Jiggly Japanese Water Cake Looks Like a Little Glass Cat

1mithirukamochicat

For years, the Kinseiken Seika Company has been perfecting the sugary-sweet art of making desserts. Located in Hokuto, Japan, the shop is renowned for its experimental approach to mochi, a sweetened rice cake. In 2014, the company’s popularity soared when the sweet-toothed Internet discovered its mizu shingen mochi, Japanese water cake. Based on the classic shingen mochi dish, mizu shingen mochi is a gelatinous cake that bears a striking resemblance to an oversized dewdrop. Inspired by the delicate dessert, Twitter user @mithiruka has recently recreated it—but with a fun and fancy feline twist.

Like shingen mochi, the Japanese water cake is composed of three main ingredients: a gyuhi base (a softer and more delicate breed of mochi), a sticky-sweet brown sugar syrup coating, and a dusting of kinako soybean powder. Unlike the traditional rice cake, however, mizu shingen mochi has an additional additive: crystal clear water collected from Japan’s Southern Alps. The extracted water has been solidified <emjust enough to give the mystifying, melt-in-your-mouth mochi its bouncy shape—which means that, if not consumed quickly (around 30 minutes), the quirky creation will begin to liquefy. Even with its strikingly short shelf life, however, @mithiruka has opted to craft an edible work of art out of the ephemeral treat.

Unlike Kinseiken’s water cake, @mithiruka’s reimagined version no longer resembles a simple, spherical bead of water. Instead, it looks like a curled up, crystalline cat. Using a recipe from Cookpad and a silicon mold of a slumbering cat, the dessert-loving Twitter user managed to put a unique spin on an already inventive sweet.

2mithirukamochicat.

Here is the original, non-feline-looking water cake:

3mithirukamochicat.4mithirukamochicat.5mithirukamochicat.

@mithiruka: Twitter
via [Rocket News 24]

All images via @mithiruka and Kinseiken.

Kelly Richman-Abdou

Kelly Richman-Abdou is a Contributing Writer at My Modern Met. An art historian living in Paris, Kelly was born and raised in San Francisco and holds a BA in Art History from the University of San Francisco and an MA in Art and Museum Studies from Georgetown University. When she’s not writing, you can find Kelly wandering around Paris, whether she’s leading a tour (as a guide, she has been interviewed by BBC World News America and France 24) or simply taking a stroll with her husband and two tiny daughters.
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