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Mochi Mont Blanc

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Autumn is here! It is the season that some particular delicacies appear in food markets. Such delicacies are mushrooms, persimmon, nuts and so much more. Amongst all these foods in this season the one that stands out especially for Japanese people is definitely Sweet Chestnut. We love Chestnuts very much. We use them for making all sorts of sweets and even for savoury dishes. The most loved sweet with chestnuts in Japan is undoubtedly Mont Blanc which of course is a western cake with a soft sponge as the base and topped up with a swirl of sweet delicious chestnuts cream. Every Autumn when I find sweet chestnuts at a front of green groceries I have been thinking that I would arrange this nations favourite cake into a Japanese sweet ‘Wagashi’ someday.

Mochi Mont Blanc

So this year I finally managed to make my own Japanese sweet version of Mont Blanc. Instead of sponge I used soft sweet ‘Mochi’, rice cake, as the base. For making the delicious Chestnut flavour to stand out, I selected simple plain flavoured one.

Mochi Mont Blanc3

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Firework on Guy Fawkes Night!

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Today, the 5th of November, is Guy Fawkes Night and sometime also called Bonfire Night. It is the day that in 1605 Guy Fawkes and a group of people plotted to explode House of Parliament in England. However, they failed and got arrested and then were executed after brutally tortured. Later on people celebrated the attempt of Guy Fawkes and started making bonfires in a square and also putting up fireworks and fire crackers in the evening on Guy Fawkes Night.

Firework

So, I made Firework, Japanese sweet. I feel a little odd to post about Fireworks sweet in November. Because Fireworks season is normally summer in Japan and it seems like an out of season post. However, I made this Fireworks sweet for British people and this is one of my monthly sweets for November.

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It’s the Dracula 🧛‍♂️ Time!

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For the last three years my monthly ‘Wagashi’ Japanese Sweets for October were all in the Halloween theme. For this year it has to be the same. I tried to think very hard this time and then decided to make … Dracula! The idea came to my mind quickly but it took a long time to come up with the design which would be easy enough to create. I finally decided to go for one design after trying so many possible models, however, as I started making it for real, the shape of some parts and the way to create them changed several times.

Dracula, Japanese Sweet

So here it is! The Star of this Halloween!!

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Apples🍎

/ Mutsumi / 10 Comments

When September starts, we are officially in Autumn. Autumn is described as a special season in many ways in Japan. ‘Autumn is for reading books’ ‘Autumn is for sports’ ‘Autumn is for appetite’ and ‘Autumn is for harvest’. Many fruits have been growing during summer and become ready to be picked this season. One of them and the most famous one in England are Apples.

For this month I made a Japanese sweet in a shape and flavour of Apples

Apples

The colour of real apples are quite various from dark red to green and yellow, but the most significant one must be a red one. So I made red apples with a tinge of yellow on the top.

Apple1

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Do you know What These are?

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Last week I passed a house which spread a tiny organic vegetable shop in front of their front garden. It seems they have an allotment and they a grow great quantity of vegetables. I’m sure they eat their own vegetables but I guess they sometimes get too much crop so that they sell what they couldn’t consume to public. All the vegetables looked healthy so I decided to take some mini tomatoes, courgettes, green & purple beans, a marrow and … these round things that caught my eyes. I thought they were apples first but they weren’t. Can you guess what they are?

Apple Cucumber1

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Mochi Rose

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In February I created a Japanese Sweet in a Rose shape for Valentine’s Day. It was a type of sweet called ‘Nerikiri’. This month I made another rose shaped sweet and this time it is Mochi Rose. ‘Mochi’ is a sticky and gooey rice cake that is getting so popular in London but actually it is not the easiest material to make into some shape. This Mochi Rose is my second attempt in a flower shape by following the Clematis I created in May. I like trying to create something new.

Mochi Rose

Unlike the pink Rose in February for Valentine’s Day, the colour of the flowers I had in my mind for summer is orange and yellow.

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Happy National Tea Day!

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Apparently it is National Tea Day in the UK today.  Britain is officially one of the biggest tea drinking countries. People’s day starts from having a cup of tea for breakfast, morning and afternoon breaks and even after an evening meal. Any film or TV drama located in the UK will always have one or more scenes drinking tea with the famous phrase “Would you like to have a cup of tea?”. Although more people have started having a taste for coffee,  people’s love of tea will never dissappear in this country.

There are many types of tea around these days. What kind of Tea do you like? I wonder which tea should I have for this special day?

What I matched with this Rose Japanese Wagashi sweet is this herbal Tea. It is a Wild Berry herbal tea which has a wonderful rosy red colour and full of fruity fragrance.

Rose 3e

Have a lovery Teatime ☕ on this special day!!

Camellia

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It is usually ‘Red’ that I see as the first colour in my garden at the start of every New Year. It is the flowers of Camellia we have at the very back of the garden. Dots of the deep red are the sparkles which brighten up the garden in wet and gloomy days but the shrub hasn’t had the colour yet this year. It has many flower buds waiting to open but they are still tightly closed. Maybe it’s because of the mild winter this season. Only recently we have started having normal cold weather. Nature is sensitive to climate change so my Camellia shrub must have been a little confused.

By hoping to see my Camellia Red soon, I made some sweets in the shape of the flower.

Camellia, Nerikiri

camellia-3-side

It is Japanese sweet called ‘Nerikiri‘. I made a Red flower with a white tinge and a white one with a red tinge.

camellia-1-2

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Moon Rabbits

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I have roughly explained about ‘Chushu‘ (the Middle of Autumn Day) and the Full Moon viewing custom in Japan in the previous post. However, there is another key character in this Story. It is a Rabbit.

chocolate-moon-yokan-with-rabbits-1

In Japan we say there is a Rabbit living on the moon and makes (pounds) ‘Mochi’ Rice Cake on ‘Jugoya‘ the Full Moon. I think the story started because people in the old days saw a Rabbit shape in the pattern on the Moon.

rabbit-on-the-moon2

However, there are several stories to back up the thought behind it.

  1. This is a story from India. ‘There were Fox, Monkey and Rabbit in a forest and they wondered why they were not human. They thought maybe it was because they did something bad before so they decided to do something good. One day an old man who was very tired and hungry appeared in the forest. Fox, Monkey and Rabbit wanted to help this guy. Fox hunted some animals and gave him some meat. Monkey climbed up a tree and gathered some nuts and fruits for this man. However, although Rabbit searched around he could not find anything for the old man then he asked the man to make a fire. The Rabbit said “I’m sorry I could not find anything for you so please eat me to survive” and jumped into the fire and died. This old guy was actually a god who came to test the three animals’ good deed. He was so moved by Rabbit’s selfless mind and felt pitty on him. He decided to leave the silhouette of the rabbit on the moon forever’.

2. In China it was said that rabbits were making medicine for immortality by pounding on the moon. When this story came to Japan the story changed that rabbits were making ‘Mochi (Rice cake)’ instead of medicine.

Moon Rabbit

Anyway, it’s time to introduce my Moon Rabbits.

moon-rabbit-three

It is Japanese sweet which made of ‘Nerikiri‘ (White Bean Paste with Mochi) and Free from Gluten and Dairy & Oil.

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