Recipe: Appetizing Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi

Gregory Fletcher
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Recipe: Appetizing Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi
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Recipe: Appetizing Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi Delicious, fresh and tasty.

Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi. Spring has finally come along and that means its cherry blossom (sakura) season. During this season, a popular treat to have is sakura mochi. Even though sakura mochi has always been a piece of pink.

Kanto-style uses shiratama-ko (白玉粉, rice flour) to make the rice cake, and Kansai-style uses dōmyōji-ko (道明寺粉, glutinous rice flour).

Osaka style sakura mochi are made with Domyojiko rice flour and have a chunky consistency similar to rice pudding with pieces of crushed rice in the mochi.

Tokyo style sakuramochi have a smooth texture and are traditionally made with Shiratamako rice flour.

You can cook Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi using 8 ingredients and 6 steps. Here is how you achieve that.

Ingredients of Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi

  1. You need 80 grams of ★ Cake flour.

  2. Prepare 20 grams of ★ Shiratamako.

  3. It’s 30 grams of ★ Sugar.

  4. You need 250 ml of Water.

  5. It’s 1 dash of Red food coloring.

  6. Prepare 250 grams of Koshi-an.

  7. Prepare 10 of Salt-preserved cherry leaves.

  8. It’s 1 of Vegetable oil.

In Japan, sakura-mochi is very popular as a spring sweets.

The sakura-mochi in Tokyo looks like a small smooth crepe folded into a square or half circle.

Sakura mochi is a delicately flavored treat we enjoy during the cherry blossom season in the early spring.

Tokyo style sakura mochi is bean paste wrapped in a rice dough crepe which is lightly colored with a hint of pink to mimic the cherry blossom's color then wrapped in a "preserved" cherry leaf.

Tokyo-style Sakura Mochi instructions

  1. Soak the cherry leaves in water to de-salt (10 to 60 minutes). Form the koshi-an into cylindrical balls..

  2. Combine the ★ ingredients in a bowl. Add the water little by little while mixing so that no lumps form. Cover with plastic wrap and rest for 30 minutes..

  3. Dissolve the red food coloring in water, and add it little by little to the batter while observing the color..

  4. Spread a little vegetable oil in a frying pan. Spread 2 tablespoons of batter at a time in the pan and cook over low heat. When the surface had dried out, flip over and cook the other side quickly..

  5. Put the cooked wrappers on a flat sieve to cool..

  6. Once the wrappers have cooled down, wrap them around the balls of koshi-an. Wrap with a cherry leaf that has been patted dry to finish..

Last week, I made Kantou style (Tokyo style) sakura mochi, a light pink, mochi pancake filled with sweet red beans, anko (あんこ), and traditionally wrapped in a preserved sakura leaf.

Not being in Japan, I couldn't find the sakura leaf, so I got a little inventive and tried a shiso leaf, or ohba, the green leaf with a light refreshing.

Sakura Mochi consists of red bean paste and pink-coloured glutinous mochi rice, all wrapped up in a pickled sakura leaf, and the new KitKat replicates the sweet by using real sakura leaf powder extract and sweet bean powder within the chocolate coating and wafers.

Kansai Style Sakura Mochi Kansai, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Kobe has it's own distinct version of sakura mochi.

Kanto (Tokyo) style has a pink crepe-like wrapping around the anko (azuki paste), however down here in Kansai, it is typically made with steamed mochi rice formed into a ball.