Rikyu Manju

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2025-09-20 manju was a little over at 9m ripping hot. Try 8m ripping hot, or even 7m.

High altitude recipe

Original recipe is from Wagashi Book - 和菓子教本, page 42 for miso manju. Then, I modified the recipe per high altitude requirements.

Original recipe

Makes 65 pieces.

• 400g cake flour
• 350g jouhakutou
• 100g shiro miso
• 65g egg (white + yolk)
• 40g water
• 20g shoyu
• 8g baking soda

Modifications

From https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/resources/high-altitude-baking:

1. Use between one-half and one-third the baking soda.
2. Use a little less sugar.
3. Use higher heat, lower time.

The reasoning:

1. Water boils at a much lower temperature, meaning moisture in the dough turns to gas and expands much sooner than it would at sea level. This happens before the rest of the dough has cooked, so the dough will puff up, then lacking structure, it will immediately deflate. Reducing the leavening agent (baking soda) will reduce the early puffing.
2. Quicker evaporation means more sugar left in the dough, which weakens the structure of the dough. Use slightly less sugar to counter this.
3. Low and slow will dry the dough out, given how quickly water evaporates. Higher heat, lower duration helps.

Then in addition, I pulled back on the miso from the recipe. I don’t like when the miso overpowers things.

Modified recipe

(Scale proportionately + include modifications from above).

Makes 7 pieces (120g ish).

Ingredients

• 60g cake flour
• 52.5g → 40g jouhakutou
• 15g shiro miso → 8g haccho miso
• 10g egg (white + yolk)
• 3g shoyu
  • A little over ½ teaspoon
• 1.2g → 0.4g baking soda (maybe 0.5g), NOT baking powder
  • A little under ⅛ teaspoon
• 6g water
  • About 1 ¼ teaspoon

Steps

1. Make a slurry from the water and baking soda.
2. Mix things in this order:
   1. Miso and shoyu
   2. Add sugar
   3. Add egg
   4. Add baking soda slurry
   5. Add flour
3. Shape into balls with a 2:3 ratio of dough to naka-an. For a 40g sweet, this is 16g kawa and 24g anko.
   1. Note: coating the dough ball in flour before flattening it into a disk to wrap the anko helps.
   2. Note: the ball will flatten slightly in the steamer. Make it slightly egg-shaped to start such that after steaming, it ends up spherical.
4. Add walnut.
   1. Press the walnut slightly into the dough, not too much.
      1. (In order to firmly attach the walnut, it must be slightly indented into the dough. Just setting it on top will not be enough to attach it in the final product. On the other hand, pushing the walnut too deeply into the dough makes it ugly.)
5. Spray with water, then steam on ripping high heat for 9m.
   1. Whatever you do, do not open the steamer. As early as 10 seconds in, the exterior will start to cook, and the baking soda will start creating air. Opening the steamer will cause it to deflate and look wrinkled,.

Things to try for next time

Attempt 1

• Steam for 9 minutes? (Last time I did 12m, and it was a little dry)
• A little more dough? Maybe 1.5:1 ratio instead of 2:1 ratio?

Did this, ended up with 9 minute steaming, 24g anko + 16g kawa.

With this ratio, you do need to make the shape a little oblong. Also, don’t push the walnut in too much, because the amount of dough now does actually expand.

(Updated the above with this).

Attempt 2

• Push walnut in less
• More oblong

Recipe (from Glenn)

Yield

~10 sweets.

Ingredients

• 20g hacho miso
  • Can be substituted with saikyo miso, shiro-an, kuri-an, or aka-an
• 80g sugar
• 100g flour
• 1/2 egg white
• 1/4 tsp baking soda (dissolved in 1 tsp water)
• 20g koshi-an per sweet
• 1 walnut half per sweet (optional)

Preparation

1. Mix sugar and miso.
2. Add egg white and mix until smooth.
3. Add baking soda / water.
4. Add sifted flour (3/4 of total amount, rest used on hands).
5. Wrap around anko ball in manju fashion.
6. Place walnut on top.
7. Spray with water, then steam for 15 minutes.

Variations

Soba manju: 70g flour, 30g soba-ko. Shiro-an instead of miso.

My notes

Note before I forget: Most recent time, I used CAKE FLOUR and that worked pretty well. All-purpose flour seems to get more blobby than it did when I used cake flour.

Also! Liberally spraying the manju with water BEFORE putting it in the steamer really helped give it a beautiful shine.

How to eat

Manju is made to be eaten with your hands. Trying to cut manju with kuromoji is a mistake.

• Place the manju on kaishi, then hold the manju and kaishi together in your left hand.
  • Thumb and index finger pinching the manju.
  • Other three fingers underneath the kaishi.
• Tear off pieces of manju with your right hand, and eat directly with fingers.