September: I'm Dreaming of...

Figs have been more readily available this September so one early morning I made a fig/honey white bean mochi.

Ahhh, September...the transitional month from summer to autumn.  Again, I'm late with this post.  I started writing on the first of September but didn't finish it until now.

For some people I know autumn is their favourite time of year, but I love the early sun of summer, the sky on warm summer evenings and everything in-between that it's hard to say "til next year' - but I know we must.  Autumn is upon us tomorrow!

So, this September I've been Dreaming of...

Getting up early to brew tea - quality me time...
the last few months I've been pretty sporatic with my tea drinking and brewing habits 

Making mochi...
I've been experimenting with different methods and hopefully I'll be able to post on what I've experienced soon

and 

Baking with chocolate...

A while ago I picked up the Mast Brothers Chocolate Cookbook but only had time to flip through it.  Most of the pictures are brown and shadow-y because, well, chocolate is brown.  Anyway, nothing really caught my eye at the time so I left it for another time to read through.  Well, earlier this month I read through the cookbook and part of it is a baking/cookbook and part of it tells their story; the story of how they started their bean-to-bar business and their ethos.  It was quite interesting.  I knew part of their story from reading the book Small Batch but there is much more detail and I'm in awe of the drive and determination.

So, I baked a chocolate cupcake.  It was good but because I was serving it to my toddler, I cut the sugar just a bit and didn't make the ganache that topped it.  So, if I did as the recipe instructed, I think it would have been an awesome cupcake.

In the past I've stayed away from baking many chocolate things because usually it doesn't go well and secondly, I actually just like eating chocolate on it's own more than in a baked good.  But chocolate baked goods are usually crowd pleasers so it's good to know a few good chocolate recipes.

After I finished reading about Mast Brothers, I came across a post about Dandelion Chocolate in Japan.  Dandelion Chocolate is another American bean-to-bar chocolate brand that had expanded to Japan.  The post mentions a flight of brownies that you can purchase, each using a specific single-origin chocolate.  Definitely would love to try these out (but, actually my partner already makes the best brownies I've ever had) or attempt making various chocolate desserts using various single origin chocolates, but the cost would be quite prohibitive!

Enjoy the rest of September!