The rubber was a lot tougher than we’d anticipated, as it broke the little toothpick, making us wonder if this was some special sort of casing made especially for this sweet. Resisting the urge to hurl the water balloon at someone, we followed the instructions and used the toothpick to pierce the rubber and release its contents onto a plate. ▼ We were surprised to find the sweet packaged up like a big water balloon. When our box arrived, we unpacked the four things needed to make, and enjoy, the Mizu Maru Mochi, which consisted of kinako (roasted soybean flour), kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup), a toothpick, and the sweet itself. ▼ These raindrop cakes, made by Marumochiya, are called Mizu Maru Mochi, with “maru” meaning “round”.Īccording to Marumochiya, the Mizu Maru Mochi is by far their most popular product, which raised our expectations for the sweet. Yamanashi’s creation is officially called Mizu Shingen Mochi, with “mizu” meaning “water” and “Shingen mochi” being the name of another jiggly sweet made by the company, which is so famous it even has its own KitKat.įor years now, we’ve always gone to Kinseiken for our raindrop cakes, but recently we heard good things about a store in Kyoto near the famed Fushimi Inari Taisha that’s also become well known for its own take on the watery sweet. What’s even better is they deliver, so we hopped online and placed an order for a box of six, which cost 3,400 yen (US$30.40), although they’re also available in sets of three for 2,200 yen. The unique dessert quickly went on to receive worldwide attention…and a lot of copycat versions based on the original from Kinseiken in Yamanashi Prefecture. “It’s really a dessert you experience in the moment,” Wong said on Today.Japan’s famous water cake now has some stiff competition.īack in 2014, Japan went crazy for a new type of dessert dubbed a “ Raindrop Cake“, which was so delicate it was said to disappear in 30 minutes. But, like the first of its namesake nouns, the Raindrop Cake is somewhat evanescent - it starts to lose its shape fairly quickly after it is served - and therefore not something you’d order to go. “It’s a light, delicate and refreshing raindrop made for your mouth,” the Raindrop Cake website boasts. The Raindrop Cake is served topped with black sugar-cane syrup and with roasted soy flour on the side, which purportedly give it a nutty, molasses-like flavor. “It was … not available in the U.S.,” he said in an interview posted on the official Raindrop Cake website, “so I decided I would figure out how to make so others who were interested in it like myself can try it.”Īfter a fair amount of trial and error, Wong came up with the current recipe, which combines “natural spring water” and “just enough agar to hold its shape,” he recently said on the Today show, adding that eating Raindrop Cake is a true “textural experience” as well as one that is “visually appealing.” Wong, who is now selling the Raindrop Cake at Brooklyn’s trendy Smorgasburg open-air food markets and may expand to other venues, was inspired to create the gelatinous clear dessert blob by Japan’s traditional mizu shingen mochi, a food he had read about and was eager to try. You know how, as a kid, you used to try to catch raindrops on your tongue as they fell from the sky? Now there’s a food that seeks to help you recapture that sensation: the Raindrop Cake, which was created by New York chef Darren Wong and is taking the Internet by storm (only partly because it looks sort of like a giant silicone breast implant).
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