For those of you who don’t know, the mitarashi dango has been made famous by the Kamo Mitarashi Tea House in Kyoto, Japan. The name Mitarashi comes from the bubbles of the Mitarashi (the purified water that’s placed at the entrances of shrines in Japan).

WHAT IS MITARASHI DANGO?

Mitarashi dangos are balls of rice cakes that’s boiled and are typically skewered onto sticks in groups of 3-5 balls. They have many toppings but the most famous topping to be used is the sweet soy sauce glaze.

SESAME MITARASHI DANGO

To make this recipe a bit more interesting, I thought the perfect ingredient to add to these dangos would be tahini. Tahini has that nutty and smokey flavour of sesame that’s perfect to combine with the sweet soy sauce glaze of mitarashi dango.

HOW TO MAKE MITARASHI DANGO

Traditionally, dango is made from Japanese glutinous rice flour, but living in Indonesia might be hard to obtain the right flour. So with that, I used a combination of rice flour with glutinous rice flour in order to create the perfect dango chewy consistency.

Combining half glutinous rice adds the chewy texture to the dango while the rice flour adds a mild soft texture so that it’s not as chewy as you would when you eat a mochi for instance.

While it’s still warm, these light chewy snacks are wonderful during cold or hot weather where you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee.

Some tips that might be useful:

• You can use skewers to make them traditional.
• Using both rice flour and glutinous rice flour helps with the perfect chewy consistency.