Anmitsu - Japanese dessert

Dear bed,

You're so warm and toasty, and I almost wish you weren't this comfy making it so hard for me to get up in the morning.

Dear rain,
Please can you re-think your forecasted long stay this week?

Dear pizza delivery boy,

Please don't deliver anymore pizzas to my place. *burp*

Dear treadmill,

You make me sweaty and my heart beat faster than anything else. And you challenge me like no-one does. That's why I like you. 

Dear friend,

Thank you for your 'surprise'. Now I can watch Ugly Betty and The Mentalist whenever I want!

Dear poodle in cooking with dog,
Your hair is slightly wonky at times but I admire your patience and self control whilst your owner is cooking.

Dear Australian winter,

Your baldness (on trees) is starting to appeal to me. I also like how I can turn up my heater and eat summertime desserts when you're around too. 

Have you seen the youtube cooking videos: cooking with dog? 

I've been a fan for a while now. Not just because I am fascinated by a sleepy poodle who sits by the stove like a rock, but I adore all the mouth-watering Japanese dishes featured on this channel.

So remember how I was sick a few weeks back? I watched the clip for Fruit Cream Anmitsu then and it immediately took me back to my unforgettable Japan trip (where I had anmitsu every single day) and I wanted to recover from the flu faster than anything else. (Talk about the most effective 'medication'!)

Anmitsu is a popular Japanese dessert made of small cubes of agar agar in a brown sugar syrup. It is also served with sweetened red bean paste, pieces of gyuhi (mochi-like sweets) and a scoop of ice-cream. Oh and decorated with seasonal fruits too. Yummo!

Ok, wanna see how it's made?

First you'll need to make some agar agar. Not flavoured or sweetened. Simple as!

Then dice them up into dainty fine cubes...so translucent that it's almost like they're invisible!

To make the kuromitsu (Japanese sugar syrup) to go with the agar agar, you'll need to melt some dark brown or muscovado sugar with corn syrup.

Pour it onto the agar agar...

To make the gyuhi (which is a type of traditional Japanese mochi), get some glutinous rice flour in either powdered form or granules...

...add a bit water to the rice flour and heat it up and eventually you'll get something like this...

To prevent the glutinous rice flour mixture sticking to everything else, you'll need to dust some potato starch all over!

Then you make some anko - sweet red bean paste (just because red beans and green tea ice-cream are a match made in heaven!) If you don't have time, just buy them canned (sweetened) at your local Asian grocery store. Recipe (or rather, another youtube video with the poodle) for anko can be found here.

Then it's just a matter of slicing up the oranges wedges and strawberries...and adding a scoop of the green tea ice-cream! You might want to use an ice-cream scoop for this. Sadly I don't own one. I wonder why? Definitely not because I eat ice-cream out of the box! How unladylike!

If you generally love Japanese desserts and can never get enough of the red bean and matcha (green tea) combination, I think you might totally adore this...even on a cold winter's day :)

Fruit Cream Anmitsu

From Cooking with Dog

Serves 3

• 4g/0.141 oz Agar Powder
• 500ml Water (2.11 us cup)
• 1 tbsp Mizuame - Thick Starch Syrup (I used light corn syrup)
• 100g Kurozato - Muscovado or Unrefined Brown Sugar (3.53 oz)
• 70ml Water (2.37 fl oz)
• 30g Shiratamako - Glutinous Rice Flour (1.06 oz)
• 50g Sugar (1.76 oz)
• 60ml Water
• Potato Starch
• 3 Strawberries
• 3 Navel Orange wedges
• 3 tbsp Anko - Sweet Red Bean Paste (buy canned or recipe here.)
• 3 scoops of Matcha Ice Cream (I bought mine but you can make it using this recipe)
• 20-30 Boiled Aka Endomame - Red Endo Beans (I omitted this).

The simple instructions for the recipe can be found from the linked videos! :)

Watch them! They're kinda...cute?! 

Might also make you want to get a dog to cook with too!

Have a blessed week ahead :)