![]() ![]() It will start to melt when it sits at room temperature for too long. The raindrop cake is meant to be eaten right away. When eaten with the syrup and flour, this dessert is refreshing, light and sweet. The raindrop cake dissolves in your mouth, which is a unique and fun sensation. It is traditionally served with kinako (roasted soy bean flour) and kuromitsu, a Japanese black sugar syrup that literally translates as “black honey.” Because it is made of mostly water and a little agar powder, it has almost no calories. It is a jelly-like dessert made only with mineral water and agar powder, and resembles a giant raindrop. Raindrop cake is a Japanese dessert known as mizu shingen mochi. If you are not in Japan, you can still make this dessert with the agar powder available in the US– your cake won’t be as crystal clear but it will still be pretty. During my trip to Japan last year, I purchased a bag of cool agar powder from Amazon for a much cheaper price. I found a few sellers on Amazon but it is expensive. In Japan, they have a type of agar powder called cool agar and this is the secret to the crystal clear appearance. I researched making raindrop cakes for months before finally figuring out that the issue was the agar powder available to me. While I thought my homemade version was pretty successful and tasted just like the ones I had in NY, one thing that bothered me was that my version was not crystal clear in appearance. Since then, I’ve had the version at Smorgasburg in New York and seen the dessert pop up at many other dessert cafes. ![]() If you recall, I made my homemade version here. Three years ago, the raindrop cake was introduced to the US by Chef Darren Wong at Smorgasburg in New York. (The stories from my Taiwan trip are saved to my Instagram profile if you missed them). During my recent trip to Taiwan, there were so many sakura-themed snacks, drinks, and desserts. My social media feeds have been filled with beautiful cherry blossom pictures. I’ve been really inspired by sakura season. This unique low-calorie dessert, known as mizu shingen mochi, is made of just agar powder and water. It has been showcased by mainstream American media on The Today Show, BuzzFeed and ABC News.Japanese raindrop cake filled with cherry blossoms. The dessert is also sold in kits to be made at home. The largely tasteless dessert melts when it enters the mouth and must be eaten immediately, or it will melt and begin to evaporate after twenty minutes. The dish appears like a transparent raindrop, although it has also been compared to breast implants and jellyfish. A molasses-like syrup, called kuromitsu, and soybean flour, called kinako, are used as toppings. After being heated, it is molded and cooled. Agar is a vegan alternative to gelatin that is made from seaweed. The water from the original dish was obtained from Mount Kaikoma of the Southern Japanese Alps, and it has been described as having a mildly sweet taste. The dish is made from mineral water and agar thus, it has virtually no calories. Shortly after, London restaurant Yamagoya worked four months to develop another version. ĭarren Wong introduced the dish to the United States in New York City at the April 2016 Smorgasburg food fair. The dessert became a viral sensation and people made special trips to experience the dish. The year prior in 2013, the creator wanted to explore the idea of making edible water. Mizu means water and shingen mochi is a type of sweet rice cake ( mochi) made by the Kinseiken company. The Kinseiken Seika Company in Yamanashi Prefecture was one of the first stores to sell this during the weekends. In modern Japan, locals in Hokuto began incorporating fresh mineral water into the dessert. ![]() Shingen mochi was first created the Sengoku era by the daimyo, Takeda Shingen, as an emergency food made from rice flour and sugar. Originally a Japanese dessert known as mizu shingen mochi (水信玄餅), the dish is as an evolution of the traditional Japanese dessert shingen mochi (信玄餅). It first became popular in Japan in 2014, and later gained international attention. Raindrop cake is a dessert made of water and agar that is supposed to resemble a raindrop. Raindrop cake served with kuromitsu and kinako ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |