Science Based Cuisine

Hokkaido cupcake, Kamalan Bakery, Houston, TX

I've recently become fascinated by Hokkaido cupcakes (sometimes just Hokkaido cakes). The only purveyor I know of is the recently opened Kamalan Bakery in the ever expanding new Chinatown region of Bellaire in Houston. Based on my research, despite the name, the cake didn't originate in Japan, but rather in the ethnic Chinese enclaves of Singapore and Malaysia. It's a product of leveraging physics and frugality to accomplish a delicious product. At its core, the cupcake is a chiffon cake - a close relative to the angel food cake - the latter is basically a prime example of a physically leavened cake. Rather than using chemical leaveners such as baking soda, an angel food cake relies on a lot of egg whites beaten into a semi-stable foam to produce it's airy structure (some manufacturers may cheat, however, and use the foaming qualities of detergent to accomplish the same thing without less labor). In the chiffon cake, the egg yolks are not discarded, but used to emulsify and incorporate additional flavoring ingredients. At its most basic, that could just be some milk and oil, but any number of flavoring components can be used. Flour is then added, but at a smaller ratio since the gluten formed toughens the cake. The beaten egg white is folded in last just before baking to produce a fluffy cake much prized for its texture.

In a sense, a chiffon cake is basically a stabilized soufflé.

Due to the delicate nature of the foam, it needs to cling to the edges of the pan to promote rising, thus, chiffon cake containers cannot be lubricated for ease in unmolding, and the cake must be cooled upside down to avoid collapsing.  When baked in a flute pan with a central chimney, this is possible, but as a cupcake, cooling upside down is impractical. But the ever frugal inventors came up with a clever solution: reinflate the cake with filling:


A Hokkaido cupcake puts the Twinkie to shame with filling abundance. It can be filled with any number of fillings, from custard to basic whipped cream, flavored or unflavored, which serves not only to provide flavor contrast, but also provide basic structural properties to the cake. Numerous recipes and videos can be found online, though most will be Southeast Asian in tenor.

Note also the use of square cardboard cupcake liners. These are quite clever - the traditional fluted liner is there to facilitate removal from the pan due to the no-grease requirement, but still requires a traditional cupcake pan mold. The cardboard cups provide sufficient strength on their own to be used without the pan mold, and the square shape allow for more efficient use of oven space. However, they seem to be rather difficult to find in American groceries.

I've often decried the meager offerings restaurants in Houston have for dessert (and I am equally perplexed why people wax rhapsodic over another bread pudding offering). But then again, maybe this isn't distinct to Houston - even on "reality TV" cooking shows, contestants are afraid to take on the dessert course. Maybe it's area so riveted in childhood memory, to cook with imagination can  terribly risky.

Once in a rare while, though, something appears that is noteworthy. Chef Steve Marques of BRC Gastropub allowed me to try a new dish he developed. And it's good to see (and taste) a chef letting his imagination fly.

It may not look like much, not carrying the trendy contrasts of "soil", gels and foams, but it delivers a potent harmony of flavor. Underneath this is a spicy chocolate cake, given an umami depth by the use of tomato paste, and that is complemented by the salty punch of peanut butter ice cream. But the layer of caramel sauce on top is redolent with those rich burnt sugar notes and fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce, but not just any fish sauce.


A product of the controlled degradation of fish in high salt concentrations, fish sauce comes in myriad forms and impacts cultures from Vietnam to Italy. Few people directly drink the stuff, but when used as ingredient, it adds a complexity of flavor and aroma that is difficult to match, particularly in savory applications. Red Boat prides itself in artisanal, graded fish sauce production, and the Phamily Reserve 50N is the highest grade they produce. Packaging that evokes tradizionale balsamic vinegar is certainly no mistake. Fish sauce and caramel is a duality that is used in Vietnamese cooking on fried meat items, but to use it in a dessert application in this form is simply beautiful.

