Meg decides to get back to basics by using the natural cooling power of snow to create a delicious matcha dessert.
With much of Japan gradually thawing itself out of an unusually heavy snowfall, our writer Meg was finding herself coming down with a case of snow-bound cabin fever and tried to find ways to pass the time.
Her first idea was to make some delicious frozen oranges by taking regular oranges and burying them in the snow. In was a fun experiment and made her feel like she was living back in olden times when people rode horses everywhere and only had 56k dial-up modems.
However, she soon learned that despite being frozen itself, snow didn’t dish out much freezing power. It was more like nature’s fridge than freezer. In the end, she just had some slightly chilled oranges to munch on.
Then it dawned on her: she could use the snow as a fridge to make something!
That something was Tsujiri Uji Matcha Pudding. In these fast-paced modern times filled with social media and smartphone-powered nose-hair clippers, to make pudding you’d just mix the powder with some hot water and milk and then pop it in the fridge for two hours to set.
Meg had other plans though. She was going to make instant pudding like they must have done 500 years ago, by mixing the powder with some hot water and milk and then burying it in snow to set.
Unsure of what kind of tupperware they used back in the dawn of the Edo period, she decided to split it into two shapes to ensure at least one would have the proper heat transferring properties for making pudding in the snow.
The snow had already begun to melt, but there was still a good one meter (3.3 feet) of it in some places, so Meg picked a spot and started digging.
She went down about 60 centimeters (two feet) and placed her pudding mix into the hole.
After that, she buried them and made sure the snow was packed tight.
It was getting late so Meg decided to turn in for the night and check the pudding in the morning. That night she dreamed of those long-gone days when openly gay samurai snacked on freshly congealed instant pudding plucked straight from the snowbank…or at least the way it would have been had Japanese people actually eaten pudding or green tea-flavor desserts in the samurai era.
When she awoke, Meg went to the window but was startled by what she saw…
▼CROW PRINTS!!!
Apparently, with their heightened sense of smell, birds had come overnight in search of her buried bittersweet treasure. Meg hurried outside to dig it up hoping that some boisterous beaked bandit hadn’t gotten there first.
The pudding was safe! Furthermore, it was fully solidified! Pulling a spoon out of her pocket and peeling off the lid she patted the top to find it had just the right surface tension for some scrumptious pudding.
Then she dug in and confirmed that the pudding had indeed stiffened throughout. It was perfect!
Thrilled, Meg immediately began to devour the dessert then and there. It had been a long and hard journey fraught with manual labor and predators, but in the end, it all made the pudding taste that much more sweet. It tasted like…victory.
She dubbed her fruits of her labor “Yukimuro (Snow House) Pudding” and savored each bite. It actually did seem to have a smoother texture that fridge-made pudding. Perhaps it was the chilling method, or the fact that she kept it in the snow for 18 hours in total compared to the two hours usually spent in the fridge. In hindsight, two hours probably would have been enough, maybe even less.
So, if you find yourself stuck at home and surrounded by snow, Yukimuro Pudding is a great way to pass the time. It’s great especially if you have kids hanging around the house and you want to peel them off their phones and monitors for a bit.
Photos ©SoraNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]