valentine’s day

Chocolate Heart for Valentine’s Day!

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💕Happy Valentine’s Day!💕

What is significant for this day where your are? Valentine’s Day is the western idea to show how much you love your wife, husband, girlfriend and boyfriend. This was not a custom in Japan until the 1970’s when one chocolate company advertised that “it is the day a girl can tell her love to a boy by sending chocolates as the gift”. Since then the chocolate industry has been go crazy before Valentine’s day every year.

Chocolate Heart Mochi with Red Currant Jam

I made this Chocolate flavoured Mochi for Valentine’s Day this year.

chocoheart

It is a heart-shaped Japanese sweet with chocolate flavoured Mochi outer layer and sweet white bean paste and homemade red currant jam inside. For this special occasion it has the golden love potion powder sprinkled on top.

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The Great thing is that you can taste this sweet at the Matcha Bar at the Havan Store (262 Kensington High Street, London). They will serve this sweet during February.

It’s Vegan and Gluten free.

Maybe love is like a Chocolate Mochi! 💕Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!!💕

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Raspberry & Cream (Meringue style)

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I apologize that I have been absent for quite a while. I went back to Japan at the end of December for spending New Year’s Day with my family and also for meeting up with some friends whom I haven’t seen for many many years. I was hoping that I could make some sweets whilst I was staying in Japan but it was difficult to work in somebody else’ kitchen where you don’t have the right tools and materials you normally use. I ended up not making any sweets there. So here is my first sweet in 2019.

Raspberry & Cream in Meringue Style

Today is the 14th of February and as you can guess I created this sweet for Valentine’s Day! I have been thinking some possible designs for this occasion such as something with heart shape. But as that was a too obvious and well used idea I wanted to make something a little more subtle to express Love this year. I had one image in my mind. It was perfectly swirled soft pink meringues with a softly whipped cream sandwiched in between and I wanted to create this as Japanese sweet.

Raspberry & Cream1

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Sweet 🌹 Roses for Valentine’s Day

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We are in February. It is the month of Valentine’s Day. So I wanted to make some suitable sweet for this particularly ‘Love’ month. In Japan by following an opportunist Chocolate company’s strategy Valentine’s day became the day that a girl gives chocolate to the boy she likes, but I am in London and I will just create something that shows love between people.

In England it does not matter if you are a man or a woman you can give flowers, a card or a book, anything to the person you love. However, I think the most common things people choose as a gift are flowers so I made a sweet in a shape of flower with Love.

Sweet Roses

When you express your love with flowers I believe Roses are the most obvious choice for many people. I had an idea to decorate my Japanese sweet as a rose for a white and used it for this month’s sweet.

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Raspberry & Chocolate Square

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Valentine’s Day has arrived. I have introduced my ‘Raspberry Chocolate Heart’ for this special day in my previous post. Whilst making the Chocolate Heart I got an idea for improving the look of the sweet.

Raspberry & Chocolate Square, Wagashi

This is it! It is using exactly the same ingredients with the previous Raspberry Chocolate Heart but I made it into a little more western sweet look.

raspberry-chocolate-sq-top

Instead of making the shape into a heart, I placed a pink heart on top.

raspberry-chocolate-square-1-wz-cup

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Raspberry Chocolate Heart on the Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s Day is coming. Surely the sweet on the Day has to be Chocolate. According to me, if it is Chocolate sweet the flavour should be Raspberry.

So I made Japanese sweet iwith Chocolate and Raspberry flavour.

Raspberry Chocolate Heart, Wagashi

raspberry-choco-heart-2-2

I have to remind you that this is not a normal Chocolate sweet. It is still a Japanese sweet ‘Wagashi’ with Chocolate flavour. So the ingredients of the outer part is mainly White Beans with Chocolate Powder.

raspberry-choco-heart-4-2

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Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

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Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce 1

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

This is the sweet dish I made for the Sake Cooking competition. The theme of my dishes for the competition was ‘Sake for Eating’. This dessert was a food but I wanted to put some reminder that Sake is alcoholic ‘Drink’. That is why I wanted to use a wine glass for serving this dessert.

My thoughts behind this dish were

1. I wanted to keep all the flavour and taste of Sake in my dessert without losing any by heating Sake. That is the reason I decided to make Jelly.

2. I like flavour of Sake, however, I wanted something ‘more than just Sake’. I infused Sake with Rose Petals in order to enhance the delicate Sake flavour. The consequence of that made the Jelly has fragrant Rose smell and also slightly Rosy pink colour. I managed to infuse Sake in both flavour and colour.

3. It has been changing in recent years but Sake still has the image as it is the drink for men more than for women. I wanted to create something which suggests that Sake could be something romantic.

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce 2

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