I truly enjoyed the clean melding of the flavors. Every item in the dish had a role, played a part, built upon one another, in texture, and in taste. Subtracting any element would've lessened the dish significantly, and I am hard pressed to think of what to add.

I hope this dessert finds great success, and inspires others to diversify the ending memory of a meal.

My favorite New Year's traditional food stuff is mochi. Or it's various incarnations. Particularly when it's a waffle. To recap, mochi is made from pounding short grain glutinous rice, so called because of the very high amylopectin content. This gives the rice starch a notably sticky quality highly prized in many East Asian cuisines. Despite the name, glutinous rice does not contain gluten, and flour prepared from it can be used to make gluten free baked goods. Like many other newfangled hydrocolloids, amylopectin use is actually quite old. One disadvantage of mochi, though, is that it loses its chewy quality after a day or two of storage in low humidity - I suspect this is due to dehydration. Seems that wheat starch, or maybe the accompanying gluten, retains water longer. And happily, glutinous rice flour forms a synergistic gel with wheat flour, and by blending the two in various ratios, you can accomplish a product that has the mouthfeel of mochi, with the staying power of wheat flour (although, understandably, this is no longer a gluten-free product).

So, I took this hybrid hydrocolloid, and made a messy heat stabilized foam with it: mochi brownies. Truth be told, a brownie is no more than a delicious failed chocolate cake, so I am not going to worry about proper measurements. You can make these brownies using all mochiko if you prefer, but it'll have a different chew.

Preheat the oven to 350F (which is the standard here in the US).

Melt some chocolate with some butter. I used the microwave for this. Of course, the quality of the chocolate depends on what your tastes are. I used most of a bar of 88% dark chocolate with a little less than a stick of butter.

Meanwhile, beat an egg with about 1/2 cup of sugar - more sugar if you have a stronger sweet tooth, and 1/2 cup of milk.

Mix together mochiko flour with regular AP flour - I used a ratio of about 2:1 - with about 1 tsp of baking powder and some salt. If you want more chocolatiness, add cocoa at this stage. Mix this into the egg mixture, and then incorporate the melted chocolate. Pour into a shallow pan, and bake for 15 min, turn off the oven, and leave it in there to finish cooking with the residual heat.

Jackfruit, the largest tree born fruit in cultivation, is pretty popular both in sweet and savory applications, and, fortunately, canned jackfruit is easily gotten here. Last year, for the holidays, I prepared a jackfruit and coconut ice cream. This year, I tried out a new method: a two toned cut cookie bar.


First, prepare the housing: I used a square cake pan, which I lined with parchment paper. I find this is best accomplished by laying two layers intersecting in the middle.

The cookie layer starts by creaming a stick of butter with some ratio of white and brown sugar. The more brown sugar, the softer the resulting cookie layer. I used about a cup of sugar, with about 25% brown sugar. After creaming, beat in a room temperature egg, and about 2 tablespoons of milk. Then 2 cups of flour and some shredded coconut, until it comes together into a sticky cookie dough. Chilling the dough will make it easier to work with, but just press it into the pan into an even layer.

Bake this for about 20 minutes at 175°C (350°F) , and allow to cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, drain a can of jackfruit, cut across the strings, and puree in a food processor. Beat some room temperature cream cheese or neufchâtel cheese until soft, mixing in sugar (be careful as the jackfruit would be sweet already), an egg, the pureed jackfruit, and a 2-3 tablespoons of tapioca starch. Pour this over the cookie layer, and bake it in a 150° C (300° F) oven until the top layer sets. I found this took around 30 minutes. Allow to cool in the refrigerator overnight before cutting into cookie-sized slices. These bars are fairly rich.

Should go well with strong tea.

Cebiche from Concepcion, Houston, TX

A number of dishes are basically fish "cooked" in acid - from ceviche/cebiche which uses citrus juices, to the Filipino kilawin which uses vinegar. But is it really cooking? What really happens?

