Authentic Sakura Fare Part 2: Sakura Warabimochi, Sakura Daifuku, Sakura Bean Cake, Sakura Manju and Pickled Sakura Flowers from Japan
As promised, this is the rest of my haul of authentic sakura themed treats from Japan during sakura season. I have other posts on sakura fare from a trip back in 2015, including traditional Kansai-style sakura mochi and sakura manju. More recently, I featured sakura castella cake by Quolofune, which I include in some pictures here. Today, I'll feature Sakura Warabi Mochi, Sakura Daifuku, Sakura Bean Cake (or Sakura no Kashi) and Sakura Manju, of an opposite type from the one in 2015. 
Finally, this is the ingredients list. The main thing I noted is that they used sakura leaves, and no sakura flowers are listed. 
Sakura Bean Cake (sakura no kashi) by Wakou Sweets
The following are pictures of the packaging and the insert, which includes a recipe for how to cook it with short-grain glutinous rice (mochi kome).
This is how the sweets above were beautifully packaged, minus the castella cake which is in another post.
Sakura Daifuku
I had the daifuku first on a separate day, so I'll cover it first. This is called Kuromon Daifuku (Sakura) as it was purchased from Kuromon Market in Osaka.
This is like a sakura version of the daifuku found commonly across Japan such as at convenience stores. The most remarkable thing about this is that they went all out to feature the sakura flavour by refraining from the intensely flavoured red bean or adzuki paste, choosing to go with neutral-tasting white bean paste instead. Out of all the sakura flavoured sweets, I would say that this has by far the purest sakura taste as a result. They used otebo beans (see ingredients list in photo below), which are so mildly flavoured that they tend to adopt the flavour (and colour) of whatever other ingredient you mix them with, and are used to make the white version of adzuki paste (anko) called shiroan. For an example, check out this cheese-flavoured snack from Minamoto Kitchoan that uses cheese-flavoured shiroan.
As a result, I could clearly taste the distinct floral and herby top notes with the slightly sour saltiness of the preserved sour plum taste of the sakura leaves.
The mochi also seemed very traditional, and is one of the first mochi I've had that really seems like it was hand-mixed from the glutinous rice flour and probably also handmade, because there were very little uneven bits of rice flour here and there. If you click the photo above to enlarge the texture, you might be able to see the unevenness and tiny lumps glistening in the light. As a result, it was thicker and stickier than any commercial daifuku mochi that I've tried, including those at convenience stores in Japan or the Luckin Coffee daifuku range. While those might be more pleasant and comforting because of their smoother and softer texture, this hand-mixed mochi felt very organic and made the mochi much more chewy, so it was a part of the experience rather than just acting as a tasteless skin or wrapper. One downside is that it was so sticky that the top of it stuck hard and fast to the plastic lid of the box (see photo below), which is why the mochi is not round in the first photo and has the top sticking up like it was plucked. They should have used more flour to prevent it from sticking, like what Luckin does with its daifuku.
This is a photo of the sakura-flavoured shiroan filling, which has that beautiful salmon pink hue.
This photo is of the original store display which shows the price of 300 yen. You can also see that these pristine ones are round and not stuck to the lid.
Sakura Warabi Mochi
Next would be the sakura warabi mochi, which is the cup-shaped jelly.
The sakura flavour of this one was not as straight, and it is reflected in the ingredients. They did use salt pickled sakura leaves (hence I would assume with sour plum vinegar), but they also used a sakura liqueur, which probably explains the difference.
Overall, the sakura flavour was less salty, sour or herby than the daifuku's filling, and it was very faint and barely discernable, like a 1% concentration type of taste. Instead, what dominated was like a slightly cherry-forward and very diluted mixed fruit syrup in flavour. The typical salty herby sour plum notes enhanced this very faintly on the fringes. I'm thinking that it is the dilution of the pickled sakura leaves with the water, mochi powder and sakura liqueur that dialled down those traditional flavours.
That said, it paired quite well with the darkly earthy and deeply nutty toasted kinako powder, with these forming the base notes that filled out a different part of the palate than the earlier mentioned sakura fragrant top notes. The faint almond notes from the cherry also partly blended into the earthy notes of the kinako. Overall, the kinako powder was also well toasted to produce something like a medium or dark roast level of aroma that was dark and toasty, so it was wonderful.
The texture of the warabi mochi was a bit disappointing, however, as it wasn't at all the wobbly and jiggly type of jelly that one might expect of warabi. Instead, it was stiffer. As you can see, it held its shape perfectly when tipped from the cup, instead of slouching over like typical freshly made warabi mochi. The ingredients list also explain this, as they used not only warabiko (bracken starch, which is the powder used to make warabi mochi), but also lotus root starch (蓮根粉 renkonko or 蓮粉 as they spelled it). And they even used more lotus starch than warabiko, hence the huge difference in texture. But perhaps they needed it for shelf stability.
Here are some photos of the pretty packaging.
And here is the ingredients list (click to enlarge). The label indicates that it is made in Kyoto City.
Next up is one of my favourites, alongside the sakura castella cake and sakura daifuku, but that is a completely different experience. The Japanese label just calls this "sakura sweet", but it is similar to a starchy bean cake or yōkan, just that the starchy part is somewhat more diluted.
This sweet cake had the most complex mix of flavours and also texture. If I had to compare it to something, it feels like a jelly form of those traditional Chinese dessert soups with beans. The two main elements are the sakura flavoured jelly and the sweetened beans.
