Japanese Sweets

I mentioned in an earlier post that there are some Japanese sweets that my sister really likes that are sold here in London at Minamoto Kitchoan (they also have stores in New York, San Francisco, and several other countries). I thought I would expand on them a bit and show some pictures. 

This first one is called Mamedaifuku. 

It is a kind of rice cake filled with sweet beans. Here is what the inside looks like.

Here is Jackie enjoying her Mamedaifuku.

 This next one is called Kusamochi.

It is a soft, chewy Japanese rice cake that is flavored with an herb called Yomogi. It is filled with red bean paste which I tried to capture in the next photo but it is still kind of hard to see. 

 Here is Jackie from an earlier trip after we told her the kusamochi looked like a big green tongue.

These next three photos are of Hakutou Mochi. The wrapping was so nice on this one!

Hakutou Mochi is a sweet white peach bean paste wrapped with soft rice cake. 

Here is what the inside filling looks like. Jackie had me try a bite of this one since she hadn't gotten it before but I still did not care for it. There is something about the texture that I don't like.

This next one is called Sakuramochi and is made of sweet glutinous rice and filled with a sweet red bean paste and is wrapped in an edible pickled sakura leaf. 

This last one is a chocolate crunch mochi. This one also came in nice packaging.

I had a hard time finding a description of this one online (which is what I did for all the others) but Jackie said it was really chocolatey but she wasn't a big fan of the crunchy outside.