Mandarin mikan daifuku mochi

丸ごとみかん大福 marugoto mikan daifuku is a currently popular daifuku mochi tea sweet. It’s a cousin of the now classic ichigo daifuku.

Most *bakers* wrap the mikans with shiroan white bean paste, but I really like the anko red bean paste and mikan orange pairing.
For the recipes to make the mochi and paste refer to this post (click).

Mikan, Japanese mandarin orange. The early ones have a green skin. Now, they are becoming really sweet.

Azuki beans to prepare tsubuan sweet bean paste.

With kurozato black sugar.

Serve fresh. Then cut :

Sakura an-pan, blossom sweet bread

The sweet bread of the season is topped with a cherry blossom !

pickled sakura

It’s seasonal variation of anpan, a kashipan (Japanese sweet bread) filled with anko sweet bean paste. :

anpan

A sweet bread dough : 1 ts of yeast, 3 tbs of kurozato black sugar, 2 cups of AP flour, enough tonyu (home-made soy milk) to wet that. I’ve mixed it in the home-bakery machine.
Filled with sakura an paste and shaped.

DIY sakura bean paste (click here)

Baked 20 minutes at 180 C. OK, the shapes are… what they are.

Only one had a perfect aspect, but they were all delicious. I didn’t make enough.

Waffle sands under the cherry blossoms

Double sakura waffles. Both the waffle and its filling have a delicate cherry blossom flavor. It’s the perfect snack for the season. It’s very quickly made.

DIY sakura leaf powder : I’ve left rinsed pickled sakura leaves dry. Then I crushed them with my finger.

I mixed them with flour, baking powder, a little kurozato black sugar, soy milk. Cooked waffles.

Took out my sakura-an cream to garnish.

Cut into triangle sands.

Prepared my basket, with a thermos of sencha green tea. And I went to eat them at the nearby park… The wind froze me, I was glad to have tea to thaw me.

Crème de sakura (sakura an)

桜餡sakura an is the girlie version of anko, the classic sweet bean paste used to make Japanese sweets.

It is traditionally flavored with pickled sakura.

Dried daifuku mame. They are big white beans, very convenient to make Japanese sweets.

After soaking and cooking.

1. Paste the beans.
2. Add color (beni koji for red) and syrup or sugar. I also add a little brandy.
3. Pass the paste through a sieve.
4. Add pickled minced sakura leaves (for strong taste) and/or flowers (for lighter taste and pink bits in the mass).
5. Let a few hours, so the paste takes the full flavor.

The pickled sakura must be rinsed and soaked, otherwise they are really too salty.

That’s the finished paste. It can be used in sweets and breads.

With the rest of paste that didn’t pass the filtering, and some leftover of anko bean paste, I made a toast.

Wagashi Saga : Japanese sweet posts and tutorials.

Recipes using sakura-an :
sakura mochi
double sakura waffles
sakura anpan

Two tones of sakura mochi

A classic wagashi (tea sweet) for the season, the sakura mochi. Actually, there exist several sweets under the same name. This one is the Kansai style version.