I love sweets. So naturally, when I went to Japan, I had to try it all and I fell in love (and not only once, lol). With the sweets, obviously. So much so, after going to a Japanese-style café with my boyfriend and seeing the cute little treats, I thought to myself “I can do that”. Recently I have been really enjoying baking and making sweets, so why not give it a try? So this post was supposed recap my first encounter with the wagashi (Japanese sweets) and then my attempts. However, as I was scrolling through my gallery looking for photos, I unlocked so many memories that I kinda forgot about, so instead of just pure Osaka diaries entry (we’ll get to the recent stuff by the end), this is a recap of all the important moments when I tried something new or when I attempted recreating it. You’re in for a … *treat*.
When you first come to Japan, you’re struck by all the things that you’ve seen online or in anime, in real life. Like, it really exists and it’s all so adorable! So finally, you can live your dreams of eating a dango, even though you’ve no idea what it actually is, but I mean, if it was Itachi’s favourite food in Naruto, it must be good enough for Lenka, right? Moreover, you’ve had “dango daikazoku” (big dango family) from Clannad for dango family and annoyed everyone in your life with the song, so obviously, it’s a must. In reality, dango itself is not the most flavourful thing out there, it’s just basically rice flour dough. But some sauce, it can be really good and soon enough, it became one of my genuine favourites.
Then I got a bit more experimental with mochi and daifuku (filled mochi). To be completely honest, I’m still confused about the differences between mochi, daifuku and dango. Apparently, mochi and daifuku are from rice whereas dango is from rice flour. But when making (or at least attempting to do so) daifuku with my Japanese friends, we used rice flour instead of real rice, so… I don’t know. Either way, both of my attempts at mochi and Daifuku are rather… questionable. Making mochi was a dorm activity and a special mixer machine thingy was used, so the dough was actually good, I think. And I tried to make it into a heart shape, filled with anko (red bean paste) – so was it then a daifuku? So this one wasn’t a complete disaster. The kiwi daifuku though… well, technically, it wasn’t awful. It tasted good. It just wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, which in Japan is very important and if something doesn’t look as good as it tastes, well, what’s the point of it all? But honestly, trying to be in control of the sticky hot dough that seems to have its own mind is a bit more difficult than one would guess, though a great fun! So, here’s a quiz for you… which two out of these five pictures include my creations?
And lastly, the sweet bean paste wagashi that you’d eat at a traditional Japanese café. The one that usually needs years of practice to master it, but me being overly confident thinking I can do it without any knowledge, not even of the recipe. Luckily, my boyfriend is a big fan of wagashi too and he’s similarly confident (though he’s actually quite crafty), so he was very supportive of this idea. That’s why when we were on a trip in Himeji and saw a shop that offered a wagashi making session, we immediately signed up! In this session, the base was already prepared, your task was to follow the master’s instructions and form it into something presentable. What surprised me was that it’s not done all by hand only, you can use different equipment. For this one (pic 1), we used a cloth to make the pattern of the surface. Very cool, would recommend. Then, on another trip, this time to Kyoto, we went to a café where you could watch a master make the wagashi in front of you. We closely observed what to do and how. He made it with such an ease that I was convinced it can’t be that difficult. And thus, a few weeks later we went out of our way to buy all the ingredients and finally, do it all ourselves.
The recipe called for 500g of white sweet bean paste. Now, if you have some experience making wagashi, you might think that it’s too much. And you’d be absolutely right, however, our amateur eyes didn’t notice. We just followed the recipe… and make a few adjustments on the way. Somehow, it was much stickier than what it was in the Himeji session. So we just kept adding flour, till the texture changed. It was still sticky, though a little less, but at the same time, it wasn’t as soft as it was supposed to be. I wouldn’t really notice, I haven’t eaten enough wagashi to know, so I was quite satisfied playing with my edible clay. But after eating a few, I could tell it was much heavier and not so airy as it was in the café. But I still did my best, trying to make a nice shape out of it and while it might not have been perfect, it’s my baby, so no mean comments. In total, I made three baby wagashi. Which is definitely much less than 500g, so if you’re wondering what happened to the rest, it might be chilling in the fridge happily ever after. ♥