When the fish (or sometimes meat) is soaked in the acidic solution, it loses the translucency and takes on that opaque and firm character associated with meat treated with heat. That's because what happens when the fish is heated is that the proteins coagulate - think how egg white turns, well, white when it's heated. Heating denatures the protein strands, and makes them reform new bonds.

Now, proteins hold on to water because they have a bipolar nature - they have positive and negative charges on the molecules. There is a point, though, under the right circumstances, when you can neutralize those charges. This is called the isoelectric point, and when it's hit, the protein loses solubility in water - because the charges are gone. "Cooking" in acid involves bringing the proteins in a target ingredient to the isoelectric point, where they coagulate as they lose the ability to hold on to water.

While this works well in meat or fishes, it's really quite evident with milk. When acid is added to milk, the casein in the milk hits the isoelectric point (around pH 4.6), and starts precipitating out. Filter it out, and, voila! paneer cheese. Or ricotta. Or if you rely on bacteria to make lactic acid - yogurt.

But you can also leverage the isoelectric coagulation of milk with lime juice to thicken condensed milk and cream to make this trifle pie.

Sago and gula melaka, Chilli Padi, Singapore

Ais kacang

Uchi Houston is one of the few restaurants that put multicomponent complex flavors into desserts. I hold out hope that perhaps dessert becomes less of an afterthought, but a planned crescendo and denouement to meals. Things don't always have to end the same way.

Poached pear dessert crafted by Chris Leung at Kata Robata, Houston, TX. Paired with preserved lemon, white chocolate, nasturtium leaves, and sesame seeds two ways.

Black rice gelato, Incheon, Korea

Black rice or "forbidden rice" is actually easily found in Houston area markets. It's a glutinous rice variety (no, that doesn't mean it has gluten), rather it cooks up a bit sticky. But it retains a wonderful chew and a nutty flavor all its own. It isn't like long grain rice, and does take a bit of skill to make properly (not to mention the coloration is water soluble, and may make the washing water alarmingly purple). It goes really well with the flavor of coconut - hence, the classic pudding, pulut hitam.

Pulut Hitam, Chilli Padi, Singapore

Lemon gelato with pistachio. Brightly flavored, brilliant use of the beet glass, and toasted pistachios.

Fried milk with chocolate semifreddo. Basically, a deep fried chunk of custard. And who doesn't like that?

Keffir lime cremeux, ash sorbet.

Miso apple sorbet, peanut butter semifreddo. I particularly enjoyed the freeze dried apples.

Smoked maple panna cotta, apricots. This was a special menu item; the use of the fried shiso leaf was smart.

All of them displayed a play on texture using various hydrocolloids, and fortunately, not one used a foam. And no baked cakes were involved. It's a gutsy display of flavors and textures - worthy of saving room for.

If the tea was better, I would recommend it as a dessert-only meal destination.

Sadly, this year I didn't get to cook with BBQDude in his new Eastern household, but looks like the Dude spread was delicious and the tradition stands. I'll have to make it up to the Boston area soon to make up for the lack.

A necessary byproduct of cooking is, well, food - and the necessary posse of people to consume it. I didn't cook as much this year as I didn't have the crew to eat it all. But I had a chance to play with a bounty of micro citrus.

The calamondin (Citrofortunella microcarpa) is a citrus plant that grows pretty well in Texas, and is often grown as decorative plants. The bright orange fruit contrasts nicely with the dark green foliage, and look like really small oranges.

Don't confuse them with kumquats, though, as these are really tart. Kumquats will have to be a fruit discussed in a different posting.


In Southeast Asian cooking, calamondin plays a major role, being squeezed over fried foods to brighten up flavors, or used in drinks. It's a floral acidity unlike lemons or limes, and is gaining popularity with chefs. I found that the rind, however, doesn't get much appreciation. The ripe calamondin peel has a nice subtle sweetness to it, and is relatively thin. So, I made calamondin marmalade. It's actually really easy to make, except for the part of deseeding the fruit. Despite the size, each calamondin has a good number of fairly large seeds in them, and removing them can be a long chore.

