You’ll want to snap your photos before you start eating one of this chain’s tempting new cherry blossom treats.

There are a lot of similarities between cherry blossoms themselves and sakura sweets. Both are widely loved but only stick around for a short time each year, for starters, and just like how you can find beautifully flowering cherry blossom trees in both exquisite, centuries-old gardens and local neighborhood parks, so too can you find amazing sakura desserts that are a treat for the eyes and taste buds in both premium-priced patissiers and everyday chain cafes.

The latest example of the latter group comes to us from Cozy Corner, who’s whipping up two cherry blossom treats, each of which is topped with an actual sakura flower. Those aren’t just garnishes, either, as Japan’s most famous flowers are edible, and are especially tasty in salt-preserved form, as they appear here (as a matter of fact, the “sakura flavor” found in Japanese desserts is a mix of sweet, salty, and very slightly floral notes).

First up is the Sakura Cake (529 yen [US$3.50] per slice). Between those sheets of sakura sponge cake are sliced strawberries in whipped cream, tsubu an sweet red beans in cream, and rich custard with gyuhi (extra-soft mochi). All of that is blanketed under a topping of sakura cream with a salted sakura flower as the proverbial cherry on top.

Even fancier is the Sakura Mont Blanc (496 yen).

Though named after the European Alps mountain whose name translates to “Mount White,” Mont Blanc the dessert is usually brown, as the orthodox version is made of strands of sweet chestnut puree. This pink Mont Blanc, though, is made with strands of sakura-flavored sweet bean paste, and Cozy Corner makes no mention of chestnut in its description of it. The ingredient list has even more Japanese influences as you make your way down below the sakura flower and bean paste. Beneath them is a stratum of matcha green tea cream partially covering a core of matcha sweet bean paste, ringed by whole tsubu an sweet beans. All of this sits atop a sakura madeleine cake foundation, culminating in a complex but surely immensely satisfying mix of sweet, bitter, salty, and rich flavors.

However, as captivating a concept as the Sakura Mont Blanc’s ingredient lineup is, you might want to avoid looking at it in cross-section, and likewise to avert your eyes from the photo below, because while it looks delectable to start, viewed post-bit from the side it doesn’t look unlike a cyclopean monster.

Of course, that whole issue is resolved by snapping any photos you want before you take your first bite, which also carries the benefit of eliminating any other tasks that would struggle in vain to compete with your attention after you start eating this amazing-sounding, mostly amazing-looking dessert.

Both the Sakura Cake and the Sakura Mont Blanc are on sale now at Cozy Corner (though they’re not available at the chain’s branches in Kyushu or Hokkaido, Fukui, Kyoto, Saga, Tottori, Shimane, Yamaguchi, Ehime, or Kochi Prefectures), and will be on offer until approximately April 10, with a “while supplies last” caveat. And yes, this does mean that they’re overlapping with Cozy Corner’s extra-adorable Poké Peace Pokémon cakes, so we absolutely won’t blame you if you come back from your dessert run with 11 different cakes.

Source, images: PR Times
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