Making Wagashi Lesson at Karakorokoubo

Aoto-sensei taught us how to make a plum wagashi. He gave us a ball of sweet bean paste with a piece of plum inside. We wrapped it up in green nerikiri (nerikiri is a mixture of white bean paste and steamed rice flour with food coloring) as you can see in the picture.  

He rolled it softly in his hands and made a ball.

After wrapping , it looks like this green ball. 

Next, he used a sharp stick like this and put the crease in the plum.

  He put the stick in cinnamon and poked the end of the plum to make a stem hole.

Like this!!

This wagashi was finished. 

 

After making the plums, he taught us how to make hydrangea wagashi. 

Because this flower blooms in June and we went there on June 15th.

He put two colors of nerikiri together (white and purple) and pushed it half-way through a sieve.

He hit the sieve and dropped pieces of nerikiri on the table next to each student.


He softly put a ball of sweet bean paste on the piles of nerikiri.

He gently picked up the ball of sweet bean paste and started to put left over nerikiri pieces on the ball with sharp chopsticks until it was covered completely - as you can see in the pictures below.

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The white and purple nerikiri pieces are meant to look like hydrangea petals.

After fixing the shape, finally, he put a leaf on the hydrangea wagashi and it was finished.

  

We really enjoyed making wagashi!

 If you come to Matsue, why don't you learn how to make wagashi!

You'll certainly have a special time.

It'll cost you 1,500 yen per person and it takes about an hour.

Bean Gong Party

Bean Gong Party

We had a bean gong party!  These sweets are called dorayaki in Japanese.  Dora means "gong" and yaki means "to cook".  They look like little gongs so we call them "Bean Gongs".  There is a sweet red bean paste filling between the two pancakes on the outside. 

The purpose of the party is “ Enjoy Japanese-style sweets at home.”

You can get the ingredients for Bean Gongs even in foreign countries.  They are not too hard to make, so why don't you give it a try?

Material of Pancakes

Eggs　2
Sugar　100g
Honey　11/2 tablespoons
Salad oil　1 tablespoon
Baking Soda　1/3 teaspoon
Sweet Sake　1 tablespoon (optional)
Flour　150 grams
Water　40~60 cc

Bean paste

Red beans 300gram

Sugar 300gram

Salt 1/2 tea spoon

(How do you make the bean paste?)

※   If you can’t get “Red Bean Paste”, whipped cream can be used instead.

By using whipped cream or other non-traditional ingredients you can try a new style of Japanese sweet!

You can make these Japanese-style cakes the way you like it.  Click here to learn more about ingredients for Japanese sweets

Let’s make it!!

1. Mix the material for the pancakes together.

2.  After resting the dough for about 10 minutes, grill them like pancakes.

3. Put some bean paste on a pancake after it cools and cover it with another pancake to make a little gong.   

Here is a finished bean gong.  It is about 8 cm in diameter.

We had fun making them and eating them too!

New Matsue Kashi

SMALL APPLE 
This wagashi looks cute! We can enjoy the strong flavor of apple in this little sweet.　It is made from minced apple with savory white bean paste. It uses cherry's stem instead of apple's for the stem. This completely new wagashi is a taste explosion!

HANAICHIGO
"HANA" means  a flower and "ICHIGO" means a strawberry. Its appearance is cute and its color is pink, white and brown. Its texture is soft and melts in your month. Its taste is very sweet. We're surprised that it's very thick and sweet. We think it suits American tastes rather than Japanese tastes.

 

SHAKE HANDS
Akushu (SHAKE HANDS) is made by Furyudo as new Wagashi. This dough is made from fresh cream and cream cheese. This sweet bean paste inside, has pieces of ginger and grapefruit mixed in it. The ginger,grapefruit and orange-liqueur tastes and fragrance are very strong. This Wagashi's taste is a little like marmalade.

CHARO
CHARO is new wagashi in which we can enjoy Japanese tea's flavor with peanuts' flavor because there are Macha, Sencha, white chocolate and peanuts mixed in layers with white bean paste. However, CHARO has a despite these different tastes. CHARO's texture is soft and like a cake. It tastes good with coffee. Its appearance displays a beautiful contrast between the green of the Macha and the white of the white chocolate. If you can eat CHARO, you will be able to feel Japan.

KURUMI
You can enjoy walnut flavor and texture. The outside of this wagashi is a steamed bun like manju. The inside has a sweet bean paste and walnut filling.

MOMIJI
The appearance is a beautiful green and orange tinge with the garnishes of Japanese Maple. It resembles the color of leaves turning from green to orange.
It's main characteristics are the soft dough and the flavor of yuzu which is a citrus fruit native to Asia. It melts in your mouth like a marshmallow or meriengue.

