yokan

alternative yōkan · alternative youkan

1. countableuncountableA thick jellied dessert made of red bean paste, agar, and sugar, usually sold in block form and eaten in slices.

   “Homemade yokan. You must be quite special to this girl,” he teased. “She's just one of many,” I laughed. Matsu picked up one of the rectangular red bean cakes and put it entirely into his mouth.

   2008, Gail Tsukiyama, The Samurai's Garden, page 61

   3 more examples

   Looking into the cake bowl which she had brought I saw that it contained some green ‘yokan’ made from bean jelly. I think that if^([sic – meaning of]) all cakes, yokan are my favourite. […] These yokan were particularly pleasant to look at, for their green-tinged lustre made them look as though they were precious stones, or as though they had been fashioned from alabaster.

   1965, Natsume Soseki, translated by Alan Turney, chapter 4, in The Three Cornered World (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, Japanese Series), Chicago, Ill.: Henry Regnery Company, published 1967, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 66–67

   There are hundreds of distinct variations within the main types of wagashi: namagashi, monaka, yokan, manju, and higashi. […] Yokan gets its firm texture from kanten, a seaweed-derived gelatin, and is likely to have fruit and azuki within.

   2007 winter, Elisa Herr, “A Sweet Tradition”, in Japan Info, volume 9, New York, N.Y.: Japan Information Center, Consolate General of Japan, →OCLC, page 8, columns 1–2

   Bill Yosses, the pastry chef, is now making yokan “pops” ($5) in several flavors at his Palais restaurant on the Upper East Side; Dylan Lauren also sells them at Dylan’s Candy Bar near Union Square. She said she liked the way the pops made yokan fun.

   2019 November 4, Florence Fabricant, “A Japanese Sweet Tradition a Thousand Years in the Making”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2019