Wagashi: A Guide to Traditional Japanese Desserts

Are you on the lookout for Japanese desserts? Then wagashi are sure to delight you. These traditional sweets are often beautifully decorated and eaten on special occasions or given to friends and loved ones. Many of these Japanese treats are steeped in history and tradition. Indeed, they take on a special meaning during certain religious occasions. Wagashi are often served with a bowl of green tea.

The typical ingredients of wagashi are anko, a sweet paste made from red beans, often used as a filling. Fruit also plays a major role, as do matcha (made from green tea) and rice flour. Here is our selection of Japanese desserts with their many facets.

Ohagi and botamochi are two traditional Japanese sweets, prepared and eaten at the equinox, when day and night are of equal length in spring and autumn. This happens twice a year, between 19 and 21 March and between 22 and 24 September. Japanese Buddhists mark this day in memory of their ancestors. Ohagi and botamochi are given to neighbours, a custom that already existed in the Edo period, from the 17th to the 19th century.

Ohagi is a Japanese rice cake eaten in autumn. Glutinous rice, boiled or steamed, is crushed with a pestle and then coated in a sweet paste made from azuki beans and soybean or sesame flour. The result is an oval-shaped treat, symbolising the blessing of the autumn harvest. Ohagi takes its name from the hagi flower, which blooms each autumn. The red colour of the azuki beans is said to protect against misfortune.

Very similar to ohagi, botamochi is eaten exclusively in spring. The red beans, harvested in autumn, are very tender at this time of year. Their skin is therefore incorporated into the paste. In spring, by contrast, after being stored all winter, the skin has hardened and is removed before the paste is made.

Mochi are also served on other occasions, with all sorts of variations in colour and flavour: cherry blossom, brown sugar, sweet potato and a thousand other ingredients are used.

Manju is the name of a dessert resembling a small filled bun, steamed or boiled. The recipe for manju varies from region to region, but the most common version is filled with red bean paste. Chestnuts are sometimes used too. The outer casing is made from buckwheat, rice or wheat flour, or from yam flour.

Dorayaki consists of two small pancakes wrapping a paste filling to form a sandwich. Azuki bean paste is frequently used. There are also dorayaki with pickled cherry blossom (sakura), or filled with cream, chocolate or matcha (green tea leaf paste). The pancakes are made with flour, sugar, eggs and honey. This recipe, which dates from the early 20th century, was inspired by the shape of the gong ("dora").

This refined treat is made of jelly obtained from seaweed (agar-agar) combined with that much-loved bean paste. Fruit is then added (peach, pineapple or cherries, for example) along with ice cream! Anmitsu is often served with a small bowl of sweet black syrup, poured over the dessert. A little detail: agar-agar is an excellent alternative to animal gelatine. Purely plant-based, it is perfectly suited to vegan food lovers.

A refreshing treat for summer: shaved ice with syrup, drizzled with sweetened condensed milk. It feels like eating freshly fallen snow! It comes in an endless range of flavours: strawberry, cherry, lemon, melon, but also plum and much more besides. This dessert was already prized in Japan in the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. Originally reserved for the wealthy and the nobility, kakigori found many fans among the general public from the 19th century onwards. The first kakigori shop is said to have opened in 1869 in Yokohama. Shaved ice, loved by all, even has its own day of the year: 25 July, now regarded as Kakigori Day.

From the Café du Monde at Kyoto station to the Nouvelle Pâtisserie Japonaise in Otaru, on the island of Hokkaido: as you travel through Japan's cities, you will notice that many patisseries bear French names. The counters and windows of Japanese patisseries have an air of Provence or Normandy about them. Little tarts with apricots, strawberries and raspberries, adorned with swirls of cream and a thousand other details, will make your mouth water. French-inspired patisserie is especially popular in Japan. Japanese pastry chefs who learned their trade in France introduced the art of patisserie to the country. Since the 19th century, these creations, born of the fusion of Japanese and French pastry-making, have been distinguished from traditional Japanese wagashi by the term yogashi.

Cream cheese cake: here is another speciality that has made its way from far-off Europe to the Japanese table. In Japan its fans are many, and the particular recipe for Japanese cheesecake is taken up by baking enthusiasts the world over. It is above all its light, sponge-like texture that is praised to the skies online. To make Japanese cheesecake even more Japanese, Japanese pastry chefs had a brilliant idea: to incorporate green tea, that universally loved drink, into specific matcha cheesecake recipes. The result: a green, fluffy cheesecake quite unlike any other.

These fried balls of dough are said to have arrived from China around 500 years ago. The island of Okinawa has since made these crispy little doughnuts its own. The black sugar used for this recipe, called kurozato, comes from the areas cultivated around Okinawa. What makes it special: it is made from locally grown sugar cane juice, cooked, dried and then broken into large pieces. The unique taste of this sugar gives the pastry its characteristic touch.

A samurai, a casualty of the restructuring of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, fell back on his talent for making delicious pastries. He opened a bakery in Tokyo, where he made small round buns filled with red bean paste. In doing so he altered the Western bread recipe to suit the Japanese taste of the time, filling his buns with the universally loved anko paste: the anpan was born.

Doesn't this wide choice of delicious desserts make you want to jump on the next plane to Japan? You will find wagashi shops and cafés (also known as kanmi-dokoro) all over the country. These are traditional cafés where you can enjoy wagashi on the spot. Some traditional patisseries have existed for hundreds of years.

The oldest wagashi maker in all of Japan is in Kyoto. Called Ichimonjiya Wasuke, it has been going since the year 1000! For 25 generations the traditions of Japanese pastry-making have been kept alive there.

Ginza Kimuraya, in Tokyo, is considered the oldest Japanese bakery to have taken inspiration from Western patisserie. This traditional bakery opened its doors in 1869 and to this day still serves absolute delights to lovers of little cakes and other desserts. The founder of this establishment is regarded as the inventor of the famous anpan.

If you would like to taste all these wonders for yourself, then set off on a culinary journey through Japan with us.