Vegan sweets in March

Last month, I introduced ichigo daifuku and uguisumochi of Mataichian (又一庵) in Entetsu Department Store. Since Mataichian makes good bean paste, you’ll never be disappointed with any of their sweets. But the shop is most famous for its kintsuba.

Kintsuba is a sweet that is usually made of adzuki bean paste wrapped in a thin wheat flour skin. In addition to this typical one, Mataichian makes some variations according to seasons. Now they have cherry kintsuba.

The skin is pale pink, adding a tone of spring. The inside is coarse white bean paste. And it has a real cherry blossom on top! It is salted but still has fragrance. I think this is one of the most springlike sweets in Entesu Department Store.

In addition to this kintsuba, mataichian has some other spring sweets. One of them is sakuramochi, It is a very popular sweet sold in many confectionery shops, supermarkets, and convenience stores at this time of year. When I came to Mataichian today, all sakuramochi for individual selling were sold out. There were only packs containing two pieces respectively. So, I went to another shop Seikanin (清閑院) in the basement of the department store to buy one.

Sakuramochi has also a pink color. It is wrapped with a salted cherry leaf whose flavor goes very well with the sweet adzuki paste inside. The outside is made of Domyojiko rice flour and has a texture of crushed rice. If you think Japanese sweets are monotonous with just adzuki bean paste, try sakuramochi! I love its unique taste and texture. 

In fact, there are two kinds of sakuramochi, and the one I ate is Kansai (Western Japan) style. The other sakuramochi is Kanto (Eastern Japan) style. Maybe I’ll introduce it some other day. I found a shop that sells Kanto style sakuramochi, but I got interested in other kind of sweet there. It was two-color dumplings.

One of the dumplings was pink and stuffed with white bean paste, and the other was green with mugwort and stuffed with adzuki bean paste. And they were wrapped with a salted cherry leaf. What a gorgeous combination!

I bought this in Shunkado (春華堂), one of the best-known confectionery shop in Hamamatsu. It is famous for its eel pie, but it was originally a Japanese confectionery shop and has some unique sweets.