miharado

Miharado has been in business since 1877.

They have several shops around Tokyo but their main shop is near Ningyocho.

Satoshi met up with his classmate to catch up the other day and was given these dorayaki and manju. (Thank you!)

Love the packaging which has their store name in kanji(chinese characters)

We tried the mont blanc dorayaki and original dorayaki.

The mont blanc one had white bean paste that was flavored with rum and studded with chestnuts.

The original dorayaki had a chunky sweet bean paste in it.

Both were delicious.

We'll try the manju another day and look forward to buying more of their items when we are in the area.

Miharado

1-14-10 Nihonbashi Ningyocho

Chuo, Tokyo

Phone: 03.3666.3333

Closed New Years Day

Hours: 9:30-19:30 (weekdays), 9:30-18:00 (Saturdays, Sundays, Holidays)

happy birthday

Today is Satoshi's birthday. I didn't get around to making him a cake, so I bought these dorayaki by Iron Chef Sakai instead.

I bought two types---flan sandwiched between sweet pancakes 168 yen (about US$1.68)and flan sandwiched between a cake made from wasanbon (Japanese confection sugar) 199 yen (about US$1.99). I stuck a candle in one of them and we split them after he blew the candle out.

He had to work today, so we had these with our breakfast since he comes home so late.

I liked the pancake version better than the cake, Satoshi liked the cake version better than the pancake.

The flan is very gelatinous to keep its shape, but still very rich.

Happy Birthday Satoshi!

dorayaki

Ever have leftover pancakes? Well, there is an easy Japanese treat that you can make with them. It is called dorayaki (literally sweet bean paste between two pancakes).

Dora in Japanese means gong. Some say that dorayaki is called this because it resembles a gong. Others say that it is because it was cooked on top of a gong. In Kansai, it is also called mikasa because it resembles Mt. Mikasa in Nara. The first dorayaki was apparently made in the Taisho era. The pancakes that are used for dorayaki resemble castella--a sweet Portugese, part sponge cake-part pound cake from the Castilla area brought to Nagasaki in the 16th century.

Since I don't have much time on weekday mornings to make pancakes for breakfast, I usually make them the night before then re-heat them for our breakfast in the morning. While I was making them the other night, I remembered that I had some leftover sweet bean paste, so I made two extra dollar sized pancakes (actually a little bigger) and made myself a dorayaki.

Depending on the kind of pancake you make will determine how sweet your dorayaki will be. The pancakes I made didn't have any sugar in it, so the sweetness came only from the sweet bean paste. It was the perfect snack!

If you can't get sweet bean paste, don't like it or can't have it, you can also fill it with apple pie filling or even nutella--the combinations are endless!