Sweet red bean paste - anko (餡子）

Backpost。

When I was at my boyfriend's house, I mention to his mom that I liked anko which is sweet bean paste. Anko is an essential ingredient of Japanese desserts. The taste is very, very sweet. I heard that I lot of people actually don't like it.

So my boyfriend's mom tried to teach me to how to make different kinds of Japanese desserts. The first is a dessert that is pretty much a ball of anko covered by red beans with a shiny coating of something. To make it we just made balls of anko and rolled half of the ball in red beans. Then coated with this liquid mix that made it shiny.

Basically it was....TOO SWEET. Amasugiru! It tasted good with tea though.

(Not the finished product...)

The second dessert I like a lot more. I had it before. It is called Sakura mochi. We had to use a special kind of rice (name I forgot but begins with a d) and color it pink. The rice is really sticky and we had to coat the anko ball evenly with it. My boyfriend's mom made it look easy but it wasn't. After that you had to put this slightly bitter tasting leaf over it. I like this dessert because the taste is not overwhelmingly sweet like the first dessert.

(This was the trickiest part because coating had to be thin yet able to cover the entire ball.)

This was a fun activity. The real challenge is to see how much can I do on my own.