seem to hate it as much as I do. 

BUT!  I found a recipe for a no-knead, easy peasy pie crust that creates no mess at all.  What?!  Are you serious?!  Totes people, totes.

Some believers in true pie crusts made from lard/butter/shortening may think this is a travesty.  I have yet to introduce the idea to my grandmother, the pie-making buddha.  But I think it's awesome.  The recipe listed is a little wonky so here is what I did:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs milk

Place all ingredients in a 9 inch pie pan.  Mix together to make a dough, then use your fingers to pat it into the bottom and sides of the pan evenly.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, then continue on your way and make your pie as usual, like nothing changed.  That's it.  Super cool.  Did I mention no mess, aka no cleanup?

The reviews for the pie crust say that it was a little salty and better used for savory pies, but I think if you cut back on the salt (which I did in the above recipe anyway,) and added more sugar it should work for desserts too.  Also, the original recipe says to use vegetable oil, but I'm on the team that thinks vegetable oil tastes like satan's pee pee so I rarely use it.  But for desserts it might be a good idea to find an oil with a more mild or dessert friendly flavor.

Why did I make a pie crust in the first place?  Duh.  Quiche.

Just in case you're curious, here are the ingredients for the quiche:

4 eggs
1 cup milk
several handfuls of spinach, torn apart
a quarter of an onion, chopped
1/3 cup of shredded Jarlsberg cheese
1/2 cup of shredded Colby Jack (for sprinkling on top)
2 Field Roast smoked apple sausages (sliced)
garlic salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the non liquidy ingredients together and pour into pie crust.  Mix the liquid ingredients together in a separate bowl with the salt and pepper and pour over the other stuff into the crust.  Top with some cheese and bake in a 375 degree oven for 30-45 minutes.  It might be a good idea to protect the edges of the crust with foil so it doesn't burn.

Will definitely make this again this week.

I don't normally toot my own horn, but damn, that was a good quiche!  And the crust made it even better.  It was a little more fluffy and thicker than a normal pie crust, but it had such good flavor, I didn't care.

(Oh, and using the above recipe in a sweet dessert pie should be just fine.)

The Nog Dilemma

To cook or not to cook?  I still have this question.  For this first batch of egg nog, I decided to go with the non-cooked kind since I know my eggs are safe.  (I made them extra safe by dunking them in boiling water for 20 seconds each to kill off any possible salmonella on the shells.)

So yeah.  It's the holidays.  Like every year they have totally snuck up on me and I have to remind myself to get festive.  So I stare at our Christmas tree to try to get in the spirit.  We've been drinking a lot of store bought egg nog, (by the way, Twin Brook creamery nog is the BEST,) which has helped but I decided to go one step further and make some of it myself.

Looking up recipes online was confusing.  There are a ton of recipes out there and some are just too much trouble.  Not only are some cooked, but some have beaten eggs whites mixed in (which sounds gross because I don't like drinking things that could be considered "frothy",) and some have so much cream that I have a heart attack thinking about it.  I also don't partake in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, so a bunch of other recipes were out.

So I looked at several recipes just to get an idea and came up with my own.  I decided to make a smaller batch first, and make adjustments if necessary.

Ingredients:
4 eggs
4 cups milk
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup sugar (rounded, so there's a little more)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
a dash or two of cinnamon
a dash of salt

Directions:  Beat the eggs with a hand mixer then slowly add the sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg.  Once mixed well, add milk, one cup at a time.  Chill, and enjoy!

The frothiness dies down pretty quick.

How does it taste?  Awesome.  I'm having hard time not drinking the whole batch.  Oh, and our nutritionist neighbor told us that the cholesterol in eggs is made worse by cooking the yolks.  Since these yolks are raw, you can drink this guilt free!  Even awesomer.  Happy holidays!

(Maybe I could just drink the whole batch and just make more to replace it... then no one would know...)

Mmmm... Purin

Purin is basically Japanese flan.  It's an egg custard with burnt sugar on the bottom.  I've never made flan before but I think the difference is that purin is a little lighter than flan and is made in individual cups. 

It's delicious.

Ingredients (to make 4 servings, though I usually do a batch an a half)
2 cups milk
8 tbs sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt

6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water

First you need to prepare the molds and the oven.  I use small coffee mugs for the molds.  Anything that can be put in the oven will work.  Spray the bottoms with a little bit of oil and set aside.  Place a jelly roll pan (or whatever flat pan with sides you have) in the oven with a half inch of water.  Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Now you make the burnt sugar sauce.  (This is the best part.)  Put the 6 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tbs of water into a small saucepan over medium high heat.  Dissolve the sugar in the water and let it come to a boil.  Let the sugar boil until all the water has evaporated out and the sugar is bubbling away.  You'll know when this happens because the bubbles will start to sound like glass.  Really cool.  Prepare a tbs. of water to keep handy next to you.  Stir the sugar occasionally and it'll start to turn brown and smell burnt.  Make sure you watch it closely for this part.  Just as it gets to a nice shade of darkish brown, add the small amount of water next to you.  It will be angry and hiss and bubble and maybe scare you.  But be strong, stand back and show it who's boss.  (Don't forget this part, it can lead to disaster if you don't add any water or add too much.  1 tbs, that's all she wrote.)  Stir in the water then divide the sauce up into the 6 molds you prepared.  There should only be enough for a few spoonfulls in each cup.

