Mochi Mummy 👻 Japanese sweets (Vegan, gluten free)
Makkuro-kuro-mochi dressed up as a mummy for going to a Halloween party tonight.
Have fun in a safe environment.
gluten free
Happy New Year 2022！
Wagashi Workshop in London
Dear Wagashi Lovers,
Your long waiting is over! I am pleased to announce that the ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweets Making Workshop in London will be held next month. The theme of the workshop is “Autumn Colour” and we are going to make ‘Momiji’ Japanese maple, Ginkgo leaf and Chrysanthemum. All the sweets we will make are vegan and gluten free.
Although it will be held at our usual venue, the Havan Store, because of the concern regarding the pandemic, this time we’ll have two sessions of a smaller class with a limited number of participants.
Wagashi Making Workshop in Autumn
- Date: the 13th November (Saturday)
- Time: 11:30 – 13:00 / 14:45 – 16:15
The ticket sales have just started. For getting your seat could you please visit:
https://thehavan.com/product-category/event/
Hope to see you there.
Mochi Watermelon in London
I have been creating several Japanese sweets with summer fruits. They are mochi with nectarines, coconut & pineapple etc and the newest version are these ones in the photo. It’s Mochi Watermelon.
Mochi Watermelon
They are Mochi type sweets in the shape of Watermelons. The centre filling was made with plenty of watermelon juice so it is not just the shape that the sweet is like a watermelon, but the flavour is the real too. For the fruit seeds I added some black sesame seeds inside. I was a little sceptical for adding coarse ingredient into a smooth sweet, however, it was a big delight to find out the little crunch of sesame seeds gives a great texture in your mouth.
These sweets are Vegan and Gluten free.
These Mochi Watermelons are one of the Japanese sweets available for you at the Havan Store (262 Kensington High St, London) weekends now with pre-order. Another available sweets are Matcha Strawberry Mochi Daifuku and Coconut & Pineapple Mochi.
Wagashi Day in 2021
Two days ago it was Wagashi Day.
Wagashi Day started dating back to the year 848 when there was an outbreak of plague in Japan. On the 16th of June the Emperor made the offering of sixteen confectionery to a shinto shrine as the greater purification of bad luck. He prayed for the end of the epidemic and good health. Since then this day became Wagashi Day.
Instead of making offering, I have been using the day as an opportunity to introduce my creations. Although Wagashi day passed two days ago, I’m going to show you my sixteen sweets I created in the year 2020 and pray for the end of this pandemic and great health to you all! 😊💕
So, belated Happy Wagashi Day! 😊💕
Mochi Mont Blanc
When is the best season for having Mont Blanc sweets? It’s using chestnuts so I assume it must be Autumn. However, being a chestnut food lover there is no such thing as a bad time for having Mont Blanc for me.
Mochi Mont Blanc
So I created this Mochi version of Mont Blanc. On top of a soft mochi type sweet plenty of chestnut cream swirled up. It was a little hard to squeeze out chestnut paste and it does not look as I wanted. However, it is a hand/home-made sweets after all. If it tastes good, who cares.
Beautiful Sakura Season
When I opened my blog for writing this new article I was so shocked to realize that it hasn’t been updated since the beginning of March. I know I haven’t posted much lately but there’s no excuse for nearly three months of absence. However, one thing I can tell you is that I have been creating sweets and there are lots of photos of them and half written articles in my folder. It was just because many things happened. We are at the end of May now and I have almost missed the opportunity to post about the beautiful Sakura season. Almost! We are still in springtime, right? So, it’s better late than never!
The beautiful season passed very quickly. I am talking about the Sakura Cherry blossom season of course. In a normal year cherry blossom flowers at the beginning of April. It’s the start of an academic year in Japan so all parents and children who are dressed up for the entrance ceremony to school take a photo with fully blossoming cherry trees. However, I heard that cherry blossom opened so early this year and it was actually the earliest flowering in 1200 years in Japan. It means that the parents and children could not have a memory shot in front of the beautiful sakura this year sadly.
Although it’s been so cold in the UK for 2-3 weeks now in May, we had wonderful weather at the beginning of April. It was good enough weather for viewing single-petal cherry blossoms which was also great timing when the strict lockdown was just eased a little. Lots of people were in the park but still socially distancing between each group.
Sakura sweets
For this springtime I made several cherry blossom sweets and the first ones are these. They might look similar to the one I made last spring but I introduced a little different technique.
Hina Mochi
The 3rd of March, was Hina-matsuri the Girls’ Day in Japan. People celebrated the girls’ healthy growth by placing Hina-dolls and having some special food and drink on this day. The most famous meal for this day is Chirashi Sushi with clear soy sauce based soup with clams. Since it is the flowering season of Plum tree, the day is also called Momo-no-sekku which means Plum blossom day. In sweets wise we have Hishi-mochi, a diamond-shaped tri-coloured mochi in green, white and pink, and Hina-rice-crackers etc.
Hina-Mochi
I made a Mochi type sweet for this year’s Hina-matsuri. What I wanted to create was a mochi which reminds of Hishi-mochi sweet.
Snowing but Nearly Spring
By following Storm-Darcy’s arrival to the UK very cold air has been sitting over London for a few days now. It snowed at the weekend and since then we still have some white cover left on ground even after two sunny days. It may seem like we are in the middle of winter but I know nature is preparing to be ready for spring.
Nearly Spring
I created this sweet with the image that a tiny plant sprouting out from white blanket of snow in my mind.
New Year and Kagami-Mochi
The transition period from the end of a year to New Year in Japan is interesting. Traditionally we close a year by listening ‘Joya-no-kane’, 108 gongs of a huge bell at a Buddhism temple. In the Buddhism world it is believed that each person has 108 evil passions so each time hitting the bell it is removing our passion from us before starting the new year.
However, when we celebrate the New Year in a totally Shinto style. Of course we are all sin-less thanks to the Joya-no-kane on the previous night so it is a happy celebratory morning. When I was a child my family used to have a morning bath and changed into brand new underwear. When we sat at the table the first thing to do is haveing a little alcoholic beverage called ‘O-toso’ in a flat goblet and hope that all family would be well and healthy all through the year. We moved onto the breakfast having ‘O-sechi’ (special New Year meal prepared previously) and ‘O-zoni’ (Mochi in broth).
There are so many other customs we do only in New Year but one of them is placing ‘Kagami-Mochi’ in certain places. It is basically a set of two round mochi ( which are pounded glutinous savoury rice and not the dessert mochi sweets with ice cream inside) with a citrus fruit ‘Dai-dai’ on top. Normally it also gets decorated with some green leaves and white paper cut into Shinto style, but how you decorate it depends on the family.
Kagami Mochi
All the things I wrote above are the customs in Japan. I’ve been living in the UK for a long time and haven’t done much traditional custom in the past, however, I felt I wanted to do some for this year so I made Kagami-mochi.
Sakura Junction 