Matcha mirin nama chocolate sounds, looks, and tastes fancy, but is super-easy to make.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, all of Japan is thinking about chocolate…but here at SoraNews24, we’re thinking about Japanese chocolate flourishes in particular. The most time-tested way to give your desserts a dash of “JAPAN!”-appeal is to add some matcha, so we were going to do that for sure, but we wanted to make this batch of chocolates extra special, and while our sweet ambitions sometimes might outstrip our culinary skills, we found an incredibly easy, and unique, way to do just that.

Today we’re going to be making nama choco, or “raw chocolate,” a kind of chocolate ganache that’s loved in Japan for its invitingly soft texture and rich sweetness. Rather than making it completely from scratch, we’re going to start with a store-bought chocolate bar (any reputable brand will do) and enhancing it into fancy matcha nama chocolate.

In addition to a chocolate bar, cocoa powder, and matcha powder, we’ll need milk. How much of each? Well, that depends on how much nama chocolate you want to make, but ratio-wise for every 150 grams (5.3 ounces) of starting chocolate, this recipe calls for 30 milliliters (1 ounce) of milk. If you’re an experienced home sweets chef and thinking that’s not going to be enough liquid, don’t worry, because we’ve got one more that’s going into the mixture: 40 milliliters (1.35 ounces) of mirin, or sweet cooking sake!

▼ Mirin can be found pretty easily in Japanese and Asian markets overseas.

It’s a surprising choice for a dessert ingredient…or maybe not so surprising, considering that this recipe was shared by Hinode, one of Japan’s biggest mirin makers. Still, if anyone knows how to enhance flavor through mirin, it’s Hinode, so while we were still sort of skeptical, we were also intrigued, and eager to find an excuse to eat sweets (that last one, to be fair, is our default psychological state).

Start by breaking the chocolate up into pieces and placing them in a microwave-safe bowl with the milk and mirin. Pop the bowl in the microwave for 45 seconds at 600 watts, then stir the mixture with a spatula until it’s smooth and shiny. Once that’s done, line a glass dish or other container with a bit of depth to it with plastic wrap, and pour the mixture in.

Put the container in the refrigerator for two hours to cool and harden. After that, using a lightly warmed knife (for a cleaner cut), slice the nama chocolate into bite-sized pieces.

At this point, you’ve actually already got a perfectly serviceable batch of nama chocolate made, but now it’s time for the finishing touch of sprinkling on the matcha and cocoa powder.

The exact amount to use is up to you, and really, you can never have too much matcha or cocoa, can you? Also, while we made our batch using both of them for extra visual and flavor variety, feel free to go all-in with just matcha or just cocoa, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

▼ Though we have to say, matcha ones, with their two-tone color scheme, do look really nice.

So how do these mirin nama chocolates taste? Incredible! The mirin imparts a unique and sophisticated sweetness, and using milk instead of cream gives each of the contributing flavors space to dance on your taste buds, and brings the flavor profile to a cleaner finish than the oiliness that comes with cream, which in turn sets you up to enjoy another piece.

▼ Hinode’s Instagram post sharing the recipe

Aside from the two hours for the mixture to chill in the fridge, we spent maybe 15 minutes making these treats, which is an amazingly small amount of prep time for something that looks and tastes this special.

Dress them up with a stylish box and wrappers (maybe from Daiso or your other favorite discount shop), and you’ve got something that’ll have friends and romantic partners asking which gourmet chocolatier you found them at.

Related: Hinode
Mirin bottle image: Hinode
All other photos ©SoraNews24
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