From the ingredients list, the jelly is made of a mix of coarse rice powder (doumyoujiko 道明寺粉), which also happens to be the main ingredient of the traditional Kansai-style sakura mochi, and honkuzu (本葛), or honkudzuko, which is a high-grade Japanese starch powder extracted from the roots of the kudzu plant (Pueraria lobata), a climbing vine in the pea family.
Also according to the ingredients list, the pickled sakura leaves are powdered, so they seem to be mixed into one of the starch jellies. I think this might explain why the jelly doesn't look homogeneous but appears in different gradients and shades of pink, including some cloudy parts that look like clumpier and pastel pink.
The sakura flavoured jelly was a little bit more forward in the fruity-floral plum notes, like a very diluted mixed fruit syrup, with vague notes of white grape, mizuame malt and caramel notes and salt. There wasn't much strong herby or sour notes, which could have been masked by the other elements in this complex mix. The photo below shows the jelly starch in detail with the dark flecks of ground sakura leaves.
The red bean was especially satisfying, because unlike typical Japanese sweets where the beans are just pure sweet and cloying, these beans had quite a bit of salt, which balanced the fragrant jelly and sugar very well overall. The dark earthiness of the red bean also provided a strong base and body for the salt to sit in.
Overall, it was a very complex blend of flavours that nonetheless came together very well in a balanced way, with the complex top notes, sitting well on top of a deep salty and sweet body. If I had to put my finger on the elements, it would be the combination of fruity sakura fragrance, caramel and malty sweet mizuame and salty earthy red beans.
These are photos of the pretty packaging and store display. It was quite cheap at only 194 yen for something so complex and well balanced.
And this is the ingredients list (click to enlarge). The label indicates that it is made in Shiga Prefecture by a company in Kyoto called Sweets Wakou (株式会社 和晃).
Sakura Manju by Wakou Sweets (manju with sakura flavoured adzuki anko red bean paste)
The final sakura sweet that I tried is the sakura manju. Specifically, this is a normal manju with sakura flavoured red bean paste filling. This is in contrast to the manju from my 2015 batch of sakura sweets, which had a sakura-flavoured manju bun skin with a normal azuki red bean paste filling.
This was the biggest disappointment, as my companion and I couldn't seem to discern any sakura flavour at all, and it just felt like a normal azuki manju. Perhaps there might have been a tinge of extra salt in the azuki paste filling, but it wasn't enough for us to distinctly notice. Based on the ingredients list, it seems like they mixed the ground pickled sakura leaf powder into the red bean paste, but the red bean's intense flavour just overpowered all of the sakura's delicate flavour.
This is an unusual case of a poorly paired and badly thought out recipe. They should have used shiroan instead, like the sakura daifuku. Alternatively, they should have done what the other manju from my 2015 batch did and infused the sakura into the manju skin instead, where the fragrance would have been a lot more isolated and pronounced.
The redeeming point is that they did the manju skin well, using butter and honey. (See the ingredients list below.) So at least as a normal manju, it was tasty with a hint of butter and possibly slightly more balanced with salt.
Here are photos of the pretty wrapper and store display. The price tag is a bit high at 162 yen for a normal small manju, however.
Finally, this is the ingredients list. This one is also made by Sweets Wakou.
Pickled Cherry Blossom Flowers
The last item is one I've not had the chance to try. It is the pickeled cherry blossom flower itself, not just the leaf. This intrigues me because everything I have tried so far has been flavoured by the pickled cherry blossom leaves, so I'm wondering if the flower has a different flavour, perhaps without the herby notes and with a more pronounced floral or fruity flavour.
According to the leaflet insert, it is meant to be boiled with konbu, pickled plums and sake in rice. Perhaps I could use it in a drink or tea instead of rice. I haven't done that yet, but I'm sharing the pictures here because it is interesting.
These are the pickled flowers.
Finally, this is the ingredients list, which is very pure. It reads just: sakura flowers (locally grown), salt and plum vinegar.
Nailing down the Japanese preserved sakura flavour
I've posted on many sakura flavoured snacks and sweets in part because I have found it a very elusive flavour to put my finger on. On the one hand, many foreign brands and shops, especially Chinese ones, tend to conflate it with cherry, raspberry or (worst of all) strawberry flavour. On the other hand, the actual authentic flavour from Japan is so faint and mild that it is difficult to describe, and even within that spectrum, the different sweets manufacturers have slightly different balance between the different elements.
So far, the only consistent and most distinct parts of it that I have noticed are the salty, herby and sour notes from the sour plum pickling process and the leaf's flavour. But the floral and fruity element has continued to evade description.
However, in the process of trying this batch of treats, I think I finally put my finger on that last element. I would describe it as the fruity-floral scent of a very diluted canned mixed fruit syrup, without the sweetness. It is not purely floral, but there is some element of mixed fruits (including faint grape, peach and pear notes) at the fringes. At the same time, there is an even fainter hint of the almond notes in cherry, but definitely nowhere near as full as those in an actual cherry flavour. That's why the mixed fruit notes seem to fit the bill the best. And I can indeed say that I've encountered this in all the sakura sweets featured in this post, as well as the sakura castella cake and the sakura macarons that I featured recently.
Summary
Overall, this was a very educational experience for me showing the range of how traditional Japanese preserved sakura flavour can be presented and how it can be paired.
My favourite would be the sakura daifuku for how purely it presents the traditional pickled sakura leaf flavour, the sakura castella cake for how it subtly but deftly uses pickled sakura leaves to make a familiar and comforting cake's flavour pop, and the sakura sweet bean cake for how it pairs complex sakura leaf fragrance with caramel-like mizuame and earthy azuki.
Discover other sakura treats
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