Sakura wagashi is a Japanese dessert made of bean paste and glutinous rice, coloured and shaped like cherry blossom flowers to celebrate the beginning of spring.

 

What is wagashi?

Wagashi (和菓子)  is a Japanese word for sweet or dessert. 

Wagashi is consist of two component; one part is the sweet bean paste filling known as shiro-an.
The second element is the dough to wrap and shape wagashi is known as nerikiri dough.

Nerikiri dough is made of bean paste (shiro-an) and glutinous rice mixture.

Wagashi is to mark the start of spring, thus they are shaped into beautiful flower like sakura (cherry blossoms), of course.

How to make wagashi?

There are only few ingredients needed to make Japanese wagashi recipes : white bean, sugar, glutinous rice flour and water.
And few steps that you have to do before creating beautiful wagashi.

Wagashi consist of 2 components : Shiro-an and Nerikiri dough.

First you have to cook white bean and make them into a paste. This paste is called Shiro-an.

Then you prepare nerikiri dough to wrap shiro-an.

We will not be able to shape wagashi into any flowers by just using shiro-an, you have to have nerikiri dough.

 

How to make Nerikiri dough ( 練り切り) ?

I will explain step by step using the photos below. I think it is much easier to understand that way.

Anyway, in a nutshell, nerikiri dough is made of mixing glutinous rice flour with water and then add shiro-an. 

It requires heat to form a dough. I used microwave to make nerikiri dough.
Then once the dough has cooled down by stretch and fold method, some colouring were to the nerikiri dough.
You can divide the dough into few colours depending the type of wagashi you would like to create.

Point to note : Always keep nerikiri dough under a damp cloth. They gets dry easily if left uncovered, especially during hot summer heat.

 
1. Mix glutinous rice flour with water

 
2. Add shiro-an to the glutinous rice mixture

 
3. Microwave on HIGH for 30 seconds for 3 to 4 times until the nerikiri become dough and not stick to the spatula.

 

 
4. Stretch and fold in a damp cheese cloth for 20 times.

 
5. Tear into small pieces to expedite the cooling process

 
6. This is how Nerikiri dough should look like when pull.
It yield to that 'pencil' tip shape like!

 
 
7. Adding smidgen of red colouring to nerikiri dough, but quite a substantial amount of white food colouring

 
8. Now we are ready to make sakura wagashi.

How to make Sakura Wagashi {桜の和菓子}?

Sakura is a Japanese word for cherry blossoms. 
Hence Sakura wagashi means cherry blossom wagashi or cherry blossom dessert.
Once you mix the nerikiri dough to pastel pink, we can now start making Sakura wagashi.

I will try to explain through these photos.