Posted July 14, 2019 by Jonelle Patrick5 Comments Animals

Is This Mameshiba Cake Too Cute To Eat?

I was in the Matsuya Ginza food hall stocking up on peanut snacks, when I saw this. I tried to walk past it. I tried. To be honest, I was sort of worried that a baumkuchen cake in the shape of a tiny shiba inu might be too cute to eat.

But my curiousity got the better of me. How could a baumkuchen – which is made by drizzling cake batter on a rotating spit, so it ends up being layers upon layers of alternating crust and cake – be made to resemble a shiba in any way?

Hmm. At first, I was kind of disappointed that it was just a shiba picture printed on top of the frosting (cute, but kind of pale, compared to the box). And what if I bungle it while dismantling the cutout?

Fortunately, it was utterly plug ‘n play., and it was actually pretty adorable. But once I’d cleared away the extra cake, it was sort of laughably tiny. Which was good, I guess, because I didn’t have to decide whether to bite off the head first or start with the legs.

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When not eating an entire shiba cake in one bite, Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Tokyo

For nine years, Tokyo Detective Kenji Nakamura thought his mother’s death was an accident. Then he gets a call, and his life begins to unravel. Because if it wasn’t an accident…what was it? *Read more*

Jonelle Patrick View All

Writing mystery books set in Tokyo is mostly what I do, but I also blog about the odd stuff I see every day in Japan. I'm a graduate of Stanford University and the Sendagaya Japanese Institute in Tokyo, and a member of the International Thriller Writers, the Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters In Crime. When I'm not in Tokyo, I live in San Francisco. I also host a travel site called The Tokyo Guide I Wish I'd Had, so if you're headed to Japan and want to check out the places I take my friends when they're in town, take a look!