I thought it would be difficult to find any special sweets for this month, but I was wrong. Some summer sweets started to be sold in Entetsu Department Store really looked suitable for the rainy season. Their names are started with “mizu (water) xxx”, implying coolness or higher water content compared with an ordinary type. One of them is mizuyokan. Yokan is usually made from bean paste, sugar, and agar and is usually dense. Mizuyokan is a lighter and softer kind of yokan with higher water content. The color is often paler than ordinary yokan.
The one I bought has a plastic leaf around it. I ate the mizuyokan after cooling well in the refrigerator. It was sweet, smooth, and refreshing. Personally, I prefer mizuyokan to ordinary yokan that is too sweet and heavy sometimes. One piece of mizuyokan is often sold in a cup as in the case of a jelly product. A box of such cups is often selected as a summer gift to relatives, friends, or acquaintances. They last long and are eaten when it is hot.
Another famous “mizu” sweet is mizumanju. Manju is one of the most popular sweets in Japan. It is a bun made from wheat flour and is stuffed with adzuki bean paste. Mijumanju had also adzuki bean paste inside but is made from arrowroot starch. Today, I found a pack containing an ordinary type of mizumanju and one with a macha flavor. The ordinary one is semi-transparent, and you can see the color of the paste inside.
They were jiggly, and the texture was like jelly. Instead of adzuki bean paste, the macha mizumanju contained white bean paste that went well with the green color of matcha. It also tasted good. I thought this kind of mizumanju was very rare as I had never seen one before. I like to eat cool jiggly sweets especially when it is hot. I’m thinking of introducing some other things in this summer.
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