After deseeding, I cut up the fruit roughly, tossed it with about a third as much by weight in sugar, and threw the whole mess into the oven for the next hour or two (I was doing other baking). No additional water added.

And this emerged.

Calamondin marmalade

Delicious over fresh waffles, pound cake, ice cream, etc. There's plenty of pectin in citrus, so this should work with just about any citrus fruit. I just stored it in the freezer, forgoing the trouble of canning it - although that will work as well.

Halo-halo from New Filipiniana, Houston, TX. Photo by Gary Wise, used with permission.

The Filipino dish halo-halo is often described as a dessert, although it is really quite filling in many incarnations. It's a member of a family of ice-based dishes found throughout Asia, from Korea's patbingsu, to the Taiwanese shaved ice bowls. The name literally translates to "mix-mix", which is both an admonition on how one is supposed to eat it, as well as a description of what the dish is. A number of sweetened items, from beans, to yam, to ice cream, are piled together with crushed ice and milk. Mix it up, and enjoy.

But food evolves. While many halo-halo preparations boast of a large variety of ingredients in a glass, one shop in Manila specializes in what could be an early ancestor to the modern halo-halo. This version only has three ingredients outside of the ice and milk: flan, sweetened bananas, and hominy. But much care is taken in the shaving of the ice, such that it yields more easily to the mixing spoon. And with relatively few ingredients, the care taken in its construction is more evident in the less muddied flavors. It is perhaps akin to the difference between a classic Neapolitan pizza margherita and the Americanized superloaded delivery pizza.

Old School Halo-halo. Mandaluyong, Philippines. Only three mix-ins, but the ice is super fluffy.

Shaved peanut ice dessert, Nu Cafe, Houston, TX

Houston is having a record heat wave. Or a heat blanket. Coupled with a drought, it's just hot out there. Somehow, an ice cream just seems too thick for this weather. One option to be had are these shaved ice milks increasing in popularity in Chinatown. Frozen flavored milk is shaved into these sheets that melt on the tongue, providing both the the cool comfort of snow, but lacking the cloying coating from cream.

Shaved ice dessert, Bellagio, Mandaluyong, Philippines. One is peanut, the other is black sesame.

Well, not all shaved items need be frozen. Jamon Iberico de pata negra.

Halwa as a technique is under appreciated by western cooks. The term halwa or halvah appears in a lot of middle eastern to south Asian cuisines, referring to a sweetened paste or cake or some sort, often additionally spiced with other flavors. Halwa is a common accompaniment to tea and other hot drinks. Multiple ingredients can be used as the basis of halwa, from vegetables, to grain, and nuts and seeds. In Israel, sesame seeds form the basis of halwa, optionally found chocolate covered for more decadence. In India, the true carrot cake, a carrot halwa, can be prepared by cooking down carrots with ghee and sugar. Or, as pictured above, doodhi - the bottle gourd. Also known as upo, the bottle gourd is eaten as a vegetable in many other cultures, in China, the Philippines, and Korea. Additionally, the dried gourd can be hollowed out and used as a bottle, hence the name. Making it into halwa, however, appears to be the purview of the Indian/Pakistani traditions. The vegetal notes and textures make for a delicious and interesting dessert. This one was purchased from Bombay Sweets.

Sahlep is a starch extracted from the root of an orchid, and is the basis of an infamous stretchy Turkish ice cream called dondurma. Various videos demonstrating the peculiar properties of dondurma are available online, but sahlep itself is rather difficult to find outside of Turkey. When I stumbled on a box of the stuff (albeit adulterated with corn starch) in Houston, I had to try my hand at making dondurma. At a New Year's eve dinner party: what better time to risk abject failure.

I first decided that the flavor will be saffron, in keeping with special occasion Middle Eastern food, to be complemented with crushed pistachios. I steeped the saffron fronds in a bit of warm cream to bloom it. In the mean time, in a mixture of cold cream, milk, and sugar, I stirred in the sahlep, and put it on heat. I kept stirring, anticipating the mixture to thicken up akin to polenta. What resulted was alarmingly lumpy and akin to ectoplasm. I stirred in the saffron as best I can, and hoping for the best, put it in the refrigerator to cool overnight.


