Warabimochi - My favorite Japanese unbaked sweet

In this blog, I have briefly mentioned warabimochi a few times, as it is a very common sweet. It is supposed to be made from bracken starch, but in most cases, some other starch such as sweet potato starch is added to it. Bracken starch is an expensive ingredient because only a small amount can be obtained from bracken roots. Genuine warabimochi made from 100% bracken starch is said to be black, but I don’t think I have seen it before.

Warabimochi sold at any supermarket all year round is usually transparent and round, and a small bag of toasted soybean flour is included in the same pack. In summer, some supermarkets sell warabimochi that is a little closer to genuine one. I like the one sold in Bio Atsumi because the  size of the pack is suitable for me. The ingredients are only four: sugar, roasted soybean flour, bracken starch/processed starch.

It was elastic and chewy and reminded me of mochi or a rice cake (unlike mochi, it doesn’t stretch though). The toasted soybean flour on warabimochi seemed to be too much, but I could eat it up as it wasn’t too sweet. I thought the flour might be also suitable to use for pancakes.

In addition to this common type, this warabimochi has also a matcha (powdered green tea) version.
Though the powder still contains toasted soybean flour, the color and the flavor are those of matcha. The combination of the sweetness of warabimochi and the bitterness of macha was very good.

Another variation of warabimochi is the one containing black sugar. Warabimochi is highly recommendable to people who want to try Japanese sweets without adzuki bean paste or who like jelly-like sweets. It tastes especially good after cooled in a refrigerator. I heard that in some districts or stores, warabimochi is sold with brown sugar syrup or both brown sugar syrup and roasted soybean flour. That sounds delicious!