It was ‘Hinamatsuri’ the Girl’s Day yesterday. I have mentioned about the Japanese culture of praying for the good health and happiness of girls on the 3rd of March on my previous post. We decorate our home with Hina Dolls of Emperor and Empress as well as some other figures on red carpeted shelves, that are between five to seven shelves (or even more) traditionally. I created some sweets in shapes of the dolls in the past. On this day we don’t just decorate but also eat a sweet called ‘Hishimochi’ which means diamond-shaped Mochi which I also have created it once before.

There is one sweet that people particularly in the Kyoto area eat for the Girl’s Day but I was not familiar with it until recently. The sweets are called ‘Hichigiri’. I heard that this sweet was born in the palace in the old time in probably the Heian period. People needed to make many Mochi to serve so many guests that they were too busy to roll up each Mochi piece into a ball shape. Then they just pulled small pieces and left the pulled shape as it was. If you understand ‘Kanji’ (Chinese) character you know Hichigiri  (引千切) means literally ‘pull and cut into a thousand’. I could imagine that the Palace kitchen was so busy.😆

Hichigiri

So this year I tried creating these sweets for Hinamatsuri.

It is a sweet with a ‘Mochi’ type base with sweet Azuki (Red) bean paste and covered with pink and white ‘Nerikiri’ on top. I made the base Mochi in three colours of simple white and pink Mochi and also green one coloured and flavoured with ‘Yomogi’ wild leaves.

This was the first time that I created Hichigiri sweets. I have seen this sweets on the internet many times and thought it looked easy to make, however, it was far more difficult to make the shape than I imagined. Who ever thought making Mochi into the pulled shape would take less time?

It’s Vegan and Gluten free.

Although the weather was quite rough in London on this cheerful Girl’s Day, I hope you had a wonderfully Happy Girl’s Day!😊