Please, Santa, we’ve been really good all year, so bring us some adorable Ghibli-themed sweets!
In Japan, your Christmas celebration isn’t over until you’ve had some Christmas cake. The most popular variety is a shortcake with strawberries and cream, matching the color scheme of Santa’s outfit. Instead of St. Nick, though, this December there’s a lineup of Christmas cakes that provide a holiday visit from Totoro!
As long-time SoraNews24 readers might be able to guess, these cakes come from Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory, a Tokyo cafe/bakery with two branches and an unabashed love for the anime films of Studio Ghibli. Shirohige’s most popular items are their Totoro-shaped cream puffs, and they’re featured in each and every one of their Totoro Christmas cakes, starting with the Strawberry Shortcake pictured above. If you’re a shortcake fan but also of the opinion that dessert should always involve chocolate, there’s also a Chocolate and Banana Shortcake with couverture chocolate, made with extra cocoa butter, and banana.
Alternatively, you can fancily fulfill the chocolate quotient with the Orange Chocolate Mousse Cake, with layers of nutty chocolate and citrussy orange mousses.
Rounding off the sharable Totoro Christmas cakes is a Souffle Cheesecake, made with Hokkaido cream cheese…
…and should you, understandably, want a Totoro cake all for yourself, or happen to be celebrating solo, the individual-sized Small Totoro Chocolate Cake, with a banana jam chocolate mousse, is just the thing.
The cakes’ Totoro cream puffs are all filled with custard cream, and prices are 1,000 yen (US$7.20) for the Small Totoro Chocolate Cake, 4,800 yen for the mousse cake and cheesecake, and 5,200 yen for the shortcakes. Of course, if you just want the Totoro Cream Puffs, Shirohige offers those year-round, but they’re getting the special holly leaf accents for Christmas.
▼ 520 yen for custard, 560 yen for strawberry cream filling.
And if only the first two parts of “Totoro, desserts, and cream” appeal to you, there’s also a 700-yen Totoro and Tree cookie set.
The cookie set is available from December 10 to 25, but the other items here will only be offered from the 23rd to the 25th. Reserving Christmas cake ahead of time is always recommended in Japan, and especially so with these, and Shirohige will begin taking orders at it’s Setagaya Ward branch by telephone at 7 p.m. on December 19.
Cafe information
Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory / 白髭のシュークリーム工房
Address: Tokyo-to, Setagaya-ku, Daita 5-3-1
東京都世田谷区代田5-3-1
Open 10:30a.m.-7p.m., closed Tuesdays (or Wednesday if Tuesday is a holiday)
Telephone: 03-5787-6221
Website
Source, images: Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory
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