food photos

Strawberry Daifuku

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It is a phenomenon to me that there are so many western people who likes ‘Mochi’ these days. Mochi is Rice Cake and usually we make it by pounding glutinous sweet rice. When I looked back at the time when I started making Japanese food and sweet to friends in England many years ago, everybody disliked Mochi. It could be to do with the gooey texture or quite blank taste I don’t know, but even when Mochi was hot or cold, sweet or savoury it didn’t go well. However, now so many people like it or even love Mochi!

Strawberry Daifuku

I have introduced you Clementine Daifuku two weeks ago. It is a very good version of fruity ‘Mochi’ type sweet. Mochi goes well with Sweet Bean Paste and fresh Fruit. But the most known fruity Mochi sweet is this Strawberry Daifuku.

Strawberry Daifuku

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The Answer is … Clementine Mochi!

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This is ‘Clementine Daifuku’. Daifuku is a ‘Mochi’ type Japanese Sweet and usually filled with Sweet Bean Paste inside the Mochi outer layer. However, the combination of it with additional fruit is great and ‘Ichigo Daifuku’, the one with strawberry, is very tasty and hugely popular. I had seen someone was making Daifuku with tangerine and wanted to try making it myself.

 

Clementine Daifuku

I made some of these Japanese Sweets with Orange coloured Mochi outer layer and some with white one (natural Mochi colour). It was not that unusual if I left the white sweet as it was, but when I placed the green part on top it looked something so unknown. It made me think it could be a round white aubergine or … what? That was how the ‘Guess What this Sweet’ Quiz started in my previous post.

Clementine Daifuku3

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Hichigiri for Hinamatsuri

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Usa hinaIt 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 HichigiriΒ  (εΌ•εƒεˆ‡) means literally ‘pull and cut into a thousand’. I could imagine that the Palace kitchen was so busy.πŸ˜†

Hichigiri

So this year I tried creating these sweets for Hinamatsuri.

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Ghost 2018

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This is my Ghost sweet for this Halloween in 2018. I have been making Ghost shaped Japanese sweets for the last three years. I created this one as the example of one of the sweets that I was planning to make in the Wagashi, Japanese Sweet, Workshop with participants. However, we changed the theme for the event in the end and I did not have a chance to make this Ghost in the event. I liked how the shape and the charming face of this ghost came out, so I hope I can create it in another workshop maybe next year.

Ghost 2018

Ghost '18 (2)

Happy Halloween πŸŽƒ

Shiba Inu Supports Japan!!

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In my previous post I mentioned about the Football World Cup. Both England and Japan went through the Group matches to the knock out stage. I created British Bulldog sweet for supporting England so I have to create some other sweet for supporting Japan too.

Shiba Inu for Japan

In order to support Japan I made one of typically Japanese dogs ‘Shiba Inu’.

Shiba Inu

How does he look?

Anyway, the tournament match Japan x Belgium is on tonight. Actually it has just started right now. I hope my little Shiba Inu will help Japan win the game!

Go πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅ Japan!!