Yatsuhashi: traditional Japanese sweets from Kyoto

There are not too many Japanese dishes you could claim to master in under an hour but if you’re willing to settle for something simple and sweet, then yatsuhashi ticks both boxes.

Yatsuhashi, meaning eight bridges, is a cinnamon-flavored sweet which comes in two forms. Nama, which is a soft triangle-shaped sweet, and the regular hard cookie-like biscuit. At the Otabe shop in downtown Kyoto, they have been making yatsuhashi for more than 200 years.

In a small tatami room above the Kyoto shop, they run lessons daily on making Kyoto's most famous sweet. The lessons are in Japanese, sprinkled with English and Italian. The instructors, while friendly, treat the demonstration with the reverence of a history lesson more than an exercise in throwing rice flour around. This, however, adds to the feeling that you are making something more important than triangular sweets.

For those who can just about manage to make toast without burning it, the place mat which comes with all the ingredients provides a dummy-proof step-by-step guide to making sure that your yatsuhashi doesn't turn out looking like it has fallen off a bridge.

After you've pounded and beaten the dough that is made from rice flour, the mandatory corporate video is played. Thankfully, this only lasts long enough for the mochi to cook. Then it's aprons on again for the final stages of coloring the mochi, flattening then cutting it into perfect squares before adding the paste fillings and folding them into perfect triangles.

As with all Japanese food, aesthetics is important. The teachers are nice enough to smile when you know they really want to fling your creation out the window. When you're finished adding your fillings and admiring your neighbor's infinitely better creation, tea is served during which you can eat the fruits of your creation. Or the staff will box up your yatshuhashi should you think it is good enough to be a gift.

Downstairs you can purchase an array of Otabe's yatsuhahshi, which of course, you can unwrap and pass off as your own.

Lessons run daily for 600 yen (US$6.50) per person. This is a fun way for all ages to spend a few hours in the afternoon.

Lessons daily from 10am and 2pm

Otabe.Nakagyoku Shinmachidori, Nishkikoji Kyoto
www.otabe.co.jp
Tel: +81 (0)12 082 4939