Best Japanese Baking Cookbooks

If you’ve ever really wondered whether it is possible to recreate a top Japanese restaurant’s heavenly dessert at home – you are in for a treat! With the following user-friendly Japanese cookbooks for bakers with all levels of experience, you simply can’t go wrong.

The Best Japanese Baking Cookbooks To Try

• Patisserie at Home – The Japanese Way 
• Mochi Magic
• Beautiful Cookies: The Japanese Way
• Kawaii Bread
• Modern Asian Baking at Home
• Japanese Desserts Cookbook
• Anime Baking & Dessert Ultimate Cookbook

The fine art of baking in Japan dates back centuries ago; in fact, sweet treats, or ‘wagashi’ traditionally made from ingredients like mochi and red bean paste, date back to the 17^th century when sugar was not readily available.

Today there are a plethora of inspirational Japanese baking cookbooks on the market ranging from traditional to fun Anime inspired recipes with a modern twist or Japanese cookie recipes with a European flavor. 

Now, so without much further ado, here are the top seven painstakingly curated Japanese baking cookbooks!

Patisserie at Home – The Japanese Way

This inspirational cookbook is perfect for beginners and seasoned bakers as it contains authentic yet incredibly simple, illustrated, and practical cake and dessert recipes with step-by-step and meticulously tested baking instructions that anyone can master.

Patisserie at Home is comprised of four sections with meticulous introductions to the main ingredients that incapsulated Japanese cuisine like matcha (a powdered green tea), hojicha (a roasted green tea), yuzu (Asian citrus), including kurogoma (dark-hued sesame seeds).

What truly sets this cookbook apart from others is the “Simple Taste” baking principle, which aims to omit unnecessary ingredients to craft pure yet decadent sweet treats.

So, it’s the perfect cookbook for avid bakers who loves nothing more than surprising their dinner guests with sumptuous yet creative sweet indulgences. 

Mochi Magic

If you are looking for a fun Japanese baking cookbook, look no further! 

Mochi is an incredibly versatile chewy rice dough that you can shape into ultra-adorable sweet and savory characters or shapes that optimize Japan’s quintessentially cute baking traditions. In fact, it is perfect for moms and kids who want to create something special.

The book’s author, Kaori Becker provides a step-by-step guide to mastering the ancient art of cooking and shaping mochi, which is both fun yet hire informative.

Every vibrantly colored page contains easy-to-follow recipes for manual, steamed, including microwave-heated mochi with decadent fillings like Nutella, fragrant rosewater, Japanese plum wine, and silky Oreo Cream Cheese.

Other delicious mochi-inspired recipes include Ozoni Soup, Bacon-Encased Mochi, and other decadent baking recipes. 

This incredible book’s best and most fun aspect is the various mochi shape options ranging from fluffy pandas and cute baby chicks to pretty mochi flowers.

Beautiful Cookies: The Japanese Way

Beautiful Cookies is a delectable fusion between Japanese and German baking practices that culminate in thirty delicious cookie recipes ranging from traditional to contemporary cookies with eclectic infusions of miso, yuzu, matcha, and black sesame seeds, and sansho, a Japanese pepper.

Adding Asian cookie ingredients to traditional German cookie recipes is a masterstroke stroke as the exotic ingredients complement the taste of traditional European-style cookies, which is a delicious combination!

You don’t even have to be a baker with much experience to produce these moreish sweet treats as the colorful and beautifully illustrated book is easy to follow and provides tried and tested methods to produce outstanding cookies. 

Kawaii Bread

This list of the best Japanese baking cookbooks would be incomplete without the author of “Little Miss Bento,” Shirley Wong’s new bestseller – Kawaii Bread!

The book features the basic techniques to bake fluffy Asian bread and simple instructions on how to shape the dough into various beautiful forms, including recipes for delicious bread fillings that are perfectly suited to the baked bread.

With a wide variety of pull-apart, filled, and plain bread recipes, it’s an ideal cookbook for those who cannot resist the temptation of piping hot, fresh out of the oven loaf of bread! 

Modern Asian Baking at Home

The Modern Asian Baking at Home edition is a must if you are looking for a comprehensive Asian baking cookbook that includes delicious Japanese sweet and savory recipes!

The book features beautiful glossy photographs of fascinating baking techniques, exotic ingredients, and mouth-watering contemporary Asian-inspired baked goods like decadent gochujang flourless chocolate cake, boba, and miso-mochi brownies.

This versatile cookbook is a great addition for adventurous bakers who want to expand their Asian desserts repertoires with the likes of fragrant matcha, miso, soy sauce, or pandan to create delicious cakes, drinks, and frozen treats, custards, and so much more.

Japanese Desserts Cookbook

Let’s face it – nothing beats the pure joy of indulging in an authentic Japanese dessert with its bespoke range of flavors and beautiful designs!

So, if you want to impress guests with your own beautiful, crafted desserts, this book will help you create these sweet indulgences in no time with easy-to-follow instructions.

It features a comprehensive overview of traditional Japanese dessert ingredients and how to prepare them so that you can create your own dinner party showstoppers in the comfort of your own kitchen, what’s not to love!

Anime Baking & Dessert Ultimate Cookbook

With over 120 pastry and dessert recipes, this is the perfect gift for anyone who loves baking up a storm and binge-watching Anime shows!

This unique cookbook includes famous anime-inspired dessert recipes with handy baking hacks, interesting dessert facts, and other useful techniques, including tasty recipes created by the iconic Sugar Coder.

---

Recent Recipes