Have you ever tried something that looks like this? Then you have had japanese red bean pancakes. It is just two round pancakes filled with red bean paste (from azuki bean: small red bean) that looks a bit like a sweet sandwich.
The word, "Dorayaki", is a combination of a word "Dora"= gong ( a metal musical instrument that has flat and circular discs shape) and "Yaki" = grilling. It makes sense to call it like that as the shape and the way it is made.
Dorayaki is the most favorite dessert of a very popular cartoon character in Japan called "Doraemon". A male cat robot from the future that was sent back by the main character's (called Nobita) great great grandson to help or support him and make him happy. Doraemon accomplishes this with tools and incredible gadgets invented in the future which he is able to produce out of his "four-dimensional front pocket". In the future cat robots are common and come in yellow color and have ears (as a regular cat would have too). The birth of Doraemon is on 3 Sep 2112. He was bitten by a robot mouse due to an erroneous command of the owner (a boy named Sewashi), which caused the mouse to munch on his ears instead of a clay model. He was sent to the hospital and the robot doctor had to remove his ears. Since then Doraemon has an incontrollable fear of mice. After the ear-removal-procedure a female cat doraemon was in love with saw him without ears and ran away from him. Doraemon wanted to take a cheer-up potion, but mistakengly took a sadness potion. This made him crying a lot and wiping out his yellow colour and as a result turning him blue.
This word, "Doraemon", is not from the word "Dora"=Gong, but "Dora"= Stray cat + "Emon" = suffix for male name in Japanese. There are many chapters of this cartoon series that referred to this "Dorayaki", especially the chapter that Doraemon used his gadgets (baibain) to multiply a dorayaki (square two), altough delighted first, he soon was not able to keep up eating eating the Dorayaki with the rate of them multiplying, resulting in a room filled with Dorayaki.
How to make Dorayaki? It is very easy to make by using any American pancake recipe and just add Japanese red bean paste (see image on the article). There are many desserts in Japan that contains this red bean paste such as Taiyaki (the same as dorayaki, but the filling is baked together in fish baking form), or add in green tea latte (hot or cold) like this :
If you watch this cartoon series, you may have interest to make homemade Dorayaki. Believe me one is not enough!
