- (speaking Japanese)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of Anime With Alvin.
Today we'll be making taiyaki, a fish shaped pastry
often enjoyed in Japan,
commonly made with a simple batter
that surrounds a variety of fillings.
The fillings can vary a bit from red bean,
to custard, to chocolate, to even savory stuff.
And although I've had them in Japan,
I think it would be quite fun to try to make our own.
This is a taiyaki pan made out of a heavier,
thicker steel that can be put directly over a flame.
Let's get started.
The batter is quite simple.
We're gonna go ahead and sift five cups of cake flour
with four teaspoons of baking powder,
four teaspoons of baking soda,
and add in a three quarters cup of sugar
and one teaspoon of kosher salt.
Once that gets tossed together, we work on our liquids.
Four eggs go into three cups of whole milk.
Instead of trying to whisk it
and making sure there aren't any streaks,
I like to use an immersion blender
for large quantities like this.
Now all we simply do is dump this yellow milk egg mixture
into the dry ingredients, and again, mix until smooth,
putting the immersion blender
to good use so there's no lumps.
The immersion blender is pretty aggressive
and pretty rough on the batter, so we do need
to let this rest at least 30 minutes at room temperature.
Let's make a custard filling first, shall we?
In a small sauce pan over medium heat,
I'm warming half a cup of a whole milk
just until it starts to bubble around the edges
and steam starts to rise from the surface.
In the meantime, in a bowl goes one egg yolk,
along with two tablespoons of sugar,
half a teaspoon of kosher salt,
and one tablespoon of cake flour.
With that together till it's nice and sticky,
and slowly with the help of someone or yourself
strain in the hot milk bit by bit,
mixing the whole time
making sure to temper the mixture
into the eggs and not dump it all in at once.
Once the hot milk has gotten
to become pretty good friends with the eggs,
they both go back into their hot pot to begin with.
This mixture gets cooked until it is starting
to bubble continuously from the surface.
It's important to stir the whole time,
or else you might get some lumps
and burning on the bottom,
and that won't be that great.
Once those dig bubbles are starting to happen,
throw in one tablespoon of butter
to give it some flavor, sheen,
and just, I mean, butter tastes good,
and it's pretty good to have butter and stuff.
Then in goes one teaspoon
of vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste.
Sort of combine it, and make sure to transfer this
to a bowl where you cover it in plastic wrap,
making the plastic wrap touched the surface
of the custard to prevent a skin from forming.
This goes in the fridge to chill.
Now that our batter has been well rested,
we could probably trial run.
a few of these into our taiyaki pan over medium,
low heat goes a little spoonful of the batter.
This is my first time,
so I'm not sure how much to put in,
but I'm just eyeballing it.
For the filling, I'm using a traditional
red bean paste filling.
Now we've actually had some leftover
from our Spirited Away red bean bun recipe,
but if you wanna learn how to make it,
there's plenty of YouTube videos and well,
you could also watch our other video as well.
So roughly two minutes on the first side
and one minute on the second.
Hey, this turned out pretty cool.
It's very common to have spillage over the edges,
so a lot of vendors in Japan I've seen new scissors
or another tool to trim away those little edge pieces.
And what you have is a nice looking fish pastry.
Oh, well it looks like our time wasn't correct.
A little bit undercooked in the middle, but we can adjust
that by adding about 15 seconds to the final cook time.
But the flavor, despite the raw batter, it's pretty spot on.
All right, second attempt batter in,
plop in some red bean paste into the head of the fish,
cover with just a little bit more batter, press clamp close.
Flip and wait for two and a half minutes
for the first side.
After a minute on the second side,
we flip it again, check it,
making sure that is not stuck to the surface.
Oh, it looks like this fish.
It's a little on the smaller side.
It's missing an entire fin, so it seems
like we need to add a little bit more batter.
Please enjoy roughly 45 minutes of us experimenting
with the batters, the fillings, cook times, trimming edges,
and making just a whole army of fish,
or a school of fish, I might say.
Alright, let's move on to a different filling.
I'm using chocolate chips
for this one because we had chocolate lying around,
and I believe chocolate is a pretty delicious
filling inside one of these.
That one came out pretty good.
On this one, it seems like I have
put a little too much batter and chocolate.
It is now spilling out of these sides,
however, it is still very entertaining to watch.
As long as you don't get it stuck to the stove,
you should still end with a pretty nice pastry.
Since we have all the batter, we might as well make it all.
So we're making a few that don't have any filling,
so we can put the custard in later,
and a few that just have the chocolate
and the remaining parts of our red bean filling.
By the 10th batch or so,
I'd say we've pretty much nailed it to a science.
A little fishy friend,
I will name you George.
This is George when he looks in a mirror, his name is Jorge.
While we're at it, why not have some more fun?
I've seen a couple flavors of taiyaki around the world.
So, we're gonna scoop two ladle fulls of batter
into each bowl and give them two tablespoons each
of matcha powder and Dutch processed cocoa powder
respectively to make matcha and chocolate taiyaki.
This will inevitably make the batter slightly thicker,
but hopefully it shouldn't make a huge difference.
Matcha and red bean is a pretty common combination,
so that's the one we're gonna start with first.
Oh, the fish is less green than I had hoped for.
That is okay.
I will trust this guy to be green on the inside.
How about a chocolate one?
All right, chocolate batter in, lots of chocolate.
This is all about the chocolate.
Close the lid, and we have, again,
put too much stuff inside the thing
and stuff is starting to come out of the thing,
but I like to think there's nothing wrong with too much
because the pan is going to take what it needs
and give you the rest back, just like taxes.
We now have a total of 20 fish,
or taiyaki to be exact.
On this sheet tray
we have a normal batter one, a chocolate batter,
and a matcha batter alternating between the fillings
of red bean, plain, chocolate, and custard in a little bit.
Let's just go ahead and arrange these on a plate,
and we're gonna take one of the plain ones
and just inject it with custard through a piping bag.
I have filled this one
with too much custard and George has now exploded.
His sacrifice will be a lesson
well learned for the future fish.
After filling the ones we haven't filled before
and arranging them in a circular motion
on a plate plate as if they were swimming,
I now present to you, our many, many versions
of taiyaki from My Hero Academia,
although this snack does appear in many other anime.
Now, the only fun part left is to try and eat them all.
But first, please enjoy and watch as all
three fish swim in not the same direction.
I decided to go for a chocolate one,
Steve went for the matcha, and Rachel went for the plain.
Here are the fish with their heads bitten off
so you can see their insides.
I really like the chocolate on chocolate.
I think it really emphasizes the flavor,
but again, I also like a lot of other flavors.
A lot of these shops that sell taiyaki
also sell taiyaki ice cream cones.
So after I scoop out the insides of one of George's brother,
I'm filling it up to the top with our custard.
And then we had some strawberry ice cream
handmade leftover from our Celeste episode,
so I decided to throw that on there as well.
And why not put some more custard in the shape of a,
I don't know why I piped it like that,
but we're gonna try and cover that up
with a few chocolate chips,
and just eat the whole thing because, why not?
And I have to say, this tasted a lot like ice cream
and custard, which is nothing to complain about whatsoever.
Steve really enjoyed the matcha one as well,
Rachel enjoyed hers, and here is Sawyer
to help us finish off the rest of this fish school.
(upbeat music)