Japanese Dessert Recipes You Have to Try

Japanese dessert recipes feature a wide range of pastries, candy, confections, and cakes. Compared to American desserts, they tend to be less cloyingly sweet and emphasize quality over quantity. They feature uniquely Japanese ingredients like matcha (green tea powder), yuzu (Japanese citrus), anko (adzuki red bean paste), and much more. Some recipes are very traditional like wagashi, an ancient Japanese dessert recipe for ceremonial confections served with matcha as part of a tea ceremony. Others are more contemporary like fruit sando or matcha latte.

Here is a selection of Japanese dessert recipes to try:

Coffee Jelly Recipe

Coffee Jelly is a very popular dessert in Japan. It's particularly refreshing in the summertime and you cannot pass by any café without seeing patrons enjoying coffee jelly in all forms. It's a very versatile dessert that you can use in bubble teas, iced lattes, or just as a bowl of coffee jelly topped with sweet cream.

Hojicha Latte Recipe

Hojicha is a wonderful variety of Japanese green tea well suited for brewing into a latte with milk. It's nutty roasted tea flavors taste distinctly Japanese but use Western latte techniques for a truly delicious drink.

Taiyaki Recipe

These fish-shaped waffles from Japan pack in red bean paste for an indulgent street food you can make at home. The styles of taiyaki vary from crisp wafer to soft pancake style. My recipe falls somewhere in between with a crisp and evenly browned exterior, but soft cake-like center. It's more like a waffle than it is a pancake or crisp wafer.

Fruit Sando Cake

In Japan, you can find fruit sando just about everywhere. These cream-filled fruit sandwiches appear on numerous café menus and even vending machines. Most people first experience fruit sando as a homemade Summer treat in their childhood. But this recipe is a bit more elevated.

Matcha Mille Crêpe Cake

Like a mille feuille, a mille crêpe cake features many layers coming together for a unique textural experience. Each layer of crêpe wraps a thick layer of pastry cream flavored with matcha (Japanese green tea). This is a very simple cake to make and in just a couple of hours, you can have something incredible.

Milk Peach Entremet

Stone fruits start to come into season around the summer and some beautiful peaches have started to pop up in the farmer's market. Blending the flavor of peaches with milky panna cotta balances out the acid and makes for a classic creamy treat for warm weather.

Wagashi Recipe

Wagashi are sweet Japanese confections made from bean paste. Similar to marzipan, the paste can be sculpted into gorgeous little shapes inspired by the season. Making wagashi is not hard, but can be time consuming and requires a bit of practice to master the techniques. As you might expect from a traditional Japanese discipline, you can spend your whole life making wagashi and never reach perfection.

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