How to make Dorayaki? Easy and Authentic Japanese way!

Dorayaki is a traditional Japanese sweet made with a pancake and Adzuki (red beans) paste.

If you know an anime called “Doraemon”, this is the sweet that he likes and always eats. 😋 – and also this is why he is called Doraemon.

Since I am not living in Japan, it is quite difficult to find this sweet. So I decided to make it by myself. ❤︎

So today, I’m gonna show you how we can make authentic dorayaki at home easily.

First of all, you have to make red beans paste by using a type of beans called Adzuki, and then you make pancakes. At the end, you sandwich this paste in the pancakes and it is ready.

So let’s start with how to make Adzuki paste!

①How To Make Adzuki (Red Beans) Paste

There are so many different ways of how to make Adzuki paste. So I compared many recipes and combined the best ones. There is more authentic ways but they will take loooooots of time, so I focused:

• keeping the great taste✔️
• but still easy and don’t take too much time✔️

Ingredients

Adzuki beans	200g
Suger	130g
Water

Step1: Soak the beans in water

1. Rinse the Adzuki beans and remove any broken beans.
2. Add water to the pot and cover the beans by 2-3 cm.
3. Put a pot cover and leave it for 24 hours.

Step2: Removing the astringent taste

1. Put the hot water into the pot.
2. Boil it around 1-2 mins.
3. Drain the beans in a fine mesh sieve – remove the water – and put the beans back to the pot.

Step3: Boil the beans

1. Add water to the pot until the beans are covered by 2-3 cm.
2. Bring the water to a boil over medium high heat.
3. Once it is boiling, turn the heat down to low and keep it simmering for 30 mins.
4. Once the beans become as soft as you can mash easily, take them from the water again. *Keep this water for the later step.

Step4: Mix with sugar

1. Add 130g of sugar and mix them well.

Step5: Simmer the beans

1. After mixing beans and sugar, add the water from Step 3. Add 1/4 – 1/3 amount of water to the amount of adzuki beans.
   *by doing this, you can make the Adzuki paste tase much richer.
2. Simmer on low heat for 10-15 mins.

Step6: Let the moisture evaporate

1. Once the moisture evaporates nicely turn down the heat.
   *Don’t let all the moisture go away, as it will be more dried eventually.

Finish!! How to Preserve?

Adzuki paste can be dried so easily, cover them with cling film in a container with another cover.

②How To Make Dorayaki Pancakes

For making dorayaki pancakes, you need a good pan for sure! If you have one, you are all set.

Ingredients (for 8 pieces = 4 dorayaki)

Egg	2
Sugar	80g
Honey	10g
*Flour	100g
Baking Soda	2g
Mirin/Sake	10g
Water	10g
Oil

What kind of flour should I use?

If you are in Japan, get “Hakurikiko (薄力粉)”. This is for baking cakes and biscuits and for general use and is low in protein content (less than 8.5%).

If you are not in Japan, you can use the similar one to this flour.

In Europe (Italy), we have mainly Farina0 and Farina00 for baking use.
I recommend the ratio of Farina0 : Farina00 = 2 : 3

For example, I use 80g of mix flour (0 and 00 are already mixed) for multi usage and 20g of Farina00.

Step1: Mix egg, sugar, and honey

1. Mix egg, sugar, and honey until you cannot see any lumpy surface.

Step2: Add flour

1. Sift the flour and baking soda in the bowl of step1.
2. Fold the flour into the dough.

Step3: Add Mirin & Water

1. Add Mirin/Sake and Water little by littely.
2. Depends on the flour you use, you can adjust the texture here by adding less water.

Step4: Leave it for a while.

1. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and leave it for 15-30mins.

Step5: Prepare for baking

1. Pour the oil in the pan and spread it nicely.
2. Turn on the heat to 170 degrees
   *if you are not sure about the temperature, you can just check the timing when you bake it.
   *I use this mold so that I can know the size

Step6: Add the dough

1. Add the dough with the nice round shape and wait until one side is baked well.
   *if you brought up the temperature until 170 degrees, you bake it for around 1 min.
   *if you just turned on the heat, it will take 3-7 mins until it is baked well.
2. Once one side is baked, flip them and bake the other side for around 1 min.

Finish! Difference between flour types

1. Take them out from the pan and put them on the baking sheet and cool them down.

The left side was made with the mix of Farina0 and Farina00, and the right side was made only with Farina00.

Since I was not able to flip it until one side was baked so well, it got burned easily.

③Sandwich Adzuki paste into the pancakes!

Just paste the Adzuki to a pancake and cover the other side with another pancake. And it’s done!!🎉

How to preserve Dorayaki?

Usually Japanese traditional sweets can last longer than a day because of lots of sugar.

You should keep them with room temperature but not in a refrigerator because it will make Dorayaki dried.

The best way is eating on the day or next day, but if you are going to eat after the next day, put Dorayaki in the freezer.

In the Freezer, it will last around 2 weeks and it is easy to defrost.

When you preserve, cover each one of them with cling wrap like a image, and put them in a Ziploc so that they won’t get dried.

Enjoy making Dorayaki❤︎

It might be difficult for the first time, especially until you find the good flour ratio/type. But once you find it, you will immediately smell “Japanese sweet”. ❤︎

I started experimenting this dorayaki recipes because my Japanese friends and I missed this sweet a lot when we are living abroad.

Now I enjoy bringing this to my non-Japanese friends and am happy to hear they like it.

Hope you enjoy making Dorayaki too! ❤︎ Thank you. xx