The next day, after some research, I learned that sahlep needed to develop like gluten, so, I decided to first give it a strong whipping in the mixer. Fortunately, that was when the mixture evened out, becoming something between marshmallow and taffy. Loading it into the ice cream maker was a challenge, but once it was churning, it seemed to freeze pretty well.



The soft serve version was still stretchy and gloopy, but we managed to wrestle them into serving glasses before freezing hard. I think traditional dondurma is whipped even further while being frozen, so our product was not quite so stretchy. But the texture was distinct, almost chewy, and I recognize that if I were to let this stuff melt, it wouldn't liquify.

I look forward to experimenting with it some more. I understand that the use of mastic improves the stretchiness, but I am not sure what to complement the piney flavor of mastic.

Over at Patisserie Jungle Cafe, I met a couple of friends for dessert, and found that they advertised a very seasonal St. Honore pastry. Named after the patron saint of baking (bless the Catholics, there's a patron saint for all sorts of things, even computers) the St. Honore is a very labor intensive cake characterized by the inclusion of little cream puffs glued on with hot caramel.

What we found was this:






By no means bad, this wasn't a St. Honore. It's actually something closer to a small croquembouche. The choux pastry itself was fine, as was the filling, and the use of chocolate I suppose was to evoke the flavor of a profiterole. But the chilled dark chocolate was hard mortar, and made prying the item apart difficult and messy. The small patês de fruit festooning the creation were fine, but we couldn't figure out what the deal was with the leaves. We weren't sure if they were edible, and their flavor really didn't seem to add anything to the dish.

Still, a fairly nice dessert, and seasonal for the occasion.




But I do highly recommend the boxes of intensely fruit flavored marshmallows. At just $3 a box, they are a steal and a delight.

It sounded like a good idea at the time. The hour was late, and we made our way over the 24 hour NY inspired restaurant Katz's on Westheimer near Montrose for some dessert. Maybe it's the levity of the occasion, but I decided on ordering the Belgian waffle with ice cream. I mean, yes, it could double as breakfast, too. Right?

What arrived was a plate piled high with neon white "whipped cream", and streaks of that obnoxious goo that covers strawberries. Somewhere in there was a blob of industrial ice cream. And perhaps the saddest waffle I have ever encountered. First of all, it was by no means a Belgian waffle. Soggy, tasteless, it bore no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Don't fall for this pricey trap if you do go to Katz's. Stick to the cheesecake milkshake if you must.

The French macaron is quite different from what Americans think of as macaroons. Not a thick chewy affair of coconut and sugar, the macaron is a delicate pair of ethereal meringue like cookies sandwiching a bit of buttercream. Flavoring options are myriad, as are the possible colors, which can look like gems when artfully presented.

It's a fru-fru snooty moonpie.

Well, in the land of the Double Stuf Oreo, let's kick it up a notch, shall we?


Behold, the chocoron.

A chocolate covered macaron, topped with a disk of colored white chocolate. This one is flavored with mango, but I'll admit that there's so much chocolate there I could barely taste it. But it's an inexpensive indulgence.

And it still looks like a gem.

At Patisserie Jungle Cafe, Houston, TX. $2.50

Ah, the last of the summer peaches are fading from the markets. But back when they were abundant and cheap, I made this cake several times this summer, and it capped our tripartite dessert for the pig roast at the Great Western Casa McBardo. Along with the chai ice cream, we grilled some fresh ripe while freestone peaches. And this peach "cake". Or is it a clafouti?


I mixed up a quick batter (slightly thicker than pancake batter) flavored with vanilla, and poured it over the top, dotted with butter, before baking in a hot oven. Resulting thing was devoured so quickly we don't have photographs.

