Son of Ramen Cake: Sushi Cake

Please note this post has been delayed by several months because of the move this summer. Sorry. -_-;

My sister's birthday is the season of weird cakes. Last year, it was a bowl of ramen. This year, we tried a piece of sushi.

私の妹の誕生日は毎年面白いケーキを作ってみる。。。が、「面白い」って、実はとても変です。享年のテーマはラーメンでした。今年はお寿司でした。マジですよ。寿司見たいケーキを作ってみました。

お寿司ケーキ．．．かな．．．？

The result was... eh, lacking something in the department of realism. However, I remain convinced that the concept and design are solid enough that this cake could be, in the hands of an experienced sugarcrafter, a really slick show.

Coincidentally, I imagine many of you fall into the "experienced sugarcrafter" category. *hint hint*

Here's the original process developed in this first, experimental instance of... Sushi Cake.

STEP ZERO
Make some round cakes and stack 'em up. Three 8-inch rounds were used here, the domed tops of each cut off (to level the cake, but you probably already knew that), and a layer of frosting spread between the layers (to make the layers stick together, but I'm pretty sure you knew about that too). Flavor is entirely arbitrary; per my sister's desires, I used strawberry and chocolate cake mix, marbled together.

STEP ONE
Spread white or off-white frosting all over the top the cake. Again, flavor is arbitrary, constrained only by the fact that it needs to be of a whitish color. We used cream cheese frosting (again, sister's choice) from a can. And not the "whipped" kind, because I hate it.

STEP TWO
Now you need sprinkles. Lots of Sprinkles. Sprinkles that look like rice, or as close to rice as you can possibly find them. I believe they call this shape of sprinkle "jimmies", or at least that's what they were labeled when I finally found them in Missouri. Incredibly, I could not actually find plain white jimmies, but the local Hobby Lobby was able to come up with these cool pearlized off-white ones for me, which actually look even more like cooked rice than I was originally hoping for.

寿司ご飯のように　：D

Sprinkle the sprinkles (hurray for immediate noun-verb congruity in a sentence!), all around the top of the cake, leaving a round area in the middle of the cake with only frosting. This will be the "core" of the sushi, where the key ingredients would be rolled up if the sushi were real. You might want to make an indentation in the frosting to mark out this part. The wide ring of sprinkles, meanwhile, is the thick layer of rice. It looks more rice-like as you get a heavier coating of sprinkles on there... try to completely hide the underlying frosting.

STEP THREE
Now we need a substitute for the seaweed wrap (焼き海苔：やきのり： yakinori, literally "cooked seaweed") that goes around a roll of sushi. You could, of course, actually use yakinori... or you could find/make the darkest, blue-green-brown frosting that you possibly can. If you know how to make frosting and have access to powerful sugary secrets, you can probably do this very well. In my case, I had a can of lemon frosting (yes, sister wanted lemon), and several vials of food coloring. This is the lemon frosting after about two little bottles of blue, two of green, a few drops of yellow and a hit of red:

やきのり色（か？）アイシング

...not very nori-colored, but the base frosting was starting to get watered down with all the food coloring, so... meh. Spread your seaweed-colored frosting all around the sides of the cake, keeping the surface smooth and even so it looks at least a little like a wrap around sushi, and not like bizarre green frosting on a cake.

Your cake should now look something like this. Actually, your cake should look better than this.

STEP FOUR
Now you add the core of the roll; that is, you put things that look like a sushi core in that bare spot in the middle of the cake. Sushi allows for almost anything to be rolled up at its core, usually in sets of three to five ingredients. Because not all of these ingredients are easily imitable in a sweet format, I tried to mimic three of the more common ones:

オレンジ色チョコ飴、orange Sixlets = いくら、ikura, salmon roe (fish eggs)


赤ゼラチン、 cherry Jello (super thick "Jigglers" recipe) = まぐろ、maguro, raw tuna


ピスタチオプディング、 pistachio pudding = アボカド、 avocado

出来上がり...さああ。ケーキの味はいちごとチョコ、アイシングの味はクリームチーズとレモン。そして、実は、おいしかったよ。o_o' 本当に。

OKAY, so here's our chocolate+strawberry cake with cream cheese+lemon frostings,* topped with pudding, jello, and little chocolate candies, that is intended to look like a roll of sushi. In retrospect, I think my ratio of width-of-rice-band to sushi core was pretty off. A real roll of sushi has a thinner rice band and a wider core. Also, the pistachio pudding was way off the color of real avocado, and the wrong consistency. I think if I'd used a chunk of mint fudge or something, it'd have lent the right kind of shape and color to the whole thing.

Then again, there would likely have been a fight over who got the lump of fudge. -_-;

*And, would you believe, it actually tasted awesome. o_o'

昨日、七夕でした

今日は私の誕生日でがんす。♪(´▽^ )ﾉ⌒☆

I have officially been here for 24 years now. That's six years more than I was aiming for. イエイ〜！

On a completely different topic, here is a graphic of an inuhariko that I've been vectoring. I turned the vector into a stencil and painted it out on an old piece of wood, so now it's at least something concrete, if not an actual figurine.

Inuhariko (犬張り子 in Japanese kanji) is the small figurine of a dog, traditionally made of a paper/plaster combination like papier mache, intended to ward off evil in several regards. For expectant mothers, an inuhariko was said to ensure a safe birth and a healthy child. For children, inuhariko (sometimes wooden toys instead of delicate paper figures) were expected to keep the child safe by frightening off evil spirits and dangerous creatures. Other dog-like figures, such as shishi and komainu, share this demon-scaring skill in Japanese mythology. In modern times, inuhariko charms and images are used as a general wish for safety and good fortune.

I'm too old to need an inuhariko watching over me, but its always nice to have a little luck. ^-^

PS: I'm thinking I'll put this guy and some other graphics on t-shirts or something, 'cause I've always wanted to try it. Any sites better than zazzle for this kind of thing?