Ichou

Photo

Recipe

From our favorite Authentic Japanese Sweets channel.

15g balls only!

Do not do 20g balls! No omotenashi here! Otherwise it looks big and awful.

Yield

6 sweets.

Ingredients

Dough

• Same as Uiro.

Naka-an

• Whatever brings you joy. Shiro-an? Koshi-an? The world is your oyster.
  • Sweets lady recommends 15g balls.

Shaping

• Katakuriko, lots.

Steps

Making the dough

1. Make using recipe from Uiro.

Shaping the dough

1. Roll the uiro into three equal-length hot dogs, green → yellow → green.
2. Smoosh them together, then coarsely flatten them using a damp sarashi as support.
   1. Note: Use mitsu on your hands while doing this.
3. With your fingers, blur the lines between the three hot dogs.
   1. Note: You must do a good job binding the hot dogs together at this stage. If you don’t, they will separate when you roll the sheet out.
   2. Be sure to blur both sides, and do more than you think. If the line looks nice and uniform, that means when you roll it out, it will look bad and separate. More blurring is better.
4. Dust a flat work surface with katakuriko.
5. Lay the semi-flattened hot dog sheet onto your dusted work surface, then dust the top of the uiro liberally with katakuriko.
6. Roll the hot dog sheet into a 17 x 25 cm rectangle.
7. Using an 8 cm diameter circle, cut 6 circles from the sheet.
   1. Cut 3 on the left, 3 on the right. They should be approximately symmetric, mainly green with a smaller (one third?) portion of yellow on the side.
8. Dust the sides of the circles with katakuriko to keep them from sticking, then brush excess katakuriko off.
9. Place the naka-an on the circle, and fold as shown in the images.
   1. Yellow should be on top.

Serve with the opening away from the guest.

Circle proportions

How to fold

Notes

2025-10-17

• Used a 3.5” cutter (larger cha-koshi). That worked great.
• DO NOT DO 20g BALLS. They’re way way way too big. They need to be 15g.

2024-10-05

• Used a 3in circle cutter, really would like to use one slightly larger (3.25”?)
• Split dough half green, half yellow.
  • Rolled hotdogs imagining quarters, eg 1/4 yellow on either edge, then 1/4 x2 on the inner part. That results in half/half circles.
• Rolled the hotdogs a little too long imo. They needed to end up being 9”, and we rolled them to 6”. But they were much skinnier than they needed, so we didn’t have room to roll them out evenly.
  • Next time, make them shorter (4.5”?) and leave them wider.

How to eat

Photos

OkashiPhotos::