 



PUMPKIN TART
You can enjoy soft pumpkin and its flavor once you eat. It is not so sweet so it make me want to eat more.

 

MOMOKA
Momoka looks like manju.The outside of this wagashi is a steamed bun like manju.And white bean jam and peach were wraped bysteamed bun.It taste was not so sweet and freshness.This is the New wagashi but it like traditional Wagashi.

 

Meimei-An Tea Ceremony House

Meimei-An
Meimei-An, which was built by Matsudaira Fumai, is one of the famous tea houses in Japan.  In 1779, whe he was 29 years old, he built Meimei-An over his retainer's house garden in Tono-machi, Matsue City.  In 1928, the Tea house was rebuilt on a hill to the East, next to Kanden-an in Sugata machi.
After World War II, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Matsudaira Fumai's death, Meimei-An was moved to a small mountain near Matsue Castle in 1966 and refurbished.

You can see this view in Meimei-An teahouse.

This entrance is called Nijiriguchi. Here is the final destination from reality to special place. Because of this small entrance, everyone from high status to low must bend over to enter. This creates a humble mood where everyone is equal.

 

As you can see, the entrance to the waiting room is wider than the exit. (there are two girls sitting next to it.) This gives you the feeling that you are going into a special place.

This rock was used to wash hands. It is put next to the entrance to go in the teahouse for noblemans.

 

 We enjoyed drinking matcha here with a wonderful view of the garden from this room. We felt mental fulfillment here.

Matsue Wagashi Pamphlet

We made a brochure to intoroduce popular Matsue Wagashi and the history of Matsue Wagashi to people in English. There is also a map of Wagashi shops in Matsue. We made it especially for foreign tourists who go sightseeing in Matsue in hopes that they will become interested in Matsue Wagashi and Matsue city through this brochure.

Ingredients

Here is a short list of some of the many ingredients that go into Wagashi.

Red Bean Paste - An（餡）
 

Here are some common types of red bean pastes

・Nama- An（生餡） is boiled red beans (azuki beans) that have been strained. There is no sugar added.

・Koshi-An（漉し餡） is Nama-An mixed with sugar. It is smooth texture and is often used for Wagashi.

・Sarasshi-An（さらし餡） is Nama-An that has been dried and made into a powder. When you use this, you must add water and sugar to make Koshi-An.

・Tsubu-An（粒餡） is that small beans is stewed softly without breaking their skins.

・Ogura-An  are small, whole beans that have been cooked and then soaked in honey.  The beans are often added to Tsubu-An.



Kanbaiko（寒梅粉）

Kanbaiko is a powder which is made from rice cakes (mochi). You bake the rice cakes without browning them and then grind them into a powder.  That powder is Kanbaiko.


Nerikiri（練り切り）

Nerikiri is a raw sweet that is a mixture of white bean paste and steamed rice flour.
It is soft and a little sticky. You can form Nerikiri into various shapes with special wooden tools or spatulas. When Wagashi craftsmen color Nerikiri, they use food coloring, but traditionally an extract from flowers such as the Cape Jasmine was used.

Nerikiri can be made make into various colors and forms to match the kind of Wagashi that is being made for a particular season.  For example, the flowers below were made from Nerikiri.

Gyuuhi（ぎゅうひ）

Gyuuhi is a kind of rice cake (mochi) that is very soft.
Generally, when we make normal rice cakes, we pound steamed rice. However, when we make Gyuuhi, we knead rice flour with water and sugar while heating it in a pot.  The soft inside of the most popular Wagashi in Matsue, Wakakusa, is Gyuuhi.

Wasanbon（和三盆） 

Wasanbon is a traditional Japanese refined sugar. It is made in Kagawa prefecture in Japan and it has a peculiar, characteristic flavor that reminds you of brown sugar.  It is ground to a powder so it dissolves quickly in your mouth.  Wasanbon is made by hand, so it is a very expensive sugar. 

Mochi（餅-rice cake） 

Mochi is usually sold in block slices or dumpling sized circles. At room temperature it's hard but it gets soft when you cook it. 

It is a kind of food made from boiled glutenous rice that has been pounded together.
Rice is a very important food in Japan. Therefore, rice cakes were used in special events and holidays; for example, New Year's Day.  Still today, many Japanese people eat rice cakes during the New Year holiday.


Mochi is easy to make, versatile and when dried will keep for many days.
Rice cakes are not only eaten in sweets, they are often seasoned with soy sauce or soybean flour.  Other varieties include rice cakes with sesame, whole green soybeans or a type of grass called "Yomogi" which is mixed into the mochi.
 

Video Featuring Matsue City

In this video you can see many or the famous places in Matsue.  At the end of the video there is some information about Matsudaira Fumai and his love for Wagashi.
Click the link below to watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf6C5rlfT_E