This was inspired by the Japanese story called “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”. The story itself featured a bamboo cutter who uncovered a little girl, named Kaguya, one day when he was cutting open stalks of bamboo. She was specifically found inside of a glowing bamboo stalk. As the story progresses, Kaguya is revealed to be the princess of the moon, and at the end of the story, she returns there after failing to find a suitable lover on Earth. For this particular dessert, I wanted to make the visual pull from this image of a glimmering bamboo stalk, and that’s how I came up with the appearance. For the flavors, even though the story itself is Japanese in origin, the dessert was flavored using ingredients that evoked either the colors, flavors, or appearance of bamboo. In this case, I went with sugar cane, which visually resembles bamboo, pandan, which provides a gorgeous green color and has this earthy, wood-like fragrance to it, and jade rice, which is rice that is actually flavored with bamboo juice! What I love about this recipe is that it is this vibrant green color, and it really does resemble a stalk of bamboo. And the funniest part is, because I went ahead and highlighted the jade rice in this dessert, it wound up being 100% gluten-free.

For the components, we have a pandan-jade rice-sugar cane mousse, which is the main body of the stalk, a jade rice-pandan sponge, a sugar cane gelee core, and tempered pandan chocolate. For the mousses themselves, I actually purchased a silicone mold for it, but honestly the hollowed-out end of the mold was very finnicky, and it was actually hard to properly unmold the mousses from it. I would recommend using a cylindrical mold, and scooping out a hole from one side using a warm metal spoon. In terms of technical skills here, a there are a few things that need to be done correctly or else the dessert sort of falls apart. The gelee core needs to be frozen solid, or else it will break into pieces when you try to press it into the mousse. The sponge is made using ground jade rice, so having a spice grinder is a necessity for this recipe. You need to get the rice super fine, or else it will leave the final cake with a gritty finish. The mousse is made by pureeing more of that rice with sugar cane juice to create a rice milk, and that is then reduced into the base for your mousse. Make sure that you cook it down until it is opaque, or else the taste of raw rice will come through and it is not pleasant. And lastly with the white chocolate collars, I used a jagged bench scraper to blend white and pandan chocolate together, but you can also just pipe thin lines of white chocolate onto acetate, and then spread the pandan chocolate on that way. Or just do the pandan chocolate. If you don’t feel comfortable doing the collars, shards are just as pretty too!

For the sugar cane gelee:
1/2 cup sugar cane juice
a pinch of salt
1 tsp agar agar

In a pot, reduce everything together on medium heat by about half, making sure that the agar and salt are fully dissolved into the juice. Pour the liquid either into a small shallow container lined with oil, or silicone 2-inch disk molds, and freeze solid, about 2 hours in the freezer. If using the shallow container, once the gelee is solid, cut out 2-inch disks, keeping them frozen.

For the jade rice-pandan sponge:
1 egg, separated
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1.5oz finely ground jade rice
1oz canola oil
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 dots pandan extract
1 tbsp pandan powder

In one bowl, whisk the egg white with the sugar to stiff peaks. In another bowl, mix everything else until combined. Fold the egg white mixture into the other ingredients to form your batter. Pour into a small baking vessel and bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes. Allow the cake to cool before cutting out 2 1/2-inch rounds, reserving the scraps in an airtight container for the top.

For the jade rice-pandan-sugar cane mousse:
2 tbsp jade rice
1/2 cup sugar cane juice
2 tsp gelatin powder + 2 tbsp cold water
a pinch of salt
1 dot pandan extract
2/3 cups heavy cream, whipped stiff and kept cold

In a blender, puree the jade rice with sugar cane juice until completely combined. Pass through a sieve to remove any lumps. Reduce the liquid in a pot over medium heat with the gelatin and salt. Once the gelatin and salt and dissolved in, and the mixture has thickened, take the liquid off heat and stir in the pandan. Allow the liquid to cool down first before folding in the heavy cream. Transfer the mousse to a piping bag.

For the soak:
1/4 cup sugar cane juice
a pinch of salt

Mix together and keep refrigerated until initial assembly.

For initial assembly:
Pipe half of the mousse into 4 petit gateau molds. I used silicone bamboo molds, but circular ones work here as well! Press into each mold a frozen disk of the sugar cane gelee. Then pipe in the rest of the mousse. Brush 4 rounds of the cake each with 1/4 tsp of your soak, reserving the rest of the soak, and press those into the molds as well. Freeze the molds solid, at least 4 hours, before attempting to unmold the mousses from them.

For garnish:
Reserved cake scraps
Reserved soak
1/2 cup white chocolate, in two parts
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp finely grated cocoa butter
2 tbsp pandan powder

Toss the scrapes of cake with the remaining soak. Unmold the mousses and garnish the tops with the scraps. Return the mousses to the freezer for now. In a bowl on a double boiler, melt down one part of the white chocolate completely with the salt. Take the white chocolate off heat and stir in the remaining white chocolate first, then the cocoa butter. Pour half of the white chocolate onto a dry sheet of acetate, using a ridged paint scraper to spread it in thin rows. Dye the rest of the white chocolate using the pandan powder, and pour that over the white chocolate, spreading it in an even layer. Allow the white chocolate to firm up at room temperature for 5 minutes before using a knife to cut out triangular shapes. Allow the triangles to firm up slightly, another 2-3 minutes, before carefully draping them around your mousses. Return these to the freezer for another 10 minutes before attempting to remove the acetate and serve.