Brazilian sent off with Japanese rice treats!

The beginning of the year is always Brazilian student season.   A number of medical student from the Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital join us up here for some research experience.  One of them always joins our facility and we had the pleasure of her company for the last two months.  On her final day, we had some cake hour treats made by the wife of one of our Japanese colleagues who will also be heading home shortly. More about that next week!

Heading back to Brazil but not without giving a seminar!

How about a rice ball now?

We have had many Japanese sweet treats before. They are similar to those from Cbina and Korea in that they tend not to be too sweet, are intended to go with tea as a beverage and frequently feature a sweetened bean paste as a filling.  Most of the time what we have had were commercially produced. This time they were homemade!

Homemade Japanese treats!

They are actually pretty basic consisting of a sticky rice flour cover/shell, that may be slightly sweetened,  that is filled with the bean paste..simple enough!  This time in addition to the sweetened bean paste there were also strawberries in the filling. This was a nice touch.   Once filled, we think, they are steamed so that the rice flour congeals.  You might think the powder on the outside is confectioner's sugar but in actuality it is regular flour which is there to make them less sticky to handle.

The white coating is actually flour!

The red indicated more than just bean paste!

Ready to dig in!

Strawberries and beans together..who'd a thought?

Come and get 'em!

We enjoyed these very much and our Asian colleagues were very impressed.  The rice flour shell has a soft and slightly chewy consistency that goes well with the filling. The bean paste and the strawberries also went well together and the flavors complemented each other nicely.  Of all the times we have had similar things, these today were probably the ones we liked the best. Clearly we are sold on the homemade goodness! Most people ate them by biting in and enjoying everything together. However one decided to peel away the outside and go with the filling separately. Each to his own!!

This is what's left if you eat off the shell!

It's still good no matter how you eat it!