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.
It is made of ‘Mochi‘ Rice Cake type of sweet.
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.
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.
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’.
These are my ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’.
It is getting colder now in the UK. However, before Winter is coming ‘Halloween is coming!’ I attempted making Japanese sweet last year in the Halloween theme. It was … OK but I was not satisfied. So this year I tried harder and these are the result.
I made two types of sweets for Halloween this year. First one is this Mochi Ghost 👻.
So I made this Matcha Soy Latte in exactly same way as my quite recent post: Iced Matcha Tea but just change Water into Soy Milk.
There are several grades in ‘Matcha‘ Green Tea sold in a shop. I normally use average grade of Matcha Tea for baking Cakes. That is because the delicate flavour of best Matcha Tea gets kind of lost during baking. However, for this Matcha Soy Latte because it is for drinking, tasting and admiring the intense Matcha flavour, I used higher grade Matcha Green Tea Powder.
Have you been to Japan? Where did you visit? I am sure one of the places you’ve been in Japan must be Kyoto. Everybody loves visiting Kyoto. It is the old Capital City of Japan with lots of temples and Shinto Shrines. You find old fashioned shops standing on narrow stone paved path. You feel like you’ve been Time slipped into 200 years ago.
There is lots of famous food in Kyoto. One sweet many people buy when they visit Kyoto is ‘Yatsuhashi (八つ橋)’. It is a Mochi type of sweet with Cinnamon flavour either soft (Nama-Yatsuhashi) or baked hard. You might think Cinnamon is very western spice but I believe we started using Cinnamon quite a long time ago. It came from China and it still has the Chinese name ‘Nikkei/Nikki‘ as well as the western name.
The famous soft type Yatsuhashi is normally cut into a square shape and folded into a triangular by wrapping sweet Bean Paste inside. The spicy scent of Cinnamon is very appetising and it goes well with Tea or Coffee as well as Green Tea.
I made my version of Yatsuhashi in a slightly western appearance.
When it becomes hot and humid in summer, there is only thing comes to Japanese people’s mind.
‘Kakigori’ is Shaved Ice with some sweet syrup. We love it during a very hot and humid Japanese summer. Japan is composed of a collection of many islands that lies very long from the North to the South so that there is slight difference in weather but anywhere in Japan we cannot escape from the heat and humidity in summer time. So, what do we do? We enjoy eating the food that beats it!
That is the way how Japanese people’s mind work. ‘Kakigori‘ shaved Ice is the best remedy. Actually I have introduced ‘Kakigori with Mango‘ last year (Remember this ↑ flag?). Mango flavour is fairly modern in Japan, so this time I made the most traditional flavour for Kakigori. That is ‘Uji Kintoki‘ flavour.
Uji-Kintoki Kakigori, Shaved Ice with Matcha Syrup & Sweet Bean Paste
There is a Japanese traditional food that is a Japanese favourite but almost all foreign people disliked it. That is ‘Mochi’ Rice cake. Many western people have said that “Mochi is not enjoyable even if it is as sweet or savoury, and however it’s grilled or cooked with sauce”… That is until now. Mochi became very popular just recently at least in London. It has been used as topping on some dessert such as Frozen Yogurt and Ice Cream.
Because I knew western people didn’t like the texture I was avoiding to make any sweet with the Mochi texture in London. However, there is huge demand for Mochi nowadays. What is happening? It was so unthinkable before.
So I created this sweet with Mochi and Raspberry to make it looks like a western cake.
How does it look?
On the 7th of July we have another traditional event in Japan. It is called ‘Tanabata 七 夕’. It seems like Tanabata originally came from China a long time ago but it became one of the Japanese traditions started in about Nara period (AD 710 to 794).
The story behind the event is like this …
Sakura Junction 