Now the egg part.  Easy peasy.  Put the milk into a saucepan and put it on low heat.  You just want it warm enough to melt the sugar.  While that's going, crack the eggs into a separate bowl and beat it for a bit.  Stir the sugar, salt, and vanilla into the milk.  Making sure that the milk is just warm and not hot, slowly add the milk to the eggs and whisk together.

Now check the sugar mixture before adding the egg mixture into the molds.  If the sugar is too runny, pouring the eggs/milk in will just mix 'em up and then you'll lose your awesome sauce that you risked your life to make.  Put the molds in the 'fridge if they're too runny.  Divide the egg mixture into your cups/molds.

Now put the molds into the oven on their nice jelly roll pan jacuzzi and bake for 35-40 minutes.  Chill, and try not to eat them all in one sitting!

The mugs that no one uses are happy today.

You can put it on a plate or eat it right out of the cup like I do...

P.S.  If you don't trust me, (I'm not offended if you don't) you can check out how this person makes purin.  It's similar but she might describe it better and has nicer pictures.

Sunday Harvest and Custard Pie

Double post today.

First the harvest.  A couple weeks ago, I stopped picking the peas and left some pods on the vines to get nice and plump.  Yesterday I pulled the plants up and left them to dry in the beautiful sun.  I'm hoping to dry the peas to use for seed next year.  I planted the rest of the seeds so here's to hoping for another crop of delicious peas in the fall.

The kale is still going strong so I harvest those as needed, and we've been eating a lot of green salads to hopefully make a dent in the lettuce crop.  Though bitter when it gets picked, it loses its bitterness if left to chill in the fridge overnight in some water.  This sun is going to make them bolt soon, which will make this tactic useless.  The chickens don't care about the bitterness so they'll get a lot.

So, not a very exciting harvest this week, next week I'm hoping to have a zucchini or two to show you.

And now for PIE.  I love pie.

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and since my dad is making a cake tonight, I decided to make a pie for her.  Fruit pie is good, but nothing beats a slice of cold, egg custard pie on a summer evening.  So that's what I made.

My chicken glass wants some.

Ingredients (for a 9-inch pie pan)

*5 eggs
*3/4 cup sugar
*3 1/2 cups milk
*1 1/4 tsp vanilla
*1/2 tsp salt (heaping)
*1/4 tsp cinnamon (heaping)

*A single pie crust

Heat the oven to 450.  Beat all the ingredients together.  Put the pie crust into the oven then pour the egg/milk mixture into the pan.  Believe me, don't pour it in the pan then try to put it in the oven, way too scary because the mix will fill it to the brim.  Bake at 450 for 20 minutes, then lower oven temp to 350 and bake another 20 minutes or so until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.  It won't look finished, but if the knife comes out clean, it's done.

Chill, and enjoy!  mmmmm...

Happy 80-degrees day!

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.

Put an egg in/on it!

Some of you may have noticed that a lot of my recent food posts I've done include eggs.  It's not an accident.  Considering I have a pretty reliable supply of eggs, I'm always looking for new ways to use them.  There are only so many egg-salad sandwiches one can eat.  I'm not complaining, egg-salad is awesome, and I have yet to get sick of any egg dishes.  I just need to keep varying recipes so that they always stay new and exciting.  And of course, I make sure I thank my ladies everyday for their hard work. 

Yesterday, I was thinking about what to make for dinner and asked this trusty foul-mouthed website.  Now some people may not find this funny, but it makes me chuckle (or even laugh out loud) and they actually have links to great recipes.  Anyway, it led me to a pizza recipe with eggs cracked onto them before baking.  What a great idea, I thought, and proceeded to take the idea and run with it.

I first started with the dough.  I used a pretty simple recipe:

2 cups flour
1 packet yeast
1 cup warm water (maybe a fraction less)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoons olive oil
a pinch of salt

Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water and let stand for 10 minutes.  Then add olive oil, honey, and salt.  Mix in the flour really well, and let stand for an hour in a warm place to rise.  After it has grown to twice its size, roll it out into whatever shape you'd like for your pizza.  I chose a random blobular shape that would fit onto the sheet I was using.  Make sure you dust the pizza pan with corn meal before you put the dough in it.

