Japanese sweet wrapped with cherry leaf: “Sakura-mochi”
Japanese sweet wrapped with cherry leaf in
the style of eastern Japan
When the season of the cherry blossoms is coming to an end, we notice that
tiny new leaves are starting to grow under the flowers whose petals are
already gone. Some of those young & soft leaves of a special cherry variety
are preserved with salt and vinegar to enjoy the scent of spring later in the
year. “Sakura-mochi” is the name of the sweet, which is wrapped with the
cherry leaf. Under the cherry-leaf wrapping, a ball of sweet red-bean paste
is rolled with a thin and pink-colored crepe made of wheat. Nowadays,
there are many sweets, both Japanese and Western, which use the salted cherry leaves, but this
“Sakura-mochi” is the forerunner in the field, and in addition, it is very traditional.
Whether to eat the leaf or not, the choice is up to you. But it is not recommended to try to eat the leaf after
having separated it from the wheat crepe because the leaf is for flavoring rather than for tasting it alone.
If you ate the crepe with the leave, first you would hear the crispy sound of the leaf tearing apart, and
right after that, a nice flavor of cherry would delight your nose. “Sakura-mochi” is a very simple sweet
which combines the wheat crepe and sweet red-bean paste with the cherry leaf, but by using the real leaf
as flavor, it becomes a special sweet for the Japanese who loves cherry flowers so much. It is basically
recognized as a spring sweet, and is an indispensable sweet at the Doll Festival held on the 3rd of March,
to wish for the healthy growth of girls.
“Sakura-mochi” has regional variations. In eastern Japan, as I mentioned
Japanese sweet topped with cherry flower
on cherry leaf in the style of western Japan
above, it is a sweet made with a ball of red-bean paste, rolled with a thin
wheat crepe, and wrapped with a salted cherry leaf. However, in western
Japan, it is a sweet made of a ball of red-bean paste, covered with
granulated sticky rice, steamed, and then, is wrapped with a salted cherry
leaf. When the granulated sticky rice is steamed, it absorbs water which
makes it appear translucent and glossy. The texture is soft, moderately
sticky (compared with rice cake), and it has a slightly having grain-feeling. On the other hand, the
wheat-made crape in eastern Japan is quite simple. Moreover, it doesn’t seem to have any noteworthy
characteristics, when compared with those made of granulated sticky rice in western Japan. I used to like
the western one simply because I love chewy texture. But now, I like the eastern one better because I
think that all of the components - red-bean paste, wheat-crepe, and cherry leaf - are in good balance. Well,
you can certainly buy them in the Tokyo area during spring. They are tiny sweets, so try both and see
which one you like beter.