#tsubu-an

[tattooed-alchemist]

January wagashi from Tokara.

The pink mochi had a stretchy rice dough outer layer and the inside was shiro-an flavored with miso.

The brown kinton is a super-soft bean paste sieved to make threads, clumped around a ball of tsubu-an.

The rat mochi has a steamed rice dough outer layer, and the zodiac sign for the coming lunar year is branded on the surface with a wire branding iron.  The filling is koshi-an.

[tattooed-alchemist]

Lunar New Year and Setsuban wagashi from Tokara.

[tattooed-alchemist]

My first batch of successful tsubu-an, which was the second batch I made because I did not get the adzuki beans tender enough on the first attempt.

This was the full magilla, starting with dry beans, then soaking overnight, cooking, shocking the beans, more cooking, and then sweetening and doing the final cook down.

But having just eaten a glop cooled in the refrigerator, it’s got a partial paste texture, the right subtle sweetness and is much fresher in flavor than the store bought available to me from the ethnic market.

Some of this needs to go in the freezer, where it can keep for a bit. I went through a bit more caster sugar than I wanted with that failed batch, and have to restock that yet again if I want to attempt koshi-an.

Once I have the three basic bean pastes down, those then get turned into all sorts of things. And mixing bean paste and agar jelly is how most yokan are made.

[tattooed-alchemist]

Wagashi by Tokara. 

Clockwise from top-left: Hydrangea, Baby Plum and Love Letter From A Bird.

Wagashi trivia: that little yellow bit is a puffed rice grain dyed with food coloring, which we would never have been guessed, @blacksunmagick and I seriously pondered, and then we just asked Tokara-san.