I then spread a thin layer of a roasted tomato and olive pasta sauce on the dough and covered that in fresh baby spinach leaves.  I sprinkled this with about 1 teaspoon of thyme and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg.  I then grated about 2 cups of cheese, (a mixture of colby jack, medium chedder, and farmer cheese) and spread it evenly over that.  Then I cracked two smaller Frannie eggs over the top and put it into a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

It was really good.

Another everyday thing that I always add eggs to is oatmeal.  Yep, when I know I'm going to have a busy day, I'll take a 1/2 cup of oatmeal, mix it with 2/3 cup or so of water, crack an egg in it, mix it up and microwave it, mixing every minute to 45 seconds, until it's cooked.  It definitely changes the consistency of the oatmeal, but it gives it a heartier flavor.  I sometimes mix in a little butter, cinnamon, and maple syrup or brown sugar.  Delicious.  And it keeps you fuller for longer.  This is what I usually eat before my triathlons.

Wondering what you can do to spice up that dish?  Crack an egg on/in it!  Well maybe...

Cake and Chickens

Ah, my two favorite things.  Both happened today.  So what to start with... cake or chickens?

Lets do chickens.  The day started rather normally, except for one thing.  I apparently forgot to open the little door that connects the coop with the run.  I think I forgot because the chickens usually bust right past me out the bigger door in the morning since they're eager and ready to get their grazing on, so they were already out in the yard.  I opened the run up so they can get into their food and water but just forgot to open the other one.  This afternoon, I went out to clean some poop and refill their food dishes when I noticed there were no eggs.  As I was feeling puzzled by this, I saw that the little door was closed.  As soon as I opened it up, Frannie came running in like she was prairie doggin' an egg.  Pretty funny.

So I left her in peace and went about refilling food troughs.  I opened the "barn" door (we call the shed that houses all the chicken supplies like food, scratch, and straw "the barn") which resulted in Abby and Mabel running in.  For some reason, they LOVE the barn and scratching around for any dropped corn kernels and such.  But this time, Abby hopped up onto the straw bale and sat like she needed to lay an egg.  Feeling bad about being a bad chicken mommy and thinking her egg may also be turtle-heading, I just let her sit.  I came back about 3 minutes later, and there already was an egg under her!  I quickly got my camera so I could report to daddy about the crazy thing that Abby did today.  Luckily, I also got footage of her after-laying-triumph-calls.  I think all chickens do this, squawking like they're really proud of their accomplishments or something.  The video is a little long, but I wanted to include Mabel trying to burrow into the nest as far as she can go... crazy girl.

Soon after this video, Mabel left the nest without laying so I grabbed the egg.  And it was ice cold.  What???  How could that be?  Didn't Abster just lay it?  She must have laid it last time we cleaned the coop... but how could she have creeped by and done that without us noticing?  But then why was she calling like she had just laid?  It's still a mystery.  I opened the egg and it was totally fine, so it hasn't been sitting there that long.  It's a good thing it's been coooold out to keep it chilled.

This leads me to where the egg went: the cake.

It was Shawn's Ma's birthday yesterday, so today I made dinner and a birthday cake for her.  I decided to make a simple yellow cake and top it with some good stuff.  What kinds of good stuff?  You know, the usual, fresh fruit, whipped cream, and to make it extra special, lemon curd.  I grew up eating lemon curd, but I've come to realize that lemon curd is not a staple in many people's diets.  We always ate it on bagels, on top of the cream cheese.  Never done it?  Do it, it's the best way to eat toasted bagels.

Home-made eggs make for a very yellow lemon curd.

Lemon curd is really simple to make.  Take a microwave-safe bowl and mix together a cup of sugar, the juice from 2 lemons, two eggs, 4tbs melted butter, and the zest from those two lemons.  Mix it all up and microwave, stirring every minute to 45 seconds until it thickens.  You can also do it on a double-boiler, but microwaving it is way easier.  Put it in a nice jar, and there you go.  It'll stay good in the 'fridge for about 2 weeks.

The cake I made is a cream cake (you use whipping cream instead of milk) and I found it here.  I whipped up the remaining whipped cream from the recipe and sliced up some strawberries.  I feel a little guilty about buying fresh fruit when it is totally out of season, but sometimes I just want it.  Put it all together, and it looks like this:

Yummy.

Oh yeah, I went to Goodwill today.  As usual, there were some serious finds.  I'm itching to get started on my garden, so I found a watering can and some planting pots and trays for the greenhouse we'll be getting soon.

Cake, chickens, Goodwill.  It's the little things that really make my day.

Kasutera

You mention that word to any Japanese person and you are sure to get their mouths watering.  Kasutera, or castella is a delicious egg and honey cake that is almost everywhere in Japan.  It actually has Portuguese origin; it was introduced when the first missionaries came to the Islands and the Japanese have adopted it fully into their food culture and made it their own.

