New York is always looking for the next Cronut.”Īs far as ingredients go, Raindrop Cake is the anti-Cronut. “Before anyone even tried the cake, I had press and magazines and blogs calling this ‘the next Cronut.’ If I had done this in another city, would I have gotten as much press? I don’t know. “The media attention I got was surprising and appreciated and awesome,” Wong said. “It’s a playful food.” ‘The next Cronut’Īs soon as the website and Facebook page went live reporters started calling. It reminds me of a scene from ‘A Bug’s Life,’ ” the 1998 Disney/Pixar film in which animated insects drink dew drops from leaves. “It looks like a water droplet,” he said. Wong hired a photographer and started brainstorming names. This was a fun food item, and I thought other people would see the funness of it and want to try it for themselves.” “But, I thought, hey, maybe there’s something here. “I don’t have a chef’s background,” Wong said. He also experimented with making different toppings. For two or three months, he experimented at home – making a batch at night, then seeing in the morning how it had turned out. Wong tried a variety of different kinds of water and gelatin.
RAINDROP CAKE HOW TO
“So I was like maybe I can try to make this myself, and I started researching how to jelly water.” In early 2016, when Wong randomly remembered the mochi and looked around online, he couldn’t find it in New York. But he figured he would find them soon enough on the trendy New York food scene and “kind of forgot about them for a year.” He came across the whimsical water cakes online in 2015 and was intrigued. Wong, originally from LA, has never been to Japan. He modeled his dessert after mizu shingen mochi, which – he said – roughly translates to “Japanese water cakes.” The Raindrop Cake website – – describes the confection as “a light, delicate and refreshing raindrop made for your mouth.”īoth the website and the cake were developed earlier this year by Wong, a 36-year-old digital brand strategist in New York who has since quit advertising to focus on his new food business. It’s about everything: the presentation, the visual experience, the toppings.” ‘Playful food’ Raindrop Cake is not just something you eat. “I’m not just selling a food item,” Wong said. The texture is supposed to be part of the appeal. I think the American palate finds jelly things kind of weird.” “People are nervous about it,” said Raindrop Cake creator Darren Wong. It’s a conversation starter, something that piques curiosity, maybe even a bit of awe, uncertainty, incredulity. Raindrop Cake is glassy-looking and shaped like an oversized drop of dew. By then, it was already an internet sensation. I had come across photos online of the see-through sweet, which debuted in spring at Smorgasburg in New York and arrived at the LA event in mid-June. Raindrop Cake was the reason I made a beeline for Smorgasburg. I had flown down for a three-day beach weekend. I was standing in one of the few shady spots at Smorgasburg LA, a weekly food fair held at the 5-acre Alameda Produce Market in downtown Los Angeles. It was wiggly, jiggly, but not as thick nor as firm as gummy candy or Jell-O or gelatin – all things to which it’s been compared. But before my first bite, I couldn’t resist the urge to poke the thing. The first time I had a Raindrop Cake, I chose black sugar syrup. Black sugar and matcha green tea syrups provide a gentle sweetness. Toasted soy flour lends a mild nuttiness that, when mixed with the melty “cake,” tastes a little like peanut butter. But water still.Īccompaniments add to the taste and texture. It is believed to dissolve into the water if not eaten within 30 minutes of being served.It tastes wet. Its self-destructing mechanism is a matter of fascination. The Japanese Raindrop Cake is sold at very few stores - it is also available in places outside Japan now - and cannot be packed for 'to-go' parcel because of its short shelf-life. It also goes well with honey and peanut powder. The transparent water cake is usually served with roasted soybean powder (known as Kinako) and black sugar syrup (known as Kuromitsu). The Japanese Raindrop Cake is traditionally known as Mizu Shingen Mochi - Mizu in Japanese means water and Mochi is a kind of dessert made of rice flour. In theory, the water is solidified using agar-agar and is then put into a spherical mould to be set. The water from these mountains is believed to be so tasty that it does not need any flavouring. It is made up of water from the Southern Japanese Alps, which is solidified just enough to be given a shape. Photograph: Japanese Raindrop Cake - a transparent drop cake that looks like a bubble of water - has taken the internet by storm. The Japanese Raindrop Cake is traditionally known as Mizu Shingen Mochi.
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