Hakurikiko, Churikiko and Kyorikiko - a Tale a 3 Flours

Last year when January came around, we celebrated chibbi-chan's birthday with cup cakes in the park and this year, in spite of the move and all the upheaval of leaving friends and little playmates behind in sunny California I was determined my little one would have a chocolate birthday cake if nothing else. To this end, I set off to Frante and bought my baking supplies -flour, cocoa, icing sugar, sugar, eggs, milk and margarine. My usual modus operandi when I can't find something is to seize on the nearest customer with, 'Ano ... sumimasen ...hakurikiko arimasu ka?' (Excuse me, is there self-raising flour?) It's probably inaccurate but it works every time and the poor customer will search the aisle for the product or a clerk to come help. Only this time, customer and clerk seemed unsure what it was I really wanted. Did I want to make cookies or sponge cake, melon pan or brioche, udon or bread? Sponge cake, I assured them. I just wanted the flour, no other added ingredients and they handed me a bag of white dust. And so I duly went home, mixed my chocolate cake and put it in the oven. When it came out it was rock hard. I didn't have my recipe books with me or my scales (still buried deep in the hold of a ship out at sea), so I wondered if I'd got the quantities wrong. I've never been a good cake baker but this sponge rated 1/10, it's only redeeming feature an edible chewiness on the inside. Not even a thick frosting could remedy this disaster. There was no way I was going to celebrate being 3 years old with this monster.
I called my neighbour upstairs, who had majored in Home Economics and could give me a recipe over the phone. She asked me if I had an electric whisk. I did, but ten minutes later she was at my door offering to beat my sponge for me. I wasn't going to say no. The Japanese way seems to be to beat the egg and sugar together into a froth of ecstasy until it's a foaming yellow cream tripled in size, before adding the flour and cocoa. Thirty minutes later and the cake was in the oven and I was looking forward to seeing the miracle of a beautifully risen sponge. But when the timer dinged and I opened the oven, my heart sank. This effort, in spite of the trouble which had been taken on its behalf by two pairs of hands, was even worse than the first. But I'd run out of time. And so with the help of a lot of whipped cream, chocolate icing, strawberries and sugar decorations and a fairy cake topper I cobbled something together which resembled a cake smashed with a mallet which more of less was what it was. I took a sampler to my neighbor upstairs, who wondered if there'd been too much flour added to the mix.
Chibbi-chan, mother-in-law and YK ate valiantly, but I was peeved. I wanted to solve the great cake mystery - was the oven too hot? Was the mixture too stiff? Had my neighbour overwhipped the eggs?
A few days later, mother-in-law solved the crime. I'd used the wrong flour she said, pointing to the label on the bag. I'd bought kyorikiko, not hakurikiko. Kyorikiko was for making noodles and bread. Hakurikiko was for making cakes, the equivalent I found, to self-raising/self-rising flour. My Home Economics neighbour filled in the details. Hakurikiko was the flour with the lowest gluten content, without bicarbonate of soda or salt. I would need to add bicarb to get things to rise. Churikiko was the equivalent of all-purpose flour (US) or plain (UK) flour, I could use that for cookies, she said. Kyorikiko has the highest gluten content.
Since my birthday cake debacle, I have successfully made everyone's favourite cheesecake, which tastes lighter and fluffier with churikiko. This morning I earned the compliment 'You made a nice apple pancake' from chibbi-chan (vocal appreciation of my cooking is a very recent development and much treasured).
The flour mixture has a glossier look and stickier feel to it than what I'm used to, but I think that's a small price to pay for the honest compliment of a 3-yr old.