Unagi Mochi

Looks standard one, but it is not a sweetfish but an eel.

“Unagi Mochi” made by a confectioner, Taihei An in Hyogo Prefecture is shaped like an eel, wrapping sweet bean paste and rice cake with sponge cake dough.  This can be an eel shaping version of a major Japanese confectionery, which is “Wakayu” , young sweetfish.

When I saw it at the store, I couldn’t help but laugh and say, “I see what you did there.”

This is not a shape of sweetfish but an eel, so the shape is long and slender. The branding of “eel” is also clearly marked on the surface of the sponge cake dough.

Azuki bean paste and gyuhi, a kind of Japanese cake made from corn flour, are filled in. The ingredients are the same as what the young sweetfish made from and  it is a little difficult to see differences of them when it is splited.

The texture of the rice cake seems to have an individuality from others, and it is like a paste-like gyuhi. It is firmly sweetened, so in that sense, it may indeed have the concept of a stamina-enhancing eel.