How to Shape a Pompompurin Nerikiri (Japanese Wagashi Tutorial)

Today's tutorial is the Pompompurin nerikiri I posted yesterday. Nerikiri is a traditional Japanese wagashi made from a soft, pliable sweet bean paste that can be molded like clay. The more colors a design uses, the harder it gets, because every color means another round of tinting and kneading. This one uses only yellow and brown (cocoa flavored), so it is simple and a great place to start.

What you need

• Nerikiri paste (white bean paste kneaded with a little gyuhi or glutinous rice flour), tinted pale yellow
• A small amount of nerikiri paste tinted brown with cocoa powder
• Smooth sweet red bean paste (koshian) for the filling
• A cornet (small paper piping cone) for drawing the face

Instructions

1. Make the body

Wrap a ball of red bean paste inside the yellow nerikiri paste. The yellow here is tinted with gardenia, a natural food coloring, which gives a gentle egg-yolk shade rather than a bright, artificial yellow. Shape the ball into a rounded gourd shape, slightly narrower at the top.

2. Add the ears

Form two small ears from yellow paste and attach them to the head. Lift the right ear slightly so it flops up, just like the character.

3. Add the beret

Roll a small ball of the cocoa-colored nerikiri and flatten it into a beret. Place it on top of the head, covering the base of the ears. Already it looks like Pompompurin.

4. Add the hands and feet

The hands and feet are even smaller than the ears, so shape them carefully. Each hand is a tiny teardrop about 1.5 cm (a little over 1/2 inch) long, surprisingly small next to your fingertip. As with nerikiri cats, the arms should be thin and small; that is what keeps the proportions cute. Thick arms end up looking oddly muscular.

5. Finish the beret

Attach a tiny bump of cocoa paste to the beret for its little stem. It is a small detail, but a fiddly one.

6. Draw the face

Put some cocoa-colored paste in a cornet and draw the eyes and mouth, as you would with a chocolate pen. Take a breath and concentrate. With original nerikiri designs you can decide the face looks right; with a well-known character it has to look exactly like the real thing, which is the hardest part.

And done. One finished Pompompurin.

Tips

• Keep the paste covered with a damp cloth while you work so it does not dry out and crack.
• Dust your fingers very lightly with cornstarch if the paste sticks.
• Practice the tiny parts (ears, hands, beret stem) separately before assembling the whole figure.