Start by measuring out the white bean paste dough into portions as instructed in the recipe.  By measuring the dough you will end up with equal sized nerikiris.  

Take the measured portion for the inside layer of wrapping and separate into three sizes.  Use food color gel to color the portions light blue, light green and yellow.  Don’t use regular food coloring as those contain quite a bit of liquid which will make your dough sticky and very hard to work with.

Once your dough is colored and chilled you can put the colors together and the inside layer of wrapping is done.  Looks quite like a dartboard, no?  The yellow is the center of the flower and the green and blue the petals, as you will see as we go along.  You can, of course, switch up the colors however you like.

Now we make the outer layer of wrapping, which is the white dough on the right in the photo above.  This is just white bean paste dough rolled out to a slight larger circle than the inside layer of wrapping.  This is so that the white outer layer can completely cover the inside layer later.

Be sure at this point NOT to do what I did wrong so many times.  You have to put the inside layer and the outside layer together now, however, I kept putting the layers together wrong!!  Arghh~!  

What the heck went wrong?  It’s an easy step right?  Well, I placed the colored dough with pattern facing up.  WRONG!  You have to flip over so that the patterned side faces the white  dough.  You don’t want to see the pattern!  It will show up later as long as you have it flipped away from sight now.

Here we show the wrapping of the white bean paste dough wrapping around the filling.  You see how the slightly larger white bean paste dough outer layer will allow you to close up the Nerikiri cleanly.

Here is the wrapped Nerikiri.  Look how pretty it is already!  The inner colored layer glows subtly through the outer white layer.  You can just see the blue, green and yellow colors.  It’s all ready for the final decoration stage!

The cleverest thing about these Nerikiri is the fact that they are so simply made.  Just humble bean paste and rice flour to make a dough.  And the shapes are all achieved with a few simple implements you can find in your house and the craftiness of your own two hands.  Amazing really.

So onto the decorations.  We first craft some lines onto our Nerikiri.  Find something with a thin pointed edge.  I used a ruler edge.  Cradling the Nerikiri gently in one palm, use the ruler edge to make equally spaced lines all around, creating 16 sections.

See the lovely colors that show through the lines?  So clever, amirite?

As this decorating is rather tricky the first time or two, we’ve made a video showing the whole process in detail.  Do check it out, it’s easier if you can see it:

The ball tip size should be slightly smaller than the width of one section of your divided flower.  Carefully push down and out to form the petal.  The petal forms, a lovely blue petal edged in white.  We’ll call this the ‘outer layer’ of petals.  See how they extend slightly beyond the diameter of the wrapped cake.

Push out the ‘outer layer’ petals, one for every other section around the flower.

For the next round we’ll push out the ‘middle layer’ of petals.  These petals are made on the sections that were skipped over before and should end in a tighter circle than the first round.  I didn’t do that great of a job of that as you can see above but you get my meaning.  These petals should form a bit closer to the center.

Be sure that the ball tip you use is adjusted to be a bit smaller than the section bit that you’re pushing out.

One more time around, this time we’ll make the ‘inner layer’.  The petal is pushed out on the same sections that the first ‘outer layer’ round of petals were made, only higher up.  So basically there are two petals pushed out on the same sections, one lower and one higher.  Again adjust with smaller ball tip to match the width of the section you’re working with.

See how in this ‘inner layer’ the green color comes out?  So very clever, the Japanese, no?

Petals are done.  By this time your Nerikiri is probably out of shape a bit.  Use your hand to gently reshape the bottom of the cake to a pleasing shape.

Any time the wrapper dough becomes hard to work with just cover and set in fridge to chill and firm up a bit.

The final touch is absolutely brilliant.  The first time I saw someone do this I think I gasped, lol.  So effing clever!  Take the last bit of yellow colored dough that you have set aside and press it through a wire mesh strainer.  You have just formed delicate stamens for your chrysanthemum!  That’s right your handy dandy strainer that you use everyday has become your new pastry tool extraordinaire!

Making Nerikiri is so much fun.  It’s like being allowed to be a kid again and putter around with clay but way better cuz it’s so beautiful and you can eat it and it’s so yummilicious!