Shingenmochi　信玄餅

I have introduced some Japanese local sweets before, I would like to share Shingenmochi 信玄餅 today. Have you ever eaten Shingenmochi before? Of course I have known about it but I had never eaten it. This is a first time to eat it for me, even it’s very famous in Japan. I love rice cake so much so I wanted to eat shingenmochi from bottom of my heart. One of my dream has come!!
https://kinseiken.co.jp/okashi/shingenmochi/

Shingenmochi is a very soft rice cake with roasted soybean flours and dark molasses. It’s a local confection of Yamanashi prefecture. There is Mt.Fuji in Yamanashi prefecture it has an elevation of 3776 meters and the most highest mountain in Japan. Also Takeda Shingen 武田信玄 was born in Yamanashi, he is a famous military commander 武将.
Shingenmochi is so soft like the air and sweet but no too much. The brown sugar syrup suits Shingenmochi because the syrup is not so sweet. There are so many roasted soybean flours on the rice cake and it’s yummy, you can taste the real soybean smell from it.

Why is it so famous in Japan though there are a lot of delicious confections here. Of cause it’s extremely attractive but there is another reason I guess.

Shingenmochi is exceedingly difficult to eat!

The package is like this. It’s like a Furoshiki 風呂敷 that one piece of fabric and people wrapped everything in it long time ago.

There are one pack of rice cakes with roasted soybean flours, one flat toothpick and one dark molasses. How do you eat it? When you open the lid, you can find out the difficulty to eat because of too much roasted soybean flours.
That’s why there are some recommendations how to eat it. I am going to share one of them.

First you take away all three rice cakes from the container and put them on the paper which was wrapping the container.

Next you pour the molasses on the roasted soybean flours that is left in the container.

Finally you can take one rice cake by the toothpick and put it on the molasses in the container and you can eat it clean!! It’s fun you try some styles to eat Shingenmoti as you like.

Anyway Shingen is a name of a famous Japanese military commander. Takeda Shingen. He was born in 1521 November 3 the age of civil wars called Sengoku period 戦後期時代 at that time in Japan. He was extremely strong and won a lot of battles. People say that when he goes to war, he brings some rice cakes. That’s why it was named Shingenmochi from his name. I don’t know it is true or not.

It’s kind of difficult to buy Shingenmochi even you are in Japan because it is not be sold in the usual supermarkets, you can find it in Yamanashi prefecture.

You can try it someday!

See you next time!