Kawaii Sweet World Cookbook

June 3, 2019
In this delightful debut cookbook, Fong, creator of the YouTube channel of the book’s title, transforms several classic, tasty desserts into kawaii (the Japanese word for “cute”) creations. For instance, she adorns her apple pie crust with bunny and heart cutouts; shapes and decorates lemon bars into smiley-faced lemon wedges, and adds almond slices and chocolate chips to transform her blondies into adorable deer. The instructions are easy to follow for beginning bakers, and she thoughtfully includes simpler recipes, such as oatmeal bear cookies and microwave caramels. Experienced bakers will look forward to some of the more challenging recipes, such as a “gravity-defying” ramen bowl cake with chopsticks and vanilla frosting noodles suspended in the air, and cow éclairs filled with a homemade pastry cream. Other recipes include hedgehog fudge (decorated like tiny hedgehogs), s’mores cupcakes (with smiley-faced marshmallow toppers), a corgi-face cake, and coffee-flavored marshmallows shaped as doughnuts. Committed to making sure that the desserts “taste just as good as they look,” Fong provides baking techniques and tricks, such as how to bring eggs to room temperature quickly and a reverse creaming method for vanilla cake. Readers won’t be able to resist Fong’s invitation to bake cute creations.