Sakura an-pan, blossom sweet bread

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

DSC07220-001 pickled sakura

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

anpan

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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.

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DIY sakura bean paste (click here)

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

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

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Rising Sun melon-pan

Melon Pan or Sunrise

Caution : cult food !

That’s Hina Matsuri (festival of little girls) in Japan this week-end, so I can get a sweet treat, coz I’m a little girl, just bigger.

If you have never had them, that’s a soft sweet bread roll that has a crunchy rind, unlike a melon… Contrarily to some rumor, they are not melon flavored. Unless they are, in which case they would become “melon melon pan”.

When I came to live in Japan, I put on 200 kilos in the first 3 months because those freaks are sold everywhere. Each baker adds his/her personal touch to the recipe and Osaka has 40 000 bakeries so I had to try the 100 000 variations. Then, when you stop eating them, you will lose the gained weight. But will you be able to stop ?

Total vice : they double as cream pan. They are filled with vanilla custard cream.

Making of :
Sweet roll bread (milk bread here, butter roll is OK), filled with the cream (or not), covered with a layer of cookie/tart dough (pâte Sucrée, flavored with lemon zest and vanilla), rolled in crystal sugar. Etc.

The bad news. This is for ONE little melon :

Cal 394 F16.1g C56.1g P8.2g

A cookie make with the leftover of “melon rind”.

Would you say this one is the melon pan ? or the sunrise ?
The 2 names exist, the 2 shapes exist. Nobody seems to agree. They made some surveys all over Japan to know what % of people called them this or that…

Anpan woman and the super hero sweet bean bread

This is anpan, sweet azuki bean bread, a long time popular kashipan (Japanese cake-bread). Maybe one of the oldest.

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Did you know this guy ? It’s Anpanman. He is to anpan what Superman is to supermarkets.

Make little balls of sweet bread : sourdough, flour, egg, butter (not too much), rice bran, very little sugar… Kiki, my home-bakery did that well.

Anko (sweet azuki beans), the simplest version : frozen azuki, kurozato black sugar, a little brandy, vanilla.

Making anko (tsubuan and koshian) from the beans. Easy recipe.

Blond sesame.

The Japanese versions are often made of koshian (pasted beans) way much sweeter. The bread is also richer (fatter and sweeter) and extremely soft. Mines are not like bread. Slightly healthier too. I love this little snack.

Wagashi Saga : Photo-menu of all Japanese sweet posts.