Japan Cake Journal

Baking guides, regional recipes and home kitchen notes

The Columns Index

Every piece the desk has run so far, grouped by beat: castella and chiffon method, souffle cheesecake troubleshooting, anko and matcha sourcing, and the reader test kitchen. Grams first, timings written for small kitchens and ordinary home ovens.

Square sponge cake on a wooden board beside a whisk and a bowl of batter

Castella technique

Castella Basics: Reading the Batter Before It Hits the Oven

Castella looks simple on paper: eggs, sugar, bread flour, honey and mirin. In a home kitchen the difficulty sits in the batter, not the ingredient list. This guide walks through the order of mixing, how far to whip the eggs, and what the surface should look like before the pan goes in. It also covers the two failures most readers write in about, a dense bottom layer and a top that browns before the centre sets, and what each one usually means about oven position and timing.

Read the guide
Sliced cheesecake on a plate with a soft browned top and a knife nearby

Souffle cheesecake

Souffle Cheesecake Troubleshooting for Small Ovens

Most souffle cheesecake problems are not about the recipe but about heat and timing. A small oven with a strong top element behaves differently from a wide one, and the water bath only helps if the pan sits at the right depth. This piece works through cracking, a sunken middle and a custardy centre as separate symptoms, with the adjustments that usually help. It also explains why a cheesecake that looks underdone at the centre can still be correct once it cools.

Read the column
Small bowls of green tea powder and dark bean paste on a counter with a spoon

Sourcing notes

Anko and Matcha in Johannesburg: What the Shelves Actually Carry

Anko and matcha are the two ingredients readers ask about most, and the answers depend on what is actually on the shelf. This column looks at the difference between smooth and chunky red bean paste, how sugar content changes the way it behaves in a dough, and why culinary matcha and drinking matcha are not interchangeable in baking. It also covers storage once a tin or pouch is open, since humidity in a Johannesburg summer does more damage than most bakers expect.

Read the column
Sliced white milk bread loaf on a wooden surface with soft square slices

Bread method

Shokupan in a Home Oven: Flour, Tangzhong and the Pull-Apart Crumb

Shokupan depends on a soft, even crumb, and the tangzhong method is what usually gets a home baker there. Local bread flours vary in protein and absorption, so a recipe written elsewhere can come out tight or dry. This piece explains what the cooked flour paste does to the dough, how to judge hydration by feel rather than by the numbers alone, and how to shape the loaf so the slices hold together for sandwiches. It closes with notes on cooling and storing, which matter more than most recipes admit.

Read the guide
Tall ring-shaped sponge cake on a stand with a slice cut away

Reader test kitchen

Reader Test Kitchen: Three Chiffon Attempts, One Working Adjustment

This month the test kitchen worked through three chiffon submissions from readers, each with a different problem: a cake that tore on unmoulding, one that shrank away from the pan, and one that tasted fine but felt heavy. The column records what each baker did, what the crumb showed, and which single change moved the result. It also explains why a tube pan and a lower oven shelf solve more chiffon problems than any change to the ingredient list.

Read the report

Send the desk a note about a column

Corrections, questions and bake-along submissions all land in the same place. If a chiffon tore on unmoulding, if a castella sank at the centre, or if you found a tin of anko worth writing about, the editorial desk reads it.

Useful details to include: what you baked, the flour and sugar you used, your oven setting, and what the crumb looked like once it cooled. For sourcing notes, the shop name and the label wording help more than a photo of the shelf.

Where to write

Open the contact page