Panda Shiratama Anmitsu

“An” means bean paste, “mitsu” means syrup. To me, Anmitsu is an epitome of sugary treats with a side of nostalgia. I remember those summer days in Tokyo where I got in line at a cafe with my mother. Whenver we order an anmitsu together, she would always order hers with ice-cream, and I would always order mine without ice-cream. Now that I’m 6000 miles away from her, those details of my Anmitsu memories come back to me like a tornado, and I’m just right here alone in my bed, wondering why I didn’t order it with ice-cream.

Anmitsu is one of many traditional Japanese sweets, made of small cubes of kanten (agar jelly,) anko (sweet red bean paste), shiratama (rice cake), and a variety of fruits and ice cream to go well with kuromitsu (black syrup).

Kanten, anko, shiratama and kutomitsu…. Just pronouncing those Japanese words easily does this magic to me, and my mind thinks I’m back in Japan already. It’s the most wonderful thing about food; -it’s often linked to your memories. And in my case, it’s always linked to my childhood memories.

Recently I discovered that making food art out of shiratama is surprisingly easy. I made my shiratama shapes like pandas, because I wanted to see how my favorite summer sweats would look like with my favorite animal, pandas. Perhaps I wanted to make new memories to ease my “tornado”, but it just made me miss Japan more. Quite an irony, but I love the way my pandas look on my anmitsu; they look shy but happy, and that’s exactly how my mother looked when she ordered her anmitsu with an ice-cream.

I don’t know if you are also wondering whether or not you should add ice-cream, but I hope you try this recipe!

I made Kuromitsu this time but you can buy it at Japanese stores pretty easily. But be careful with the ones that contain black food coloring. If it looks obviously black, it’s probably artificially colored and we don’t want that!

1: Make the Kuromitsu.
Put the Kurozato (dark brown sugar), honey, and water in the pot and heat it on the medium heat. Mix the ingredients constantly until honey dissolves completely. When it boils, stop the heat and wait till it cools down. Place the kuromitsu in a container and let it rest in the fridge for a while.
2: Make the Kanten.
Measure the water in the pot and add the Kanten powder. Turn on the heat at medium and lightly stir the mixture with a spatula while cooking. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat to low, simmer for around 2 minutes, making sure to constantly stir the kanten in the water. Pour the kanten in a container and let it rest in the fridge. Kanten will harden itself within 20~30 minutes.3: Make the Matcha Kanten (Optional).
If you feel adventurous and want some green tea kanten for your anmitsu, just pour 1/4 of kanten on another container and mix it with matcha powder. If you don’t like the green tea bitterness, add a little sugar. 4: Mix the shiratama ingredients.
Knead with your hand, until the dough becomes smooth. If the mixture is too dry, add a little tofu, until the dough is just right. (When it’s too dry, it’s difficult to stick ears to the panda face and we don’t want that!)5: Separate the dough into 2 colors.
Take 1/4 of the dough and knead again with cocoa powder. The color of brown turns darker after boiling, so no need to put too much cocoa powder this time. 6: Make panda faces!
Oh, this was so much fun. When attaching ears to the face, make sure the dough is sticky enough to stick together, otherwise, they might fall apart when boiling. No one likes earless pandas!7: Boil the pandas!
Toss the pandas gentry in boiling water with low heat, and cook them till they float. It should take around 5 minutes.8: Pick up the floating pandas.
When pandas start to float, it’s time to eat!9: Cut the Kanten.
Your kanten should be hardened and ready to be cut. Run a knife several times to make kanten cubes.10: Place kanten to the plate.
And you’re almost done!11: Decorate the rest of the ingredients to finish.
Set kuromitsu on a side of the plate and you’re DONE! Now you’ve made a beautiful Panda Shiratama Anmitsu!12: Serve it with kuromitsu.
And have fun pouring it on their faces! Here’s a little bonus I made for me, who would order an anmitsu without ice cream. *wink!*
Ice-cream or no ice-cream, you can pick what items you want to add in your Anmistsu. Unlike some other sweets, anmitsu is all about your own choice. And I chose to have an ice-cream this time, with panda-shaped shiratamas. Despite what everyone else think of me, anmitsu knows I’m evolving.

Thanks for reading

xx
-Yuki