Whenever I go to Japan or when one of my friends go to Japan, I usually ask them to bring me back some baking ingredients. Everything from freeze dried purple potato flakes to cherry blossom extract. And more often than not I end up hoarding and "saving" them for ''special'' occasions...meaning they end up sitting in the cupboard for a very very long time...
In anycase, in honor of springtime, I thought I'd pull out my salted cherry blossoms and actually try to bake something with them. My version of cherry blossom shortbread - the flowery saltiness of the cherry blossoms perfectly complimented the sweet shortbread.
When cooking for a diabetic, there's a lot of thought that goes into choosing certain ingredients over others. For example, there's a lot of debate over various sugar alternatives and how they affect your blood glucose level and how its metabolized in the body...one of these days, I would love to research and do an in depth post on it for my own knowledge. For now, I am going with splenda.
If you feel like baking these, they do carry salted cherry blossoms at Japanese grocery stores if you're lucky enough to have one nearby, or you can always find them online.
OR I'm always a fan of altering recipes - If you're able to come up with any alternatives to Salted Cherry Blossoms let me know!
