One of my favourite times of the year is here and that’s cherry blossom season. While there are also other blossoms and flowers blooming now, there’s something about the sakura that just makes me want to be outside having a picnic under the trees. I’ve been in Japan the last two years for the season, but this year I’m home, so I’m going to try and incorporate the flowers into my recipes instead. Here are a selection that have given me a lot of inspiration.
The panacotta from Manu’s Menu just uses sakura essence for flavour, but they do come topped with some preserved sakura flowers. I think the decoration makes them much prettier, daintier and perfect for the season.
These perfectly pink sakura doughnuts would be an amazing addition to a hanami picnic. They require plain doughnuts (so you can make them yourself or buy them) to be decorated with a sakura pink glaze. Matcha Oishii no longer sells the powder, but you can still find vendors online for a similar product. Otherwise you could make a plain pink glaze and decorate with preserved sakura flowers.
However, if you do pick up some sakura powder, Onigiri Kitchen fills their sakura macarons with a white chocolate cream flavoured with sakura powder. So they’re not just sakura in colour, but sakura in flavour too. The video goes through the process step by step, with measurements on screen.
While you’re celebrating the season with lots of snacks, you’ll probably need something to wash to all down with and this sakura lychee fizz from Sift and Simmer looks very refreshing and blossom pink. Plus, why not garnish with preserved cherry blossoms that bloom in liquid and some lychee, like in the photos.
In my last sakura recipe post, I shared the Kansai way to make sakura mochi, but Kitchen Princess Bamboo has a recipe sharing the Kanto version. Sakura mochi is a very traditional recipe at this time of year and the Kanto one rolls a kind of rice-wheat crepe around the red bean paste rather than having a coarser glutinous rice style mochi encasing it, as in the Kansai version.
This perfectly pastel pink roll cake is so pretty and comes filled with cream and sakura-an (bean paste made with sakura flowers). If sakura-an is hard to find, Japan Centre give alternate options and a way to make it yourself. However, my next recipe has a tutorial too…
I need to finish off with one of the most spectacular works of art, the Sakura Dream Cheesecake from Bake Street. This is not just a normal cheesecake, but a Japanese souffle-style cheesecake on top of a fresh cherry filled cake. It’s then covered in piped sakura-an (bean paste) and decorated with rice clay flowers and chocolate branches. This is a mega recipe that takes 3 days to make, but I think it’s wonderful inspiration if you don’t want to do it all. If you do, this would make the most exceptional centrepiece for a spring celebration, like a wedding, birthday or special gathering. They have a separate recipe for the sakura-an, which you can use in both this recipe and the one above.
Which one will you try?
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