[Bouffe]du ramen.... gateau!!!

Love ramen? Got a sweet tooth? Listen up! You can now eat cake that's shaped like the delicious noodle dish. "Ramen cake" (ラーメンケーキ), it's called. But that's not the only food in Japan that's getting caked out.
In Japan, more and more people started to take note of ramen cake earlier this year, and today, the intriguing dessert popped up on Yahoo! Japan. Website Pouch also introduced a walkthrough on how to make your own ramen cake (watch that down below).
There are different recipes. Some are more pudding and cream based, with a Mont Blanc dessert doubling at the noodles. Others are more cake-like. Usually, a jelly is made to recreate the soup broth.

Here's what uneaten ramen cake looks like.

And here's after someone took a few bites.
This still isn't a mainstream dessert—meaning, that you can't get it at your typical Japanese cake shop. But it's becoming more widely known. Perhaps, the most famous ramen cake maker is "Machi no Kuma-san" in Gunma Prefecture, which started selling "ramen cake" this past February. One cake costs 1,400 yen or around US$14, and as Sankei News notes, Machi no Kuma-san only makes 40 ramen cakes each day. But there are other ramen cake makers and other styles of ramen cakes.

One pastry shop, Baigetsudou, even has another name: "nanchatte ramen" (なんちゃってラーメン) or "just kidding ramen."
Let's have a look at the various kinds of ramen cakes.

Shio (塩 or "salt") ramen.

This is Kitakata ramen...cake.



Wow, they look like real ramen.

Sliced in half! The "bowl" apparently isn't edible.

This bowl is definitely not!

Wedding cake ramen. How cute.

Besides ramen, there are also other kinds of food being turned into cakes. About five years ago, I remember buying a dessert that was shaped like mabodofu in Osaka. I think I bought it at Namco's (yes, that Namco) dessert eatery, but don't remember for sure.

A pastry that looks like unagi or eel.

This is a dessert that looks like a rice omelette. (That's strawberry sauce doubling as ketchup.)

Chawanmushi (茶碗蒸し), which is a type of egg custard, in cake form.


Soba...cake.
Below you can learn how to make your own ramen cake.

Perhaps, this gentleman is biting a door handle. Or perhaps, he is eating a door handle made of chocolate.
In Japan, "sokkuri sweets" ("sokkuri" or そっくり means "looks like") are deserts and confectionaries that look like other things. Traditionally, they look like other food—for example, here are some cakes that look exactly like ramen noodles.
On a recent Japanese television program, members of boy band Tokio and other celebrities were shown a room filled with several things that were actually sokkuri sweets—made from chocolate or sugar or whatnot.

On a recent Japanese television program, members of boy band Tokio and other celebrities were shown a room filled with several things that were actually sokkuri sweets—made from chocolate or sugar or whatnot.

The guests had to bite the items that they thought were, in fact, sugary treats.

So is this a shoe or is it sweets?

It's a shoe.

Is this a picture frame or sweets?

A picture frame.

A glass table or a sweet table?

"Crunch." Sweets!

Several kilograms of candy were used to make the "glass," which apparently tastes delicious.

And the table legs?

Chocolate!

But what about the calendar?

It's made of calendar. 

And the hanger? Surely, that's a chocolate hanger.

Nope! Just a hanger.

This might look like a plant, but it's sokkuri sweets!

The white shoes were shoes, but what about the brown shoes?

Chocolate shoes! The entire shoes are chocolate—even the laces and the stitching.

And this hat?

A chocolate hat! But, what about the door handle?



Sweets!