plant based

Christmas Wagashi Sweets！

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Just one week to go till Christmas! I know we live in uncertainty at the moment especially in the UK. However, how about having Japanese sweets with your family for this year’s Christmas? I know it will be difficult to gather with many friends but you can have a little cheerful time with your family by sharing these little festive sweets.

The four festive sweets have all different centre filling and are going to be in a box set.

The Wagashi members are

  • Father Christmas: Nerikiri with smooth Adzuki (red) bean paste filling
  • Rudolf: Mochi type with Sweet Chestnut filling
  • Snowman: Mochi type with Yuzu flavoured filling
  • Christmas Wreath: Nerikiri with Matcha flavoured filling

They are all Vegan and Gluten free.

The Christmas Wagashi Box are available to preorder from here now and you can collect it from the Havan Store (262 Kensington High St, London) between the 22nd- 24th December.

*PLEASE NOTE: This box set is for collection only!

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Mochi Watermelon in London

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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

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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

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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.

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Beautiful Sakura Season

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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.

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Hina Mochi

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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.

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Snowing but Nearly Spring

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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.

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