NIQUE EATS

I hate asking for help in public.

I will spend hours trying to do something by myself rather than ask for help from anyone, even people whose only purpose of being in the same room as you is to assist you.

I blame my mom. When I was a kid, anytime I needed help finding something she would wave me off, saying, "Look with your eyes, not with your mouth!" Thx.

So, when I decided I wanted to incorporate yuzu into a dessert it took me over an hour to actually find yuzu juice in my neighborhood Japanese market, for a few reasons:

my aforementioned aversion to asking for assistance
everything in Mitsuwa is, obviously, labelled in Japanese or English approximations of Japanese words
my social anxiety of being observed and judged to be a Dumb Person(TM), causing me to switch between standing in one aisle, googling Japanese to English translations of bottle labels on my phone, and wandering aimlessly around the rest of Mitsuwa pretending like I know exactly what I'm doing

Eventually, after googling many different iterations of "bottled yuzu juice brand dessert sweet" I settled on a bottle of yuzu juice that was labelled "Yuzu Dressing Base," which threw me off because I had completely ignored that bottle in favor of "Yuzu Extract" for the first 20 minutes of my search. I hesitated to buy the Yuzu Extract bottle because I knew that I wasn't looking for extract, I was looking for actual yuzu juice without any alcohol. I skipped over the Yuzu Dressing Base because, to me, "dressing" implied savory purposes. Turns out it was the only bottle that didn't have any alcohol or salt listed in the ingredients, and upon further inspection I saw that the bottle even said on its label that its uses ranged from sweet to savory. At that point I was too relieved that I had found what I was looking for to feel irritated that it took me so long to notice something right in front of my face.

Anyway, I really wanted to use yuzu instead of plain old lemon juice because yuzu has a much more floral quality to it than lemon, which in turn brings out the floral and bergamot elements in earl grey tea. The floral note in earl grey is what encourages many to pair it with lavender, but personally I find that combination to be a little too perfumed for my taste. The additional bright tang of yuzu, plus the freshness of the mint leaves, prevents the whole thing from tasting like a Lush bath bomb.

You could, of course, save yourself the trouble of internal turmoil at the thought of asking for help at a supermarket and switch the yuzu with lemon juice instead.

I'm just saying that my socially awkward ass overcame alllllllllll that just to get some damn yuzu juice, so it's pretty worth it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Earl Grey Loaf cake

Ingredients

1 cup milk
5 bags earl grey tea
8 tbs (1 stick) butter, cold
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Method

Heat the milk in a small saucepan just until tiny bubbles appear around the edge. Remove from heat, add the 5 bags earl Grey tea. Cover and let steep for 20 min. . Remove the bags, and use the back of a wooden spoon to squeeze the bags against the side of the saucepan to extract all the milk and flavor possible. Allow milk to cool to room temperature. For a stronger flavor, leave the bags in until the milk is at room temperature

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and the baking powder .

Preheat oven to 325* F. Grease and line a 9x5" loaf pan with parchment, leaving 1" of parchment overhang.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter on low for 1 min, then stream in the sugar against the side of the bowl. Cream together the sugar and the butter on low-medium until pale and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl, then beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping between each egg. Beat in the vanilla.

Remove the bowl from the mixer. Using a rubber spatula, fold in 1/3 of the flour mixture by hand. Follow with 1/2 of the milk tea. Fold in another 1/3 of the flour, then the last half of the milk, and finally the last 1/3 of the flour. Fold together until just combined, and no streaks of flour remain.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.bake at 325*F for about 50 minutes, checking for done-ness at 45 minutes. Stick a skewer or chopstick in the center to check if any wet batter remains - if not, remove from the oven and let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, use the parchment to pull the loaf from the pan and cool directly on the wire rack.

Mint and Yuzu Glaze

Ingredients

1/4 cup water
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
2 tbs yuzu juice
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Method

Puree together the water and the mint leaves. Let sit for 20 min, then strain out the water into a medium bowl. (I used two strainers overlapping each other, which left only the tiniest bits of mint in the water.) The water will look very green, don't worry. Add the yuzu juice, then in 1/4 cup increments add the powdered sugar. Whisk until all the sugar is incorporated. For thicker glaze, add more powdered sugar.

Assembly

Once the loaf is completely cooled to room temperature, remove all the parchment paper and place it and the cooling rack over a sheet pan. Pour the glaze over, starting from the center of the loaf and moving the glaze around the loaf as necessary. Garnish with fresh lemon zest for an extra citrus kick.

Profit.