August 16, 2012
On the very special occasion that a visitor from Japan would bring Toraya to our home in Cupertino, I would actually be excited about eating. I was a very picky, skinny child, but whenever my mom busted out the Toraya I would eat blocks of yokan (red bean dessert) and stack as much anko into my […]
April 9, 2012
In Japan, everything is made easy for busy housewives who have to raise kids, clean the house, yet also have to cook and make dessert. You throw things in a microwave and five minutes later, you can a serve main course to your hungry kids and demanding, asshole husbands. I was recently given a simple-to-make sakuramochi […]
March 29, 2012
After reading Moto’s post about making anko (sweet bean paste), I began to reminisce about my visit to a wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionary) shop in Koishikawa, Tokyo called Ikko-an. All of the wagashi are made by hand by the owner Chikara Mizukami, while his wife works in the storefront. He has made it a point […]
March 19, 2012
My most recent obsession is making anko (sweet bean paste) from scratch. As I wrote in my strawberry daifuku post a couple of weeks ago, using bean paste as dessert doesn’t really exist in the west. But I am trying to find ways to mix this into my future baking. After all, it’s gluten-free, and […]
December 25, 2011
By Kenji Miura I celebrated Christmas in Japan by making wagashi, or traditional Japanese sweets. Santa is shaped out of shiro-an (white bean paste). The holly is made out of ogura tsubu-an (red beans boiled with sugar, skin-on). The tree is comprised of shiro-an and kanten (agar agar). The kinton (mashed substance, in this case the […]