It’s time for another awesome DIY candy kit!
DIY candy kits are a big thing in Japan, and they can range from simple to complicated.
This is another kit from the lovely TokyoTreat Japanese candy box. It came in September’s box, and it looked like a great opportunity for some sweet creativity!
This particular kit was to make tiny wagashi (traditional Japanese candies) by making various coloured pastes and shaping them in the moulds provided.
The TokyoTreat menu always provides step-by-step instructions for their candy kits, so we didn’t have to rely on the Japanese instructions on the package!
First of all, we opened up the package.
Candy kits are always very well organized, and provide everything you need (except for water).
They generally include moulds, stirrers, and little packages of powder. Everything is conveniently colour-coded.
The first job was to make some jelly. This was so the jelly could be left to set while we made up the other pastes.
This involved mixing powder and water (measuring lines were helpfully included in the mould) and shaking it up in a little bag.
The resulting jelly was then squeezed into the first set of moulds, fish and little squares.
Apparently we should have been able to get four squares out of the jelly, but we only managed the fish and two squares. Never mind.
Next it was time to create the different coloured pastes. These were supposed to represent the bean pastes that so many wagashi are made from.
They are commonly red, white, green, and brown, which are the four we had here.
First, the brown paste. We poured the water up to the indicated line, then added the powder.
You can just see the colour coming through at the edges.
Then we did the same for the white, pink, and green.
As all the powders started off white, I don’t know what alchemy made them change colour so drastically!
I’m not sure I want to know, especially as I can’t read the ingredients.
Anyway, to continue.
We ended up with four little balls of paste.
Pretty, huh? Rather like play-doh. In fact, apart from being somewhat stickier, the texture was very similar to play-doh.
As these pastes were going to be moulded, it seemed appropriate.
The moulds provided were in the shape of a leaf, and tiny strawberries and flowers.
Now, there were some pictures in the booklet to show examples of wagashi you could make.
Little C, however, decided to go a little off-piste and create her own.
That’s far more fun anyway.
She pinched and rolled and moulded and created, and came up with some lovely creations!
She made little sushi roll-type things, and decorated the jelly squares.
My particular favourite is the sakura branch.
What shapes can you see?
Some of the YumeTwins plushies were rather keen to get in on the act too! A little reminder of home perhaps?
Anyway, this was a terrifically fun DIY kit. It took quite some time to put together, and it was especially nice to be able to be so creative.
One final note. This was certainly a fantastic candy kit. The only downside was that we didn’t really enjoy eating them! I’m afraid the taste wasn’t as nice as we expected.
But that didn’t matter at all because we had such a great time creating the candies!
