Pandora’s Box

I think the funny thing about growing up sandwiched between two polar-opposite cultures is that often I just couldn’t tell if a particular idea that made total sense to one side would be found by the other to be equally awesome or utterly bizarre.

Take this thing called Shibuya honey toast. It is an ingenious Japanese creation that basically involves cutting a whole loaf of sweet milk bread into humongous cubes, toasting them, removing the interiors, reprocessing them, then stuffing them back into the cubes and adding various toppings. To us Asians who are fanatics about milk toast—you know, those sweet, squishy, goosedown-pillow breads sold at Asian bakeries?—this is seriously genius stuff. But to the other side of me, raised to throw stones at people who eat bread that didn’t bloom from a decade-old levain...a sweet white bread bowl? Bizarre.

So I guess this recipe is my effort to make ultimate sense of it all. It is Shibuya honey toast, sort of. It is crème brûlée French toast, sort of. It even has a little bit of a custard-filled doughnut going on. The whole cube of crustless milk bread is encased in a shiny, shatteringly thin caramel shell, then filled with an enormous dollop of chamomile-infused vanilla bean custard. It’s crispy, soft, pillowy, and creamy all at once, with a few pops of tart fresh berry to give it a little shout.