I’m NAOKO, a food and beauty writer.
The dorayaki project is getting underway. As our kickoff event, we held a tasting party where guests could customize their own dorayaki!

I baked 120 dorayaki wrappers myself and prepared a variety of topping options. Normally dorayaki is just red bean paste (anko) between two pancakes, but this time we laid out plenty of fruits and sauces for an unexpected culinary encounter. Everyone got their anko as a base, but the toppings on top were entirely up to them.

The toppings we prepared were:

• Yellow peach
• Dried cranberries
• Banana
• Orange
• Mascarpone
• Crumble (crumbly cookie-dough style topping)
• Walnuts
• Strawberry jam
• Condensed milk
• Custard
• Sugar glaze
• Honey
• Matcha
• White chocolate and milk chocolate
• Yuzu paste (in a tube)
• Salt
• Marshmallow

That’s a full 17 varieties!

Of course, we had originally designed our own set of arrangement recipes to guide the event, but once everything was laid out, we found that letting guests top their dorayaki freely made the experience even more enjoyable — and it opened up all kinds of new ideas.

Here’s a sample of the arrangement we had originally designed.

The most popular choice was mascarpone — paired with yellow peach, dried cranberries, and condensed milk.

And these are the freely-arranged dorayaki our guests created for themselves.

Matcha, marshmallow, and the crowd favorite mascarpone all seem like flavors that would appeal to people overseas too. It’s exciting to imagine how dorayaki might keep evolving as it becomes better known internationally. I’d love nothing more than for people working in food professions around the world to learn how to make dorayaki, and for each country to develop its own unique way of enjoying it.

We’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign to launch an online school where people can learn how to make dorayaki. Would you like to join our project to spread dorayaki around the world? We’d love to have you with us!

A project to create a future where dorayaki is as popular around the world as sushi.

You can find our project story page on Kickstarter here (campaign runs through December 12, 2019 — your support is appreciated):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wadamika/dorayaki-online-school-project

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naoko Okada
Beauty & Food Writer / Cook
Specializes in proposals that go beyond flavor alone, incorporating presentation to bring out a delicious smile. Enjoys not only classic recipes crafted for delicate palates, but also experimenting with creative arrangement recipes that break from convention. Sees wagashi (Japanese sweets) as a food closely tied to beauty. As someone with the soul of a cook, whenever she encounters a delicious wagashi shop, she can’t help wanting to recreate — and share — what she’s tasted.