The Children’s Day has ended. It was the 5th of May in Japan. There are several traditions people do on that day including eating special food, particularly sweets. One of them is called ‘Kashiwa Mochi’. As you can guess from the name it is a ‘Mochi’ type of sweet and has some kind of central filling inside. The filling can be various but normally it is Sweet Azuki (Red) Bean Paste. The most characteristic feature of the sweet has come from its figure. It is wrapped up with an Oak leaf and ‘Kashiwa’ in its name means Oak in Japanese.

I saw many photos of Kashiwa Mochi on social media. I really wanted to eat it so I suddenly started making my own one on the Children’s Day. That is why I could not post this article in time. However, there was a problem. I didn’t have Oak leaves for wrapping the sweet…

Kashiwa Mochi

This was the solution for having my own Kashiwa Mochi. I made a Leaf with Japanese sweet so the leaf is edible too.

I used ‘Tsubu-an’ Sweet Azuki (Red) Bean Paste as the filling. This is simply because Tsubu-an is my favourite filling.

I prepared soft Mochi and wrapped the filling. I could eat it as it was but I decided to steam it to give it a more gooier and bouncier texture.

Before eating I wrapped the sweet with a Leaf shaped sweet which was coloured with Matcha green tea.

Because you can eat Mochi sweet with the leaf together in my version it actually taste better than normal Kashiwa Mochi with a real Oak leaf.

It was a happy Mochi day on the Bank Holiday for me!