Before the year 2018 finished I received an order of my sweets from a Tea shop My Cup of Tea (Piccadilly Circus, London). I was asked to make two types of sweets for their Tea & Sweet Tasting event. I have already introduced one of the sweets that I had created for them. That is Gingko, here on my blog. It was a ‘Mochi’ type sweet with the soft and sweet Mochi outer layer wrapping up sweet white bean paste filling inside created into a shape of Ginkgo leaf in yellow autumn colour.

So I wanted make another sweet with a different type of material. I also wanted it to have a little more colourful design and then I chose a sweet in a pretty flower shape of Cosmos.

Cosmos

This is one of the designs I selected as ‘Nerikiri’ sweets. Nerikiri is one of the most traditional Japanese sweets that is used to serving at a tea ceremony. Because it was still Autumn time I created it into a Cosmos flower. It is actually quite a nostalgic flower for me from my childhood. It comes in a shade of white to striking dark pink colour on very soft and delicate looking leaves.

The leaf part on the sweets are coloured and flavoured with ‘Matcha’ green tea. Its slight bitterness creates great harmony with the sweetness of the sweet Azuki Bean filling and other Nerikiri part.

I selected Sweet Azuki (Red) Bean Paste as the centre filling for this sweet because this sweet was for the Tea and Sweet tasting event. I assumed that the attendants would not be that familiar with Japanese Tea and Sweets culture and I wanted them to taste the most traditional flavour of our sweets first.

It is Vegan and Gluten and Dairy free.

How about having these sweets for your own Tea Tasting occasion?