Minamoto Kitchoan

Minamoto Kitchoan

509 Madison Avenue

New York City, NY 10022

1-212-489-3747

During my research stage before our trip, I was looking for places with dessert (no surprise here) and came across Minamoto Kitchoan. I'm so glad I pinned it to our map because it was such a surprising treat!

The store looks like a museum or a jewelry store, bright lights and edible jewels on display.

We believe that everything in the display cases are non perishable replicas. A lot of detail went into these inedible pieces and they sometimes show you a cross section of the dessert.

Look! A baumkuchen! I only know what that is because it was once featured in an episode of Yumeiro Patissiere (see episode summary here). Look at all the layers in the ring, I've never seen one for sale before and was tempted to get one. But to buy a whole cake (no slices), I just couldn't do it.

Howard's not a fan of red bean paste, but I adore it. Red bean ice cream, red bean pudding, and now look at all of these red bean fillings!

Gasp! Bunnies! Way too cute to ignore. We bought a box to bring home as a gift. It came nicely gift wrapped and the bunnies were individually wrapped inside the box to ensure freshness. As it was described to us, these "rabbit cakes" are baked "manjyu" (buns filled with bean paste) with Yuzu flavour.

These were quite beautiful. The Kingyo is a Japanese style jelly using natural fruit flavours.

We bought the Peach Sherbet to try. One of the neat features of this treat is that it can be eaten as a jelly or if you freeze it, it becomes a sherbet! They have the jelly ones in baskets for purchases, but if you're like us and wanted to try the sherbet, let them know and they'll grab one from the freezer for you and provide you with spoon and napkin too!

This was one of the highlights from all of the desserts I made Howard tried. Probably his favourite as it was refreshing and delicious.

We also tried the Ayashirabe, as we were told it was their most popular item. It's a condensed milk and sweet white bean paste with yolk wrapped in Japanese crepe. After eating it, we can see why it's one of their bestsellers. The filling isn't overly sweet and that crepe has the best flavour and aroma to it!

There was also this exquisitely wrapped white peach jelly that Howard coveted. But the price point was a bit too high for us to justify. Although, it does look lovely and the whole peach surrounded by jelly sounds like it would be another fun treat.

Happy Chinese New Year

We're celebrating the Year of the Rabbit with some more peanut butter chocolate crispy bars. They were so good that we made it again with more "crispy" to them. By some kind of luck, we had a snow day yesterday, so I made these early in the morning and popped them in the fridge to set. By late afternoon, half of the batch was gone.

This is currently the wallpaper on my laptop. Mmmm chocolate!

Such a good combination!

Let me out of the pan!

I packed up 3 boxes of these little treats. One for Howard's parents, one to stay at home, and one for me to snack on at work.

My dad had the brilliant idea of adding Osmanthus flowers to the crispy bars. So I made a batch without the peanut butter and chocolate topping for us to test. It is quite the success and I'm torn between which version I like better! The flowers give such a great aroma when you're combining it with the corn syrup mixture and the fragrant stays even after the bars are chilled!

Osmanthus Crispy Bars
Makes about one 8x8 square pan

1 3/4 cups of crisped rice cereal
1/4 cup of water
1/4 cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of corn syrup
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons of dried Sweet Osmanthus flowers

1. Lightly spray a paper towel with nonstick cooking spray and use it to rub the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan.
2. Pour the water into a small saucepan. Gently add the sugar and corn syrup. Make sure none of the sugar or syrup gets on the sides of the pan. Use a wooden spoon to stir the mixture until combined.
3. Put a candy thermometer in the saucepan, cook over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage, 235 degrees F.
4. Remove from heat, stir in the butter and Osmanthus until well combined.
   
5. Pour the mixture over the crispy rice cereal. Quickly stir until the cereal until it is thoroughly coated. Then press into the 8-inch square baking pan. Let the bars cool to room temperature, chill to set.