During a visit to Japan, we were on a hunt for more authentic sakura-flavoured fare and so were delighted to stumble upon this Sakura Castella cake by Quolofune, a boutique castella specialist in Japan that has branches at upmarket department stores. (I had previously posted about their original, matcha and brown sugar castella rusks, way back in Nov 2014.) We got this one at the Kansai Airport.
The interesting thing about Quolofune is that their signature castella cake is actually not the traditional Japanese castella cake, which normally contains no dairy. Instead, their normal signature castella cake actually departs from that norm and contains milk or cream, which makes it fluffier and more similar to a chiffon cake in texture. However, their VIA castella cake series, which is what we got, reverts to the traditional norm and uses no dairy, with a texture that is denser, more moist, more eggy and more mizuame malty caramelised notes. It is also slightly sweeter due to the higher mizuame content. It is specifically baked for overseas consumption as the lack of dairy increases its shelf life, which makes sense why they would be selling this version at the airport. And I actually don't mind, because I prefer the more traditional version, especially when trying it in this festive and traditional limited edition sakura flavour.
Here are some photos of the pretty packaging. The outermost box is the pink and gold one, which is the pattern of their VIA series. The white and black one was the airtight sleeve inside which contained the box holding the cake.
The sakura castella cake colour was a very obvious and pretty salmon pink hue, in contrast to the normal pastel yellow plain castella cake. Not every photo captures this well, but the one below that is the pinkest has the colour most representative of what I experienced with my eyes. I loved how you could clearly see the preserved sakura leaves as well. At first, I thought there might be sakura flowers, but based on the ingredients list (further below), they listed only sakura leaves.
As for the taste, I really liked it. The predominant flavour is still the eggy castella cake flavour. However, at the corners of the palate, there are some subtle floral and herby notes from the sakura leaves. There is also a very faint tinge of salt and sourness.
I would say that these made up perhaps 3% of the overall taste, so it was very subtle. And this becomes a bit more prominent when you bite into the places where the leaves are concentrated or in the caramelised skin.
But given that the castella cake's body is already so full of the mellow egg and flour taste, these complex but very subtle top notes pair very sophisticatedly to build on the bed of egg cake taste rather than replace it or douse it. The overall effect is that it is much more balanced than a normal castella cake the way adding even a bit of salt to pastries goes a long way towards balancing the sugar and butter in them. In this case, it wasn't only salt, but also faint sourness. And if you ate a plain castella cake side by side, you would definitely taste the difference.
Furthermore, for the browned "crust" (which is normally not crunchy or crispy at all), which tastes very malty and caramelised, the floral, herby and sour notes did very subtle enhance the malty notes, broadening and deepening them.
So I really like how it is done. It feels very Japanese to be subtle and natural about flavours, as they tend to cater to more mindful connoisseurs even for their regularly accessible and affordable products.
This is another photo below of the cake from the bottom with the baking sheet still attached.
This is a photo of their pretty paper bag which has the brand name in Japanese kanji characters. It literally means black ship, pronounced "kurofune", which is how their brand is supposed to be pronounced as well.
Finally, here is the ingredients list, promotional display case with the price in yen (Y1400) and pictures of a little leaflet that came with the cake inside the box with a write-up describing the sakura leaves for reference (click to enlarge for clarity). It's lovely that the first ingredients is eggs (locally produced). Followed by sugar, wheat flour, mizuame, sakura leaves, salt, cochineal colouring, pH adjuster. It seems though that the pink colour comes mainly from the cochineal dye, which makes sense because the leaves themselves would never lend much colour to the cake.
Discover other interesting castella treats
- (mentioned) Matcha, Original and Brown Sugar Castella Rusks by Quolofune
- Japanese Komeko Rice Flour Castella Cake by Fukusaya, Tokyo, Japan
- Butter and Matcha Castella Rusks by Minamoto Kitchoan
- White Peach Castella by Minamoto Kitchoan
- Hojicha Biscoff Castella by Muji Cafe
- Oil Free Cocoa Castella with Raisins and Walnuts by Fukusaya in Japan
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