Ingredients of Japanese Sweets

The most important difference between Japanese sweets and Western-style sweets is their ingredients. For Japanese sweets, it is extremely rare that animal ingredients are used. For example, it isn't common that milk products or animal fat is used to make them. Probably it is only the hen's eggs that will be used for them. In contrast, for Western-style sweets, animal ingredients are mainly used to make them and it is also said that they couldn't be made without milk products; milk, butter and cheese.

Japanese sweets

(http://www.tamachi-baigetsu.co.jp/staff_blog/archives/2010/0129-1600.html)

 Western-style sweets

(http://sweets0141.seesaa.net/article/111101487.html)

Here are two important ingredients of Japanese sweets.


*Beans*

Beans are the most important ingredients of Japanese sweets. Most of Japanese sweets contain bean paste, and the beans paste is made mainly from beans. Especially, azuki beans are used for making red beans paste, so they must be essential ingredients for most of Japanese sweets. And the azuki beans could be grown all over Japan. Particularly, in Tanba, Bittyu, and Hokkaido, they are grown very much. The azuki beans made in Hokkaido is about 90% of ones distributed in Japan. Incidentally,the kidney beans are used for making white bean jams.There are other beans as the ingredients of white bean paste; ohukumame, hukushiromame, white beans and so on. Then, the green peas are used for green smooth bean paste, and the red peas are used for mamedaihuku (the rice cakes contain beans), mamekan (the sweets contains beans and cubes of agar gelatin), anmitsu (the sweets made with agar gelatin and fruits, and covered with bean paste).
And the kinako (sweet soybean flour) is also made from beans. It is made by parching and grinding soybeans. It is used for ohagi (rice ball) and so on.

azuki

(http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%82%BA%E3%82%AD)

*Rice flour*

The grain that is most often used for Japanese sweets is rice; non-glutinous rice and glutinous rice especially. The two is different in character each other. And their characters also change by grinding in raw or heated. So rice flour is distinguished by the way it's heated and the size of it.
Both joshinko and joyoko are made by grinding raw non-glutinous rice. The sweets used joshinko are more hard to chew. For example, dumplings and kashiwamochi (rice cakes wrapped in an oak leaf). In contrast, the sweets used joyoko are softer.
Both shiratamako and gyuhiko are made by grinding raw glutinous rice. They are used to make rice-flour dumplings, habutae-mochi and so on.
Kanbaiko, domyojiko and jonanko are made by adding water, heating and then grinding glutinous rice. Kanbaiko is also called yakimijinko and used to make rakugan (hard candy), yubeshi (sweet yuzu-flavoured steamed dumpling) and so on. Jonanko is finer than kanbaiko. Domyojiko is made by steaming glutinous rice, heating or drying, and grinding coarsely. It is used to make sakura-mochi (rice cake with bean jam wrapped in a preserved cherry leaf).