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Sweet 🌹 Roses for Valentine’s Day

/ Mutsumi / 9 Comments

We are in February. It is the month of Valentine’s Day. So I wanted to make some suitable sweet for this particularly ‘Love’ month. In Japan by following an opportunist Chocolate company’s strategy Valentine’s day became the day that a girl gives chocolate to the boy she likes, but I am in London and I will just create something that shows love between people.

In England it does not matter if you are a man or a woman you can give flowers, a card or a book, anything to the person you love. However, I think the most common things people choose as a gift are flowers so I made a sweet in a shape of flower with Love.

Sweet Roses

When you express your love with flowers I believe Roses are the most obvious choice for many people. I had an idea to decorate my Japanese sweet as a rose for a white and used it for this month’s sweet.

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‘Sensu’ Folding Fan

/ Mutsumi

I say here once again ‘Happy New Year!’. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. In Japan New Year is such a big deal so the first three days of January are national holidays. Traditionally we celebrate those days in very Japanese style visually, musically and spiritually. So naturally I would like to make a very Japanese looking sweet for this New Year month.

‘Sensu’ Folding Fan 

I wondered what was very Japanese in design. I thought something that relates to Japanese clothing ‘Kimono’ must be surely very Japanese. The pattern and the texture of the silk print and embroidery work are unmistakably Japanese. So I had been thinking what was suitable as the design for my sweet making and decided to create a sweet in a shape of one of the important props when you wear Kimono. It is a folding fan called ‘Sensu’ that is made of Japanese paper ‘Washi’.

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Japanese Anemone

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Japanese Anemone

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.

Japanese Anemone

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.

Japanese Anemone2p

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Mochi Hydrangea

/ Mutsumi / 11 Comments

It is ‘Tsuyu’ Rainy season again, I mean in Japan. Instead, we are having a heat wave here in London right now. Actually it is the longest heat wave in June for 20 years. But back to talking about the rainy season in Japan. We get an announcement when the rainy season starts in each region, however, it is quite common that it stops raining after the declaration. This year seems to be the example of that year because I just checked today’s weather in Japan and saw ☀ for almost all the area.

Anyway, however the weather is, it is June and it is the begining of the rainy season and the symbol of the season is ‘Ajisai’ Hydrangea flower.

Mochi Hydrangea

Last year I designed a Japanese sweet Hydrandea by getting  inspiration from the flower of June. It was a ‘Nerikiri’ type of sweet. However, because ‘Mochi’ is very popular in London, I have been trying to think how I could make this flower in a Mochi type of sweet. I came up with an idea and here is the result.

Ajisai 5 Continue reading →