Funky furikake spread seeks to spread holiday cheer.

Furikake is a catch-all term in Japanese that describes powdered toppings to be sprinkled over white rice. Salmon is one of the most traditional kinds of furikake, but there are all sorts of other variants, including egg, beef, and wasabi.

Or, if you want to get really out there, now there’s Christmas cake furikake too, the package for which is pictured above.

While various baked goods are part of yuletide celebrations in a lot of countries, in Japan the traditional Christmas sweet is specifically a cake. A Christmas cake, to festive-minded foodies in Japan, is some sort of fancy cake with a winter appearance, with strawberry shortcake being the most common choice since the cream looks like a field of snow and the red fruit brings to mind Santa’s outfit.

▼ A selection of Christmas cakes produced by Japanese rock star Takanori Nishikawa

However, Japanese confectioner National Depart is offering a unique alternative with its Christmas Cake Furikake. Part of the company’s Furichin lineup of inventively offbeat furikake flavors, the design concept is to give you a way to “casually enjoy a Christmas mood.”

So how do you turn a Christmas cake into a powdered topping? The base is bits of dried Biscuit Joconde, a type of almond sponge cake. National Depart then adds chips of strawberry and mango “crystal merengue,” plus mascarpone cheese, an accent that’s enjoying a burst of popularity among upscale desserts in Japan these days.

The Christmas Cake Furikake also comes with a separate pouch of toppings to put on top of the base toppings: cookies shaped like Christmas trees, stockings, and bells, plus sugary stars and silver dragees. Usually with furikake everything is mixed together into one blend, but having these separately lets you arrange them for the most aesthetically pleasing powdered cake possible.

National Depart seems to realize that it’s pushing the furikake concept pretty far here, and so it also recommends using the Christmas Cake Furikake as a topping for toast or even ice cream, which may make for better-tasting results than sprinkling it on white rice. Then again, with the current furikake boom ongoing, there’s arguably never been a better time in history to release powdered cake rice topping than right now. If you’re up for it, Christmas Cake Furikake can be ordered through National Depart’s online shop here for 390 yen (US$2.50).

Source: PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: SoraNews24, PR Times
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