Among the collaborative cooking projects I did at the Great Western Casa McBardo (home base to Indirect Heat) is an adapted chai ice cream we served as one of the desserts to the roasting of a 50 pound pig. Yes, there was more than one dessert.

Here's the basic recipe:

1. Slice and bash up 1x3 inch piece of fresh peeled ginger. Add this to a nonreactive pot along with 1 bashed up sprig of fresh lemongrass and 2 cups of whole milk.

2. Crack up 4 tablespoons of whole cardamom, and add to the pot along with 2 tsp of freshly cracked black pepper, 2 tablespoons of cinnamon powder.

3. Add in 40 cloves, 3 tablespoons of dried basil, and 8 teaspoons of assam tea.



4. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat, and allow to steep for 10 minutes, and strain into a measuring cup. Make up the volume with more milk up to 2 cups to allow for evaporation.

5. Return to the cleaned pot along with 2 cups of cream, and mix well. Add 1 split vanilla bean, scraping out the seeds, and 1/4 cup of sugar, and heat up to a simmer - do not allow to boil. Make sure that the sugar gets dissolved. Allow the vanilla to steep.


6. Meanwhile, beat 12 egg yolks until liquid, and gradually add 1/4 cup of sugar while beating (do not dump the sugar directly on egg yolks, as this will result in the proteins "salting out").



7. When the yolks are foamy and the sugar mostly dissolved, temper the yolks by adding the hot milk mixture into the yolks, and stir the custard back into the pot. Cook the custard until the appropriate consistency, add 2 cups of room temperature cream to stop the cooking, and strain to remove any possible curdling. The vanilla bean should also be fished out, and can be reused for other things. Drying it out, and sticking it into a jar of sugar is traditional for making vanilla sugar.

8. Grind in a generous amount of fresh black pepper (fine grind). Don't skimp here, the cold will mute the bite of the spices. Chill overnight, and process in an ice cream machine.




I did mention that there was more than one dessert, right? It has something to do with this caramelized fruit....

The term, of course, refers to something in Star Trek, in tribute to the opening of the rebooted franchise movie. It is a metaphor for failure. This post was originally posted on 10 May 2009, but has been updated with additional material.


While Houston local food enthusiasts take appropriate pride in the diversity of foods available here, there are gaps. Myself, I am fond of chocolate babka bread, a rich yeast bread that originated from Eastern Europe. I discovered this wondrous foodstuff in the New York City. I usually make the effort to pass by Zabar's in NYC, and pick up a few loaves of Green's chocolate babka bread to bring back to Houston. Fortunately, the stuff freezes well, but I have been looking for a local source for babka bread.

The main source of Jewish style baking is Three Brothers Bakery, which has been shuttered since Hurricane Ike. They allegedly would make babka bread ever Friday, although in all the times I've tried, they never seem to have it in stock. Perhaps the best in grocery bakery in town, Central Market, tried its hand at babka bread a while back, and it was awful. I bought a loaf and was so appalled at the product, I actually wrote a letter of complaint. I've never seen it stocked there ever again.

Last December, the local Whole Foods carried Green's babka, albeit at quite a markup (and I don't know if this is a special arrangement, but it seemed quite a bit smaller from what I remember it to be). However, I was informed that this was a seasonal arrangement (which I don't understand - babka isn't really a celebratory food).

Recently, I was advised that babka bread is available at Kenny and Ziggy's in the Galleria. Excited that there may be a good local baker of babka, I took the opportunity to order it there when I went there for lunch yesterday. One thing about Kenny and Ziggy's is that the place is an exaggerated stereotype of a New York touristy midtown deli, complete with oversized desserts, homemade pastrami, walls covered in Broadway posters, but with a conveniently spacious dining area. The babka was offered with the option of being warmed, and served with ice cream. What arrived was a generous slice of what is unmistakably Green's babka bread. I asked if they made the babka in house, and was told that they don't, but wouldn't tell me their source. I'm pretty certain that they had this shipped in from New York City as well.

So, the verdict still stands: There is no local Houston babka maker. Shame.