Spring is a great time for fans of wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets. While many wagashi reflect the seasons all year long visually ¡ª especially the colorful, beautifully formed nerikiri created by skilled artisans ¡ª this is the time of year when you can taste, as well as see, the season as it progresses.
In March and early April, there are sakura-mochi that use salty, tangy preserved cherry blossoms as well as leaves for flavor. And later on in May, there are kashiwa-mochi, wrapped in woodsy kashiwa (oak) leaves, as well as chimaki, which use young green bamboo leaves as wrappers.
One of my favorite springtime wagashi is kusa-mochi, which means ¡°grass mochi,¡± also known as yomogi-mochi, made with the young leaves of yomogi ¡ª Artemisia princeps, sometimes called Japanese mugwort (it differs from European or common mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris). Kusa-mochi was originally made with a plant called hahako-gusa (Gnaphalium affine), which is one of the seven herbs of spring, and enjoyed by the nobility during the Heian Period (794-1185).
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