I have tested this recipe with both the one in the photo below and the NOW foods* brand I purchased on Amazon. Asian supermarkets often also sell agar powder mixes with other added ingredients used for making puddings, which will not work for this recipe. Make sure you buy one that is pure agar powder (check the ingredients list to see if anything else is added). Agar powder can be found at most Asian supermarkets or on Amazon.You can make six at a time and they slide out very easily. To get the shape, I bought this Freshware 6 Cavities Half Circles Silicone Mold*.While this cake is very easy to make, it does require purchasing some ingredients and tools you may not have in your pantry. It will start to melt when it sits at room temperature for too long. The raindrop cake is meant to be eaten right away. When eaten with the syrup and flour, this dessert is refreshing, light and sweet. The raindrop cake dissolves in your mouth, which is a unique and fun sensation. It is traditionally served with kinako (roasted soy bean flour) and kuromitsu, a Japanese black sugar syrup that literally translates as “black honey.” Because it is made of mostly water and a little agar powder, it has almost no calories. It is a jelly-like dessert made only with mineral water and agar powder, and resembles a giant raindrop. Raindrop cake is a Japanese dessert known as mizu shingen mochi. If you are not in Japan, you can still make this dessert with the agar powder available in the US– your cake won’t be as crystal clear but it will still be pretty. During my trip to Japan last year, I purchased a bag of cool agar powder from Amazon for a much cheaper price. I found a few sellers on Amazon but it is expensive. In Japan, they have a type of agar powder called cool agar and this is the secret to the crystal clear appearance. I researched making raindrop cakes for months before finally figuring out that the issue was the agar powder available to me. While I thought my homemade version was pretty successful and tasted just like the ones I had in NY, one thing that bothered me was that my version was not crystal clear in appearance. Since then, I’ve had the version at Smorgasburg in New York and seen the dessert pop up at many other dessert cafes. If you recall, I made my homemade version here. Three years ago, the raindrop cake was introduced to the US by Chef Darren Wong at Smorgasburg in New York. (The stories from my Taiwan trip are saved to my Instagram profile if you missed them). During my recent trip to Taiwan, there were so many sakura-themed snacks, drinks, and desserts. My social media feeds have been filled with beautiful cherry blossom pictures. I’ve been really inspired by sakura season. This unique low-calorie dessert, known as mizu shingen mochi, is made of just agar powder and water.

Japanese raindrop cake filled with cherry blossoms.

Raindrop cake mold