For example, Yingying Cake was eaten at the beginning of the year. The light mung bean powder of oriole is rolled outside, which is full of spring. I've loved it since I was a child.
The cherry cake eaten before and after the Peach Blossom Festival on March 3 is a powder cake made of cherry leaves. Cherry leaves are new leaves that germinated in the early summer of the previous year. Picked, salted and preserved until the next spring. Cherry blossom leaves are slightly salty and delicious when served with desserts containing bean paste.
May 5th is a festival for Japanese boys. Cypress cake is a kind of white cake with oak leaves. However, unlike cherry leaves, mistletoe leaves are too hard to eat. Therefore, when eating cypress cakes, you should remove the leaves first, and then eat the cakes inside. Berry cake is very special; Besides bean paste stuffing, there is also miso stuffing. Personally, I like to eat bean paste stuffing, and I have stayed away from miso stuffing since I was a child.
There will be goat soup and Ying Ge in summer. Mutton soup with bean paste is my grandmother's specialty. I don't know why she did it specially on the first day of New Year's Day. As for Ying Ge, you must go to the store to buy it. On the pickled cherry leaves like the cherry cake, there is red bean paste wrapped in transparent Ge Fen. It feels cool just looking at it and tastes extremely refreshing. In summer, there are cool cakes like bamboo leaves and steamed buns.
In September, you must package jiaozi for the Mid-Autumn Festival to enjoy the moon. Round jiaozi, round taro, round grapefruit, etc. The Mid-Autumn Festival in Japan is to prepare all kinds of round food and ears to welcome the full moon. Chinese moon cakes are also sold in Japan, but people here don't know that they used to be special cakes for Mid-Autumn Festival.
Then there is the autumnal equinox. In addition to red bean paste, there are those wrapped with soybean powder and black sesame powder. Red, yellow and black, they look lovely.
Autumn in Japan is chestnut season. The store sells desserts such as chestnut mutton soup and chestnut steamed bread. There is royal juice powder all year round, that is, red bean soup. You can have ice cream cold in summer and chestnuts in autumn. Even the cartoon character Doraemon's favorite dish, Tongluo Shao, will contain a chestnut in autumn.
In Japan with four distinct seasons, the cakes sold outside change with the seasons. However, some things can be eaten all year round. For example, my favorite doctor Dou. The black peas on the skin of white rice cake look like pockmarked seeds, but they taste delicious. There are also the annual opening ceremony and graduation ceremony of my son's kindergarten, as well as the red and white steamed buns distributed to all the students on the anniversary of the founding of the school. They are not rice cakes, but a pair of red and white cakes with the word "Zhu" printed on them, which is really jubilant.