The steward and the magistrate would then offer the visitors rice cakes with azuki beans, and sake.
Momiji manj, pastries filled with azuki jam or custard, are popular souvenirs and carry maple-leaf emblems.
Flours made of other ingredients, like azuki, soybean or green pea and starches are often used too.
In some cases, other grains, beans (azuki beans or mung beans), sesame seeds, wheat flour, or starch can be mixed with the rice.
It is prepared by boiling and mashing azuki beans and then sweetening the paste with sugar or honey.
Flavors include azuki bean paste, green tea (matcha), "yuzu", strawberry and chestnut.
A very effective way to sprout beans like lentils or azuki is in colanders.
Others use amanatt (sweetened bean confectionery) instead of azuki.
