Japanese Komeko Rice Flour Castella Cake by Fukusaya, Tokyo, Japan - wheat-free alternative to castella
I love castella, especially the traditional kind where no oil or butter is used. So when I saw this Rice Flour Castella Cake, I had to try it. It was produced by Fukusaya in Tokyo, a traditional Japanese castella specialist. Instead of wheat flour, they swopped it out and used rice flour. They called this "Komeko Castella" on the item description, which means rice flour. But the fancy name is "Fukusaya Cube Yasohachi Castella". Yasohachi means 88 and refers to a Japanese saying that a multitude of tasks (88) is needed for something to bear fruit, representing the effort that goes into growing rice.
The cake is as pure as it can get with only four ingredients: egg (from Japan), sugar, rice flour and mizuame (a traditional Japanese syrup made from starch). (Image of ingredients list below.) So it should be gluten free, unless the mizuame is made from some gluten-containing starch. (Usually, it is glutinous rice or potato starch.)
In contrast, the packaging was extremely fancy (pictures below), with multiple layers of wrapping and a cute cubical box for each portion of 2 slices.
So was it different from normal castella? I was surprised that it was noticeably different.
Firstly, most noticeably, the texture was different. It appeared similar to normal castella on first bite, but once it hit the tongue, it quickly became moister and stickier compared to the wheat flour version. But it was still fluffy right until then! Perhaps like a fluffy moist pound cake. This was a super interesting experience. But it also makes sense, because it reminds me of the stickiness and moistness of glutinous rice or mochi skins.
In terms of the taste, the difference was more subtle. There was an absence of the grainy or even malty wheat taste. As you know, rice doesn't have as strong a flavour as wheat flour. If anything, some might say it is very mildly earthy or woody, but even so, it is barely noticeable even when eating plain rice. So this cake was similar - there wasn't a clear rice taste, but just an absence of wheat grain flavour. But if you concentrate, there is a very small tinge of the earthy rice flavour.
Nonetheless, we have many rice flour cakes in Asia, and I would say that the taste instantly reminded me of our rice flour cakes, such as tutu kueh, except that it was eggy.
Because of the absence of wheat grain taste, the egg flavour was also much more prominent, along with the caramelised mizuame taste that is reminiscent of brown sugar or maltose. So the flavours were slightly purer and clean to discern.
Overall, it felt like a more traditional Asian version of the castella, or a Castella Lite, which pairs better with clean flavours such as plain clear sencha green tea or hojicha. I really enjoyed it that way.
Check out the fancy packaging below. (Click to enlarge image.)
And finally, this is the ingredients list.
Discover other Castella snacks
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