Wagashi Workshop in London in Summer

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I have hosted several ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweet Making Workshops. They were mainly for adults and I had been thinking that it would be great if I could have a Workshop that people could participate with their children. In order to make this plan possible there were several issues to clear and the biggest one of them was that the event has to be held daytime. For solving the problem I thought it would be best if the event was held during the school holiday period. In case this idea happens, I have been considering several designs for sweets which are attractive and also simple enough for children to make but enjoyable for adults too. After going through many possibilities I finally picked three designs in the summer theme and set up a date and the venue to have a workshop on the 25th of July.

 

Wagashi Making Workshop (July/’19)

I had a ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweet Making Workshop in the Summer theme on the 25th of July and it ended well.

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Morning Glory, the Summer Sweet

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How’s your summer been so far? (Sorry, it’s winter for the people who live on the Southern Hemisphere). Here in London we had a record breaking hot day in July which was followed by some rainy cold days and now some sunny but still quite chilly days as summer. I wonder whether the Indian summer will come this year.

Morning Glory

I made some Japanese sweets in a summer flower design. This is one of them, Morning Glory. I think it’s the most summery flowers. It is the first plant that I have sown the seeds and looked after myself when I was a child.

Morning Glory2-2

I made this sweet because I received a private order. It is one of the best sweets for summertime.

Wagashi Workshop in London in July

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I have been thinking to have a ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweet Making Workshop in London with a summer theme for a long time. Although I was trying to make a plan, there were several obstacles in front of me and it took quite a while to set up an event. I wanted to do my Workshop in July which is the school holiday time so that children can join the activity with their parents.

So, I have finally fixed the day and the venue of my next Workshop. Because I wasted so much time for sorting out the problems, the time I have until the actual day became much shorter than I wanted it to be. I’ve got just TWO WEEKS from today. I hope many people find this workshop attractive and want to join me.

 

Wagashi Making Workshop in London

  • on: The 25th July (Thursday) 2:00-4:00pm
  • at : The Crouch End Cellars (55 The Broadway, Crouch End, London N8 8DT)

Workshop summer1

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Galaxy Mizu Yokan

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This Sunday, the 7th of July, is a special day called ‘Tanabata’ in Japan. It’s not a national holiday but it is the day that everybody hopes to have good weather and looks up at the sky in the evening. It came from the ancient story that a young loving couple was forced to live separately each side of a river by the God. It was because they loved being together too much and neglected their work. However, the God saw that they were too saddened about the fact that they could not see each other anymore, he gave them permission that they could cross the river to meet once a year if the weather was good and the sky was clear. That one day they are allowed to see is the 7th of July. It’s an ancient story which was supposed to be happening in the sky. The lovers were actually stars and the river was the Milky way. I mentioned this story in more detail in the past so if you are interested to know more, please visit my old post of Tanabata with Cosmos sweet.

So the Tanabata day is coming tomorrow. It is known as a Star festival and a wishing day in Japan and there are some places having a festival too. Last year I made the Bamboo Japanese sweet for this occasion with ‘Sasa’ Bamboo leaf shaped sweet and the red and yellow wishing paper strips as decoration. I was wondering what sort of sweet I should make for this year’s Tanabata day. I wanted to make something quite different.

Galaxy Mizu Yokan

This one is my Tanabata sweet this year.

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Roses

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Oh, No! How time flies! We are already in July. Time passes so fast and it’s so difficult for me to catch up! I made these Rose sweets a little while ago but could not post it here until now.

Roses

Anyway, there are a lot of ways to express a Rose flower in a Japanese sweet. I have made several sweets in the past including the Mochi Rose last year.  The one here is using the same technique for making the Mochi Rose but I used ‘Nerikiri’ sweet instead of ‘Mochi’ this time.

Roses1

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Clematis

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Clematis is one of my favourite flowers. Last year I made a Clematis sweet with a ‘Mochi’ type sweet so this year I wanted to create it in a different way. I decided to make it with a ‘Nerikiri’ sweet. The Clematis flowers are normally from white to pink or purple colour which is the colour I like the most. However, I did not want to use any food colouring this time so I used Ube Purple sweet potato/yam to colour and flavour the sweet. I like purple blue Clematis flower so that helped too.

Clematis 

By using the same sweet material in two colours (and flavour) of white and purple I created these two types.

Clematis 19-4

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Another Form of Wisteria

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I have introduced two types of my Wisteria sweets previously that I created by using two types of tools. And then I thought I could create another Wisteria sweet in a slightly different and possibly better design, so I wanted try to see if my method will work. Basically I was not satisfied with previous designs because they did not look Purple showering enough! It needed more flowers hanging down like a real shower.

Another Wisteria

So I created this sweet as an experiment. The technique is quite similar to the designs of the Wisteria I had made earlier by placing two layers in different colours and removing the top layer and revealing the bottom colour from the cut.

Wisteria v2-1

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Wagashi Day 2019

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Today, the 16th of June, is the Wagashi Day (please read the article about this day that I posted in 2017). It started as the day that the emperor made sixteen of ‘Wagashi’ Japanese sweets as the offering to the God when the plague took place and destroyed people’s lives in the Heian period. Although the day was set as the Wagashi Day since then, the custom of the offering almost died down. However, just recently people started bringing this Memorial day back.

By following the custom of offering, I re-introduce sixteen sweets of my Wagashi I had created in the previous year here.

16 My Wagashi in 2018

Here are the sixteen sweets from all Wagashi Japanese sweets I have created in the year 2018.

With these sixteen sweets offering/photos I just hope our world is going to reshift towards a better direction. Happy Wagashi Day!