Cleverly beautiful tiramisu sweets are only available three days a week.

Coffee is the key ingredient in tiramisu. Even the dessert’s name, meaning “pick me up” in Italian, is a reference to the energizing caffeine kick that comes from some strong java.

So if tiramisu is going to have the flavor of a cup of coffee, why not the appearance too? The obvious answer to that is “Because it would be really hard to make a cake look like a coffee cup,” but apparently it’s not beyond the talents of Tokyo sweets shop Kissaten ni Koi Shite, which has created this.

Called the Kisa Tiramisu (kissa being a Japanese word for “coffee shop” or “cafe”), what looks like a mug is actually a carefully crafted mousse made with mascarpone cheese sourced from Hokkaido, Japan’s top dairy-producing prefecture. Poured into the divot at the top is a Brazilian coffee sauce with a gentle bitterness, and beneath that is a coffee syrup-soaked sponge cake with bits of crisp chocolate mixed in, and the whole thing sits atop a disc of crumble pie crust-style chocolate.

The Kissa Tiramisu is sold in packs of two for 1,620 yen (US$10.80), so while it’s not an exorbitant luxury, it’s still meant as a special occasion kind of dessert. As a matter of fact, it can’t be an everyday indulgence, as it’s only sold on three days of the week, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, with the first batch of each day becoming available at around 11 in the morning and the second at 3 in the afternoon. Quantities are limited too, with each batch being a total of 30 boxes.

▼ The cakes are sold frozen, and take three to four hours to defrost in the refrigerator.

Kissaten ni Koi Shite has only one location, and it’s located on basement level 1 of Tokyo Station’s Gransta Tokyo section, near the Marunouchi Chika Chuo gate. The shop is inside the station gates, so you’ll need a ticket to access it, but that also means you’ll be able to pick up some of Tokyo Station’s famously delicious ekiben bento boxed lunches while on your dessert run.

Related: Kissaten ni Koi Shite
Source, images: PR Times
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