Vegan sweets in January

In Japan, there are many women who learn tea ceremony. Personally, I’m not very interested in it, but my sister learned it for several years in her 20’s. I remember her telling about hanabira-mochi or a flower petal rice cake served in the first tea ceremony of the year. It is a thin flat rice cake with a burdock root stick and miso-flavored bean paste wrapped in it. The origin of hanabira-mochi is called hishi-hanabira-mochi, which have been eaten at court for 600 years as a part of osechi-ryori or special dishes for New Year.

In Entetsu Department Store, I found three confectionary stores that sold hanabira-mochi. I bought the one made by Kanou Shoujuan (叶匠壽庵). It was vegan, while the ones of other two confectionary stores contained eggs. In addition to a stick of sweetened boiled burdock root, it had also a stick of carrot.

The rice cake had soft smooth texture. Though it was unusual that a sweet contained a burdock root, I didn’t feel strange. The slight flavor of miso matched the bean paste, and I liked it. As a whole, it was a very sophisticated sweet.

I have heard that hanabira-mochi is an indispensable sweet for the New Year in Kyoto. It is a former capital in Japan, and there are many beautiful sweets originating from there. At the end of last year, Takanoya Sadahiro (高野屋貞広), a confectionary store in Kyoto, had a stand in Entetsu Department Store to sell their semi-baked sweets. I introduced their products in “Vegan sweets in December”, and this time, they had new sweets for the New Year.

These sweets were also sold individually, and I checked the ingredients one by one. I found that most of them contained eggs and there were only six vegan sweets. I bought all the six kinds and ate them with my mother and sister. The main ingredients were rice flour, adzuki bean paste, sugar, agar, etc.

The white one represented a crane, and the pink one a turtle. Both crane and turtle are symbols of long life in Japan. Especially, cranes are often drawn on New Year’s cards. There was also a colorful sweet made from agar. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what the one above the crane was because no one tried it at that time. Judging from the appearance, it might have been a sweet mainly made of adzuki bean paste.

I ate the orange one on which a bore, the symbol of this year, was drawn and the one represented a chestnut. I found the latter very good as it contained real chestnuts.