🎍 Happy New Year!🎍
Brand New Year has arrived! During 2016 I experienced many new things and thank you all the people who visited my Blog. I wish you all a very Happy New Year! 🙂
japanese food
Sweet ‘Mochi Snowman’ ⛄
This year we are having very mild winter in England. We hardly need to heat rooms during daytime and wear gloves outside. So it is very unlikely that we are going to have a White Christmas. Although it is not cold, in my mind “Winter = Snow” so another sweet I made in the Winter theme was this one.
Mochi Snowman
It is made of ‘Mochi‘ Rice Cake type of sweet.
Christmas WA-Pudding
What kind of traditional Food do you have during the Christmas season? In England people have Roast Turkey with Gravy for their meal and then Mince Pie or Christmas Pudding for dessert or Tea.
I wanted to make some Japanese Sweet with a Christmas theme so after thinking for a few days decided to make this fusion sweet.
Christmas WA-Pudding
It might look like just a normal Christmas Pudding which is a wheat cake with lots of dried fruits and steamed in a quite big bowl. My version is much much smaller, just about 5cm in diameter. It is actually a very traditional Japanese sweet ‘Nerikiri‘ that is made from sweet Bean paste, rice flour and sugar. The white part is also made from sweet White Bean Paste and not icing sugar.
🎄 Market was a Success!
Our yearly event ‘Christmas Market’ is over!
Thank you very much for the people who came to the Market and stopped by our Sakura Junction stall. My preparation for the market started a week earlier and in the morning on the day I finally wrapped up my sweets for taking them to the venue.
These are some of the little ones.
Japanese Themed 🎄Market🎄 in North London
How time flies! I feel like it was just a month ago that I mentioned Sakura Junction had a successful stall in the Christmas Market in 2015. Now it is the time again that we are going to have a stall for introducing our sweets to public.
The 🎄Christmas Market🎄 is actually TOMORROW!!
These are some of the range that I am going to take for the market.
On top of the various Japanese sweets we are going to serve ‘Chicken Kara-age (Japanese Fried Chiken)’ this year.
There are Sushi and some other food as well. You can have nice Japanese lunch or Tea with my sweet there.
The venue is in North London. If you live near by or even from different part of London please pop in to see me. I have been working very hard to prepare for this occasion so will be very happy if you come to say ‘Hi’ in person💓
The Market is open only for 4 hours! So don’t miss it! See you there.
Matcha Ukishima Cake with Sweet Chestnut
This is one of the sweets I assorted for creating the Sweet Gift Box in an Autumn theme which I introduced on my previous post. It might look like a normal western cake but it is actually very Japanese sweet.
Autumn Sweet Gift Box
Just before Halloween I received an order for a gift box of Japanese Sweets. I was told that the gift was for a family with Japanese and also some non-Japanese people so that the client wanted me to make variety of sweets that could be enjoyed by everybody. I thought a lot to decide which sweets were most suitable and seasonal for this occasion.
These are the finalists for “Autumn Sweet Box Set”.
The selected sweets for this occasion in the photo (↑) from right to left
- Matcha Ukishima Cake with Sweet Chestnut (Free from Gluten, Oil & Dairy)
- Halloween Jack-O’-Lantern (Free from Gluten, Egg, Oil & Dairy)
- Mochi Sweet Chestnut (Free from Gluten, Egg, Oil & Dairy)
- Japanese Maple (Free from Gluten, Egg, Dairy)
- Plaine Castella (Free from Oil & Dairy)
In case you cannot get a good view of them from the top these are the side shots of them which are much closer.
Japanese Maple in Autumn Colour
Day by day Autumn is setting in here in London. First thing which comes to my mind by thinking about Autumn is colour change in Leaves. It would defines as Autumn Colours so it should be the most significant part of this season. In Japan we have four completely different seasons. Warm & beautiful Spring with lots of Cherry blossom, very hot & humid Summer, very cold Winter with deep snow in some area and then … this Autumn. Our Autumn is very between summer and winter, but it is not just that. During the transition period between two totally different seasons a significant temperature change causes the beautiful Autumn Colour in leaves. The Nature is Science. It is amazing!
Japan is a very mountainous country and the sight of mountains in Autumn colour is so magnificent. It does not get defeated by the sight of marvellous view of Sakura, Cherry blossom in spring. We even have a word ‘Momiji-gari‘. ‘Momiji‘ is a Japanese word for Japanese Maple and ‘Gari/Kari‘ means Hunting. Well, we do not hunt/harvest Maple leaves literally but it means that we go out to the countryside to enjoy the amazing view of mountains which are covered in various colours in yellow to red.
The most famous plant with the leaves in Autumn colour is ‘Momiji‘, Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum). I thought it represents beautiful Autumn the most so I made my version of it as a sweet.
Japanese Maple, Momiji
Yes, we call the plant ‘Momiji‘ not ‘Emoji‘. Please don’t be confused. 😀
Mochi Sweet Chestnut – The Taste of Autumn
Officially it is Autumn now. In the UK the clock has been set back to Winter Time so that morning starts in darkness and the Sun sets very early. The weather has been becoming more and more wet and miserable. On the contrary in Japan Autumn is described as for 1. Sport, 2. Appetite, 3. Arts, 4. Reading Books and then 5. Great Autumn Colour and more!
The reason that “Autumn is for Appetite” is simply because there are so many tasty food that become available during this season. They are Mushrooms (including super Mushroom ‘Matsutake‘), Fruits (such as ‘Kaki’ Persimmon), Sweet Potatoes, Ginkgo Nuts and so on …
However, the delicacy we enjoy the most of all is ‘Kuri’ – Sweet Chestnut. Everybody loves Sweet Chestnut in Japan. I have to say that it is almost like “Kuri = Autumn” for Japanese. We make lots of sweet with Kuri Chestnut and we cook even rice with it.
So inevitably I chose Sweet Chestnut as the material for the sweet of November.
Kuri – Mochi Sweet Chestnut
Trick or Treat! Jack-O’-Lantern 🎃
I made two types of Japanese Sweets on the Halloween theme this year. One of them was ‘Mochi Ghost’ in my previous post and the other one was ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’.
Jack-O’-Lantern
These are my ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’.
Sakura Junction 