sweet

New Life – Sprouting Spring

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After I introduced my Matcha Swirl Mochi in my previous post with a hope that the arrival of warm sunny spring is nearer we had another snow in London, but yesterday turned out to be a very sunny day. In Japan we say that it is ‘San-kan-shi-on’ (三寒四温/ 3 cold and 4 warm) which means “the weather moves onto Spring by having three cold days and four warm days”. It is describing the weather condition particularly in East Asian countries, however, I feel it is the same here in London.

The sunshine outside looked so welcoming yesterday and I could not resist stepping out into the garden. My garden has been messy during winter time and I did the first gardening of this year. I hope good weather stays so I can do some tidying up bit by bit before the real spring arrives here.

New Life

Spring is a season of new life. I created some sweets in this ‘New Life’ theme which is also the theory of Easter that comes next week. I wonder whether you can see what it is supposed to be?

New Life1

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Matcha Swirl Mochi for Early Spring

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Comparing to the snowy weather three weeks ago it is so much more like spring now. It is not just because the temperature is higher but because the sunlight is brighter and the air is lighter. Although the forecast says there is a possibility that this weekend might become cold again, the season always moves forward by going back and forth a little. It means we are definitely getting closer to spring!

It means we are in Early Spring now. I quite often design sweets depending on which season we are in. I pick some significant signs of the season such as colour, flower or mood of the season. So what is early spring like for me? It is the season some leaves start to come out (Green) on a tree and field, but in some area it is still covered with snow (white). It is a little too early to see a view of full Sakura cherry blossom in the most places, however, but in some warmer area some trees probably starts blossoming (Pink). The smell of early spring is a grassy green smell. So what I have to do after running my imagination is put all these images together.

Matcha Swirl Mochi

I needed to assemble all the elements of green, white and pink together. I was imagining a mountain in early spring. For autumn season I made Autumn Mountain Mochi and reached up to this swirling sweet of early spring version of the mountain.

Matcha Swirl8

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Soufflé Pancake with Redcurrant Sauce

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It is Pancake Day today. To be honest I did not have any plan of making Pancake or even having any Pancake at all. But when I saw some beautiful and tasty looking Pancake photos on some people’s posts I could not resist making one.

I did not have any fresh fruits at home, however, I remembered that I had some frozen Redcurrant in my freezer. So my pancake making had begun …

Soufflé Pancake with Redcurrant Sauce

I used my recipe when I made a similar Soufflé Pancake two years ago. That time I used fresh Strawberries for making sauce. I also changed some ingredients so I am writing the new recipe with some changes below.

Souffle pancake1e

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Christmas Tree 2017

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I made two types of Japanese sweets for December. You might have noticed that one of them has been briefly introduced as the part of White-Christmas Market report in my previous post.

Christmas Tree 2017

It is December, the Christmas month. So one of them I made is of course a Christmas Tree. This one is my third attempt in making a Japanese sweet ‘Christmas Tree’ for last two years (the last years’ one is here with Mochi Snowman😊) and I am satisfied with this year’s one the most.

Christmas TreeP2

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Autumn Mountain

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We are in the middle of Autumn – Winter transition now. It is getting very cold lately but this chilling weather is the key to the magnificent sights of nature during this season. When the temperature drops the colour of leaves change from green to yellow or it goes even further to orange and then red. It is due to the chemical reaction in leaves. This is called Autumn Colour and can be seen on the leaves of deciduous plants.

‘Autumn Mountain’ Mochi

So, as one of the sweets for November I wanted to create a sweet in Autumn Colour. I want you to imagine all the mountain changing the colour from its deep green to various colour of yellow, orange and red but in a very tiny scale.

Autumn Mountain 1-2R Continue reading →

Halloween Black Cat🐱

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I needed to make two Japanese sweets for October. It is quite normal that a typical Japanese sweet maker gets an idea for designing their sweet from some seasonal flower/plant/fruit or event occurring during the month. So what is the most significant thing I could use for designing this month’s sweet?

As a ‘Wagashi’ Japanese sweet designer who lives abroad a big event in October is Halloween. I had already decided one of the two sweets would be a Mochi Ghost, but I wanted to make another one in the Halloween theme too. When I was searching images of this theme it became obvious that the second sweet has to be a Halloween cat. It is not an any cat, it has to be a Black Cat.

Halloween Black Cat 🐈

So, these are my Black Cat sweets for this Halloween.

Black Cat1p

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Can You See Who is Hiding?

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Something is hiding in the darkness.

It is someone who likes going into a small box, who gets afraid of a sudden appearance of a cucumber and who people started to think could be liquid… However, more importantly it is one of the main characters for the coming Halloween.

Cat2p

Can you guess who it is? 🐈

Halloween Mochi Ghost👻is Coming!

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Oh, we are in October now. It is the month that Halloween is coming! Last year I made two types of Japanese sweets for this Halloween month. One of them was Jack-o’-Lantern and the other one was Mochi Ghost. Actually I started making a Ghost like sweet two years ago and then last year’s Ghost was my revenge creation because the first one was not that a great Ghost. I made a blog post and tweeted about it with photos and then actually it got a good reaction from people. I received many great comments regarding the sweet (Thak you!). The Ghost sweet was also served at Wasoukan Café (Notting Hill, London) and the manager told me that that sweet was the best seller amongst all the sweets they had sold last year. I started thinking that I should make this Ghost sweet as my yearly traditional sweet in this season so that I created another one for this year’s version.

Mochi Ghost 👻 2017

I made a little similar one in order to meet the people’s expectation but slightly different Mochi Ghost again. This time it is vertically standing 3D Ghost.

Mochi Ghost2p

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The Tasty Incident of the Mochi Ghost 👻 before Halloween Time

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It happened again!! Just before Halloween a Mochi Ghost was found being murdered.

His snow white soft Mochi body was cut into two and the purple sweet organ and sticky vivid red blood are oozed out …

Mochi Ghost7p

Now, we are investigating this tasty Incident to solve the mystery. 👻👻👻👻👻