A little late for the Season but … Lilac Sweet

FlowersOne of the magnificent shrubs that has a brilliant colour and scent in early spring is Lilac. I made a sweet in a shape of Lilac flowers a little earlier, however, could not manage to write and edit it until now. Its flower comes out around at the beginning of May, so this post is basically one month late. I am sorry about that. Once the spring season starts everything in a garden grows so quickly. When you have some events and engagements it is very difficult to catch up and that is my excuse for delaying to publish this article.

Anyway, it’s the exactly same case as my recent post of Choisya that I wanted to make a sweet of Lilac every spring. It produces such a wonderful scent at the front of my garden and I really had to create it into a sweet. I have two types of Lilac in my garden. The one near my back door has white flowers and the other shrub gets purple flowers so it took a while to decide how I was going to produce the design of Lilac flowers and which colour I should use. I probably love white flower shrub more. Thit is because white flowers have the sweeter smell and the purple one (Syringa vulgaris) is quite vigorous. However, when one says ‘Lilac colour’ it means light purple colour so I had to go for the purple one this time.

Lilac

Here is my Lilac sweet in Lilac colour.

Lil 4

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Choisya

C shrubChoisya ternata is the shrub which flowers the earliest every spring in my garden. It gets numerous number of tiny white flowers which have marvellous orange blossom like scent. No wonder it’s called Mexican Orange Blossom as the common name. Every spring when I see and smell the flowers I wanted to make ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweet of Choisya as the design, however, the timing of their flowering season is somehow always wrong for me and before I decided what kind of design I should make, the flowers were. This spring, I finally managed making one design before all the flowers’ disappeared, however, the problem this year was that I did not have time to write my article about the sweet until now.

plant

 

Choisya ternata

So, this is the Choisya sweet I finally managed to make.

Choisya3

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Mochi Tulip

When you make a Japanese sweet in a flower shape or some decorative pattern ‘Nerikiri’ sweet is the most suitable material. It has a soft marzipan like texture and you can colour or flavour it into anything you like. On the other hand ‘Mochi’ type sweet is more for wrapping up a filling so it’s used for something like a ‘Daifuku’ kind of sweet.

That is why I wanted to try making a flower with Mochi type sweet. It was just a quick experiment so this is not meant to be a finalised precise work but as the spring season is coming I tried making a flower with a Mochi kind of sweet.

Mochi Tulip

So this is the result of my little experiment. I don’t know whether it is clearly seen but it’s supposed to be a Tulip flower made with a Mochi type sweet. I had the image of a pure white colour Tulip with a big green leaf. I wanted to create it as a Japanese sweet.

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Wisteria – the Purple Shower!

Wisteria on fenceThe “Purple Shower”! This is what people call it. You find it on a pergola, trellis or just above a house porch or fence. You see hundreds of flower pendants in white to bluey purple hanging down during middle to early summer. It has a wonderful scent and attracts lots of bees. They are the flowers of Wisteria.

Wisteria

Although this flower is quite a traditional design as a Japanese sweet, this was my first time that I have tried making a Wisteria sweet. I tried several ways for making Wisteria sweet and these are the two of them. I used a technique called ‘See though’ which is basically two layers of sweet in different colours are placed on top of each other and the bottom colour comes out being viewed by removing some parts of the top layer.

Wisteria3

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Kashiwa Mochi

The Children’s Day has ended. It was the 5th of May in Japan. There are several traditions people do on that day including eating special food, particularly sweets. One of them is called ‘Kashiwa Mochi’. As you can guess from the name it is a ‘Mochi’ type of sweet and has some kind of central filling inside. The filling can be various but normally it is Sweet Azuki (Red) Bean Paste. The most characteristic feature of the sweet has come from its figure. It is wrapped up with an Oak leaf and ‘Kashiwa’ in its name means Oak in Japanese.

I saw many photos of Kashiwa Mochi on social media. I really wanted to eat it so I suddenly started making my own one on the Children’s Day. That is why I could not post this article in time. However, there was a problem. I didn’t have Oak leaves for wrapping the sweet…

Kashiwa Mochi

This was the solution for having my own Kashiwa Mochi. I made a Leaf with Japanese sweet so the leaf is edible too.

KashiwaMochi1

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Wagashi Workshop is Coming to North London

It’s been quite a while since I announced about my upcoming Workshop. I am happy to tell you that I am planning to have a Wagashi Making Workshop in Spring theme one more time. The Sakura Cherry Blossom season has been gone even in London but Sakura flower is the very popular shape to make amongst participants so this will be the last Workshop to make Sakura Cherry Blossom together this year. If you fancy making one yourself please join me.

One thing I want you to know is that the venue of the Workshop has been changed. It will be in North London this time so please check the address below if it is reachable for you.

Wagashi Making Workshop in London

Workshop May1

on: The 14th May (Tuesday) 7-8:30/9pm
at: The Annexe (46 Park Road, Crouch End, London N8 8TD)

For booking your space please send me a message from Contact on this Blog or give me a direct message on Instagram/facebook/Twitter with your Email address. I will send you the details by email.

I look forward to hearing from you.💁🏻‍♀️

Happy World Penguin Day!

Yesterday, the 25th April, was World Penguin Day! I didn’t know about it until I got up and saw my social media yesterday morning. But as soon as I knew about it and also read that the number of Penguin chicks is declining due to the climate change and I thought I had to make some Penguins.

In Central London Eco Protesters have been fighting for us. It is very painful to hear that the young Swedish girl is making an appeal to people that her future has been stolen! Yes, Stolen! We all have to do something about it! Act now to make a change!

Penguins 🐧 Japanese Sweets

These are the Penguins I made for appealing the importance of Penguins in our world.

Penguins1

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A Flower Sweet Buquet for the Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day in the UK as well as some countries like Nigeria, Guernsey, Jersey and Isle of Man. Lots of flowers and sweets are displayed at the entrance of all the super markets as the suggestion of the gifts to mothers here in London now. OK, I got the idea! Flowers and sweets must be the best gifts for mothers, so I combined them together!

Mothers day

💐 Happy Mothere’s Day, Everyone! 💐