Eating Mutant Fruit Cakes at Kajitsuen

As a lover of all aesthetic foods (especially sweets), this cake at Kajitsuen immediately caught my eye with it’s beautifully pink-glazed icing stuffed with whipped cream and freshly cut strawberries of all shapes and sizes. From the outside, it looks like a regular frosted cake, but it actually has the same texture as angel food cake (which goes way better with fruit, in my opinion). Not to mention that perfect strawberry on top! It tasted fresh and simply amazing.

The price for cake by the slice was a bit steep compared to other cafés (1200円) but considering how expensive fruit is in Japan, I’d say the quality was worth it.

As you can see, these cakes are beautifully crafted and have a unique mutant-like appearance with the large slices of fruit.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the appetite or the budget to try more than one slice, but if I come back I’m definitely interested in the grape and strawberry green tea flavors.

What I liked about this fruit parlor is it had a large menu of just plain slices fruit, parfaits, pancakes, cakes, and even triangular watermelon!

That is definitely something you don’t see everyday. The other widely known and most famous fruits parlor in Japan is called TAKANO, and here’s a strawberry cake I recently bought from them in comparison:

Though it looks huge from this picture, it was actually quite small! I think TAKANO is a bit more expensive, and though they have a larger selection of fruits and more stores, I would say that the cakes are best at Kajitsuen.

If you love fruit and sweets, then definitely check out a fruits parlor at least once during your trip here!

Dominique Ansel Bakery in Tokyo: Creatively Crafted Sweets and Desserts

Over the course of my nearly 3 years in Japan, I’ve been to many bakeries, but my favorite recently has been the Dominique Ansel Bakery located right off the main streets of Harajuku. This bakery creatively crafts sweets, breads, and desserts with influences from all over the world, and is arguably most famous for their blowtorched frozen s’more:

With a delicious and melted marshmallow exterior, the inside contains sweet vanilla ice cream and is in my opinion, the world’s best s’more. Besides this delectable treat, they also have many other sweets you can order for around 400~800 yen each:

A huge variety of sweets and breads to choose from! All of them have a beautiful design and unique flavor!
My personal favorite: The Magnolia Cake! Not only did it have a beautiful design, but it had some really good lemon cream inside.
The square watermelon cake. I bought this one for pure meme factor. Who needs to buy a $200 square watermelon when you could have this beautiful glazed cake?
Tomato bread filled with basil! I was surprised because I thought it was a cake, but it tasted just as good as one!
The infamous frozen s’more after it was blowtorched. It’s gooey, filled with ice cream, and served on a plastic stick to make it feel authentic.
Last but not least, a cookie shot to finish everything off! There is a chocolate layer around the cup so when you eat/drink it, the milk turns chocolate!

Everything that was displayed here looked absolutely delicious–almost like works of art! So whatever sweet you choose to order, it’s hard to go wrong! There may be a wait to get inside due to this bakery’s popularity, but luckily there are a lot of tables and tons of shopping nearby to do if you don’t feel like waiting.

I will be back in the future to see what other aesthetic food items they add!