Wait, so it's a Portuguese/Japanese cake?  Just like me!  Except I'm not a cake, but that just means I have a special connection with it.

Ok, back to the cake.  Basically, castella is a cake you can buy almost anywhere in Japan.  They come in all different qualities, from slightly crappy versions that you can buy in a super market to super expensive, high quality cakes you can get in special stores.  It's not often that people will make it at home, that's probably why there are so many different brands you can buy.

The cake itself is a super spongy, mildly sweet cake that almost has a bready consistency.  The basic castella is yellow, but there are also variations flavored with chocolate and green tea.  I decided to make the green tea kind and started with a recipe I found on this amazing blog.  (Definitely holds a place up there in my bookmarks list with Dr. Fankhauser.)  There are some things I changed about the recipe so here's what I did:

Ingredients: (Note this are incorrect. Scroll down to bottom of page for link to correct ingredients list.)
* 8 eggs
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1 cup flour (all purpose or bread, not cake)
* 1 package instant matcha green tea powder (or you can use 2 tablespoons plain matcha powder)
* 1/2 cup milk
* 4 tablespoons honey

First you want to line the inside of your pan with parchment paper.  If you spray it with cooking oil, the parchment paper will stick to the sides nicely.  Don't worry about it covering it completely, just mostly.  Sprinkle the bottom (so on top of the paper,) with coarse sugar.  Set aside.

Combine the milk and honey.  You may have to microwave it for 30 seconds so the honey melts into the milk.  Don't heat it too much and cook the milk though, then it becomes a curdled baby puke mess. (Though it would still work, it's just kind of gross to look at.)  In a separate bowl, sift the flour and green tea powder together a couple times so that it is nice and fluffy and combined well.

Whisk together the eggs and sugar.  You want to do this in a medium sized bowl that can be rested into  larger bowl with hot water in it.  It's important that the eggs are beaten while they are lukewarm.  (Don't ask me why, I still need to figure out the science behind it.)  This is the part that takes the longest.  You need to beat the egg/sugar mixture until it gets nice and foamy.  The recipe says soft peaks, but after 20 minutes of standing there with a hand mixer, I gave up.  It was pretty thick and foamy so I decided it was good enough.  But like it says in the blog, it does take a loooooong time.  I don't have a KitchenAid, which would make it much easier on the arm, but a hand mixer does the trick, especially if you switch off between two people, like I did.  Thanks Shawn!

Once you finally get to the point where you say "eff it, that's good enough," (or if you get to soft peaks, which I recommend... see comments later,) whisk in the milk and honey mixture.  Then switch to a regular hand whisk and whisk in the flour mixture, one tablespoon at a time.  When it is incorporated enough that it doesn't have any lumps, pour it into the prepared pan and bake at 340 degrees for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  The top will get dark quickly, don't worry about it, it won't burn, and it's supposed to do that anyway.

The website says this is a cake that's hard to make, which I didn't really believe, but I'm starting to think maybe it is hard.  As far as putting the ingredients together, you need to follow the directions exactly.  Now I've made this cake twice in the last week. I didn't blog about it the first time because it was a big ol' FAIL.  It looked just like this when it came out of the oven, and a toothpick came out clean.  But then it totally collapsed.  My oven is a little weird so I thought maybe the temp wasn't right and that I didn't bake it enough.  This time around, I made sure to bake it for the full time plus 5 minutes.  And guess what?  It still collapsed, worse than last time!  Grrrr!

Nowhere in the blog where I got the recipe mentions this problem so I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong.  I read through the all the comments to the blog, and there were a handful of people who complained about the same thing.  The blogger's responses are a little confusing and she seems to think that the people just didn't do it right.  This got me thinking about the possible reasons why mine have failed.  Maybe my impatience with beating the eggs to soft peaks is the problem.  Or the fact that I baked it in a loaf pan and not a brownie pan.  Or the fact that I added the matcha powder...

My sister and I were discussing the possible problems and she brought up the point that it could be like angel food cake.  For those of you who've never made that, it's an egg-white based cake that has to hang upside down to cool to prevent it from falling.  Since this cake is also egg-based and has no other leavening it may require some hang time.  You'd think that if that was a requirement, it would have been mentioned in the bog.  She mentions that I have to put the cake in a plastic bag while it's still warm to retain the moisture, but maybe that has something to do with it. 

Oh well, I guess that's just a good reason to make it again.  I am determined to succeed!  I may have to look up other recipes and see what they say.  I'll keep you updated!  In the meantime I will eats lots of really dense, delicious kasutera with hot Japanese green tea.  mmmm...

6/13/2011 UPDATE:  I finally did it!  Turns out I converted the recipe from grams to cups wrong and didn't use enough flour.  So DON'T FOLLOW THE RECIPE ABOVE!  Use this one instead.  The directions will still be the same that are written here.