Cupcakes in Tokyo

Fairycake Fair cupcakes from Flickr user yuichi.sakuraba

The article "Curious about cupcakes?" in the Daily Yomiuri looks at three cupcake bakeries in Tokyo, Japan. Prior to reading this, we were only aware of one of them, Notting Hill Cakes and Gifts.

The others profiles are the interestingly named N.Y. Cupcakes and Fairycake Fair. Fairycake scored the "most unusual" cupcake with "the sakura cupcake topped with a globe of white anko sweet bean paste and a pink chocolate wafer representing a cherry petal."

Do check out the entire aritcle (excerpted below) because at the end they do a taste test. As an American, it's interesting to read about customers not even knowing what a cupcake is, but of course that makes perfect sense given the location.

What is a cupcake? This is becoming an important question in Tokyo, where passersby who wander into the city's small but growing number of cupcake bakeries may think they are seeing muffins.

Mark Peterson is the president of Notting Hill Cakes and Gifts, a bakery in Minato Ward, Tokyo, that specializes in both cupcakes and muffins. He told The Daily Yomiuri that a cupcake is basically a miniature cake. It is sweet, and it must be decorated with a topping. Muffins are "more breakfasty."

But a cupcake is more than just a muffin dressed to party. Another difference, according to Peterson, is that the wet and dry ingredients for muffins are mixed separately and then combined at the last minute, with relatively dense, heavy results, whereas with a cupcake everything is thoroughly beaten together for a final product with a lighter, airier consistency.

N.Y. Cupcakes, which opened in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, last July, seeks to educate customers on its Web site, explaining, with reasoning similar to Peterson's, that cupcakes may look like muffins, but that they are decorated and sweet. N.Y. Cupcakes proprietor Kaori Sasaki told The Daily Yomiuri in an e-mail that she fell in love with cupcakes while in the United States, where she was attracted by their cute designs. But when she began selling her own cupcake creations at her shop, she was surprised at the response.

"Before opening the store, I expected our prime customers would be high school girls and young women," she said. "But we actually have many customers among not only young women, but also women in their 40s and 50s. Everybody says the cupcakes are kawaii [cute], tasty and somehow nostalgic."