Something is hiding in the darkness.
It is someone who likes going into a small box, who gets afraid of a sudden appearance of a cucumber and who people started to think could be liquid… However, more importantly it is one of the main characters for the coming Halloween.
Can you guess who it is? 🐈
Oh, we are in October now. It is the month that Halloween is coming! Last year I made two types of Japanese sweets for this Halloween month. One of them was Jack-o’-Lantern and the other one was Mochi Ghost. Actually I started making a Ghost like sweet two years ago and then last year’s Ghost was my revenge creation because the first one was not that a great Ghost. I made a blog post and tweeted about it with photos and then actually it got a good reaction from people. I received many great comments regarding the sweet (Thak you!). The Ghost sweet was also served at Wasoukan Café (Notting Hill, London) and the manager told me that that sweet was the best seller amongst all the sweets they had sold last year. I started thinking that I should make this Ghost sweet as my yearly traditional sweet in this season so that I created another one for this year’s version.
I made a little similar one in order to meet the people’s expectation but slightly different Mochi Ghost again. This time it is vertically standing 3D Ghost.
It happened again!! Just before Halloween a Mochi Ghost was found being murdered.
His snow white soft Mochi body was cut into two and the purple sweet organ and sticky vivid red blood are oozed out …
Now, we are investigating this tasty Incident to solve the mystery. 👻👻👻👻👻
Have a wonderful Weekend!
Japanese Anemone
Apart from Grape Mochi the sweet I have created for my September Japanese sweet. I used a perennial flower called Japanese Anemone as the inspiration for this time. Japanese Anemone get lots of flowers around this time of a year which has either pink or white petals with a greenish yellow round centre. When the flower’s gone this round part stays and it looks like small a pom-pom on a stick sticking out from the plant.
I chose Japanese Anemone as the design for this month’s sweet not just because it is a very seasonal flower in gardens right at the moment but also it has the word ‘Japanese’ in its name. What else is more suitable for this occasion than that.
September has just started. It means it’s the time that my sweet for this brand new month should be introduced. During the spring – summer season we get various fruits and vegetables harvested or found in a shop and I have used some as inspiration for the flavour or the image of my sweets such as mango, strawberry or Raspberry. So what kind of plant or fruit I can use for my sweet this month?
The variety of fruits are becoming less in this season. Luckily I found a very good one. Actually it was in my garden. I noticed that there were some branches stretching out from the next door. That was a grape vine and the fruit was just getting ripen. Yes, it is not my plant but some branches are coming into my side and reachable, AND nobody-else seems to care, And I think it is a sin to waste food so I took some grapes and tasted. It was a little sour and tangy comparing to the shop bought ones but not too bad to eat.
The Grapes from my garden
So, it is the Grape season now and I used this inspiration for creating my September Japanese Sweet.
This is a Mochi type sweet. I decorated the plain Mochi with Grape pattern as a reminder of what is inside.
When schools break up for summer holiday, it is the signal that lots of local festivals are ready to start all around in Japan. Many stalls appear in a square that sell food or goods to the people visiting. There are some stalls for offering games too and ‘Kingyo-sukui’ is the one of them. ‘Kingyo’ means Goldfish and ‘Sukui’ is a noun form of a verb to-scoop in Japanese. So what does ‘Scooping-Goldfish’ mean?
Children enjoying ‘Kingyo-sukui’
On the Kingyo-sukui stall they bring a pond with many small Goldfish. The customers pay to get a small ladle which is made of paper and can keep scooping goldfish until the paper tears up and it is no longer possible to scoop up any fish. That is the time that game is over! At the end of the game you can take the goldfish home you scooped. I have to say I was very good at Kingyo-sukui when I was a child. I could get about 20 goldfish easily with just a one paper ladle.
So when I see Goldfish it reminds me of the Summer holiday. It is very nostalgic and that is why I chose Goldfish as the design for the sweet for August.
Although the fish is called Goldfish, the main colour of them is Red, bright red so the Goldfish on my sweet is also Red.
I want to know whether we are still in the summer in London. It’s neither hot or warm any more. It is actually quite cool. It is the first day in August today but I already feel like that summer has gone. Autumn must be coming soon or we are already in Autumn. I know usually Indian summer comes around September but still it is too cold for mid summer.
In order to get rid of this cold rainy feeling I had to make something very summery sweet. In my mind ‘Summer = tropical = fruit = … Mango!’ That is why I chose Mango as the flavour for my Mochi for August.
Have a Fabulous Weekend! 😀
It is the middle of Summer in the UK. The weather is so far so good. Many sunny days and also a few rainy days. It is great for plants and nature. In the summer time one plant you cannot avoid talking about is ‘Sunflower’. The most significant things about this flamboyant flower are its huge flowerhead with array of magnificent yellow petals and big leaves. It’s called ‘Himawari’ in Japanese and it means the ‘thing moves with the sun’. It came from the plant’s nature that the flowerhead moves its direction by always trying to face toward the sun.
During this summer time I wanted to make this most summer-like flower as a Japanese sweet.
Sakura Junction 