Taiyaki Recipe: How to Make Japanese Fish-Shaped Cakes

Taiyaki is the fish-shaped Japanese cake sold from street stalls and station kiosks across Japan — a thin, crisp shell of pancake-like batter wrapped around sweet azuki red bean paste. This guide covers the traditional taiyaki recipe, the pan you need to make it at home, the fillings that work, and how to get a shell that stays crisp rather than turning soft.

What is taiyaki?

Taiyaki (たい焼き) means baked sea bream. The name comes from tai, the red sea bream, a fish long associated with celebration in Japan — it appears at weddings and New Year, and shares a syllable with medetai, meaning auspicious. Sea bream was expensive enough that a cheap flour-and-bean imitation had obvious appeal, and the shape stuck.

The batter sits somewhere between a pancake and a waffle: flour, egg, milk, sugar and a raising agent, thin enough to pour. It is pressed between two hinged moulds, so the finished cake has a defined fish silhouette with a slightly frilled seam where the batter escapes. Inside is traditionally anko, sweetened azuki red bean paste, though custard, chocolate and even savoury fillings are all normal in Japan now.

Two things separate good taiyaki from a soft, cakey imitation: a thin batter and a properly preheated pan. Everything below is built around those two.

What you need to make taiyaki at home

Taiyaki needs a hinged two-sided mould — a frying pan will not give you the shape or the even contact that crisps both faces. The Pearl Life Taiyaki Pan is the one we stock and use: aluminium alloy with a non-stick fluororesin coating, a heat-resistant phenol resin handle, and it moulds two fish at a time. Made in Japan, $49.

One important caveat before you buy: this pan is designed for gas stoves only. If you cook on induction or ceramic, a cast-iron taiyaki plate is the alternative to look for — heavier, slower to heat, but not limited by hob type.

Beyond the pan you need very little: a mixing bowl, a whisk, a jug for pouring the batter, a teaspoon for the filling, and a skewer or chopstick for lifting the cakes out.

Taiyaki recipe

This makes eight taiyaki with roughly 30 g of filling each. The batter is deliberately thinner than a pancake batter — that is what gives you a crisp shell instead of a sponge.

Ingredients

• 200 g plain flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 40 g caster sugar
• ¼ tsp fine salt
• 1 large egg (about 55 g)
• 250 ml full-cream milk
• 1 tsp neutral oil, for the pan
• 240 g anko (sweet azuki red bean paste), or the filling of your choice

Method

1. Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Mix the wet ingredients. In a jug, whisk the egg until smooth, then whisk in the milk.
3. Combine. Pour the wet mixture into the dry in three additions, whisking after each, until the batter is smooth and just pourable — about the consistency of thin cream. Do not overwork it.
4. Rest the batter for 30 minutes in the fridge. This hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten, and it is the single change that most improves the shell. Rest it overnight if that suits you better.
5. Portion the filling. Divide the anko into eight 30 g pieces and shape each into a flat oval, roughly the size of the fish’s body. Chill them while the batter rests — cold filling is far easier to place.
6. Heat the pan. Set it over low to medium heat with both sides closed for 2–3 minutes, then open and brush both moulds lightly with oil. The pan is ready when a drop of batter sizzles gently rather than spitting.
7. Fill the mould. Pour batter into one side until it is about 60% full and comes just up the sides of the cavity. Lay a portion of anko in the centre, keeping it clear of the edges, then pour more batter over the top until it reaches just below the rim.
8. Close and cook. Close the pan and cook for 2–3 minutes, then turn it over and cook the other side for 2–3 minutes. Open to check: the shell should be golden and dry. If it is still pale, close it and give it another minute per side.
9. Trim and serve. Lift the taiyaki out with a wooden skewer, snap off the thin frill of overflow batter around the seam, and eat warm — this is when the shell is at its best.

What to put inside taiyaki

Anko is traditional, but Japanese stalls have long since moved beyond it. Keep any filling to about 30 g and away from the edges, or it will find the seam and leak.

• Anko (azuki red bean paste) — the classic. Tsubuan keeps the bean skins and has more texture; koshian is smooth. Both are sold at Japanese and Asian grocers.
• Custard cream — the second most common filling in Japan. Chill it firm before using; a loose custard will run.
• Chocolate — a thick ganache or a firm spread rather than plain chopped chocolate, which melts to liquid and escapes.
• Sweet potato or chestnut paste — autumn fillings, and both hold their shape well.
• Matcha white chocolate — a modern favourite, and the bitterness balances the sweet shell.
• Savoury — cheese, or cheese with a little bacon or corn. Reduce the sugar in the batter to about 15 g if you go this way.

Why your taiyaki did not turn out

How to store and reheat taiyaki

Taiyaki is at its best within minutes of leaving the pan, but it keeps perfectly well. Cool it completely first — wrapping a warm cake traps steam and the shell goes soft.

• Room temperature: up to a day in an airtight container.
• Refrigerated: up to three days.
• Frozen: up to a month. Wrap each cake individually, then bag them.

To reheat, use a toaster oven or a conventional oven at 180°C for 5 minutes — from frozen, 8 to 10 minutes. This is the step that brings the crispness back. A microwave will warm the filling but leaves the shell limp, so if that is all you have, microwave for 20 seconds and then finish in a hot dry frying pan for a minute a side.

Taiyaki, imagawayaki and obanyaki

They are close relatives and the batter is much the same. Imagawayaki — also called obanyaki, and a dozen other regional names — is the round, thick, drum-shaped version, cooked in a plate of circular wells. It holds noticeably more filling than a taiyaki and has a softer, cakier crumb because of its depth.

Taiyaki is the flatter, crisper one, and the shape is the whole point of it. If you want to make both, the Pearl Life Obanyaki Pan makes four at a time and takes the same batter and fillings — though, like the taiyaki pan, it is gas-only.

The history of taiyaki

Taiyaki appeared in Tokyo during the Meiji era, in the late 1800s, as a variation on the already-popular imagawayaki. The commonly told account credits a shop in Azabu that struggled to sell the round version and reshaped the mould into a sea bream — a fish ordinary households rarely ate, offered for the price of a snack.

Naniwaya, founded in Azabu-Juban in 1909, is the shop usually named as the origin and is still trading. Whether or not it was strictly first, taiyaki spread quickly and has stayed on Japanese streets for more than a century, largely unchanged: two hot moulds, thin batter, sweet beans.

Japanese vendors distinguish between tennen-mono, cooked one or two at a time in individual hinged irons like the pan above, and yoshoku-mono, cooked in large multi-cavity plates. The single-mould method is slower and is generally held to give the crisper shell — which is the method you are using at home.

Taiyaki FAQ