I have never heard of the raindrop cake until recently even though I worked in Japan in the late 1990’s. Turns out it was originally known as Shingen Mochi (信玄餅) which is made of rice cake with kinako (roasted soy flour) and kuromitsu (black sugar syrup). Instead of using rice as the mochi, mineral water and agar was used in its place. So what’s so special about the raindrop cake? It just look amazing with a dome shaped gelatin and very mild flavor. I guess you can call it a dieter’s dessert. The hardest part about making the raindrop cake is the ratio of gelatin and water.
So it’s much harder to find agar agar unless you have a Asian market near you or else you can buy it on Amazon. For me, I prefer the gelatin texture over the agar texture so I’m substituting agar with gelatin. Now, if you want to make this completely vegan, then you can use agar. They substitute at the same ratio.
I also substituted the kinako and kuromitsu with chunky red bean paste and heavy cream. The whole concept is that since the raindrop cake is basically flavorless gelatin, you need to have ‘accessories’ that adds flavor and sweetness. Red bean is a very popular ingredient in Japanese and Chinese desserts and you can get the recipe here.
At first, I tried to use a silicone ice ball maker to put the raindrop cake but the ‘cake’ was way too soft that I couldn’t remove it from the ball. So instead, I found that a semi-spherical bowl works the best, especially if it’s glass since you can dip the glass bowl in warm water prior to removing the cake and it will slide out easily.
So please enjoy this healthy dessert, it’s like eating air 🙂
Ingredients
- ½ cup cold water
- 1 tbsp gelatin
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 cups water
- 1 tsp mint extract (or 2 drops of mint oil)*
* optional – since it’s summer, I think adding a bit of minty flavor to the raindrop cake really helps cool down the heat.
Toppings
- Sweetened red bean
- Heavy whipping cream (or half and half)
- ½ cup cold water
- 1 tbsp gelatin
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 cups water
- 1 tsp mint extract (or 2 drops of mint oil) (optional)*
- Sweetened red bean
- Heavy whipping cream (or half and half)
- Bloom gelatin by mixing gelatin with ½ cup cold water
- Boil remaining 2 cups of water and stir in sugar until dissolved and remove from heat
- Mix in the bloomed gelatin ensuring all gelatin has dissolved
- Pour into round glass bowls and let it cool to room temperature
- Refrigerate at least 6 hours for it to set
- Gently lower bowl bottom to warm water for 30 seconds to loosen the gelatin from the bowl
- Slide out to serving dish
- Add a scoop of red bean paste on the side and drizzle with heavy cream
