Pale yellow and nearly as fine as confectioner’s sugar, wasanbon is a rare sugar made with a traditional, labor-intensive process, and only in Japan. The name “wasanbon” comes from the manufacturing process which includes three (“san”) refining stages during which craftsmen work the sugar by hand on a worktable, referred to as a tray (“bon”), to achieve smaller, uniformly sized crystals. With its light, unobtrusive sweetness, wasanbon is used in premium Japanese confectionary.

Text by Kitchen Nippon