With just a small bit of ingenuity, turn everyday food into something cute using Kaori’s recipe series! With a few simple ideas, an ordinary recipe magically transforms into a cute dish.

For this recipe, you'll learn how make mini Pompompurin pumpkin tarts! This is a simple recipe you can make with just a blender.

1: Ingredients

12 Tart shells

150g Pumpkin (deseeded, skin taken off and made soft)

50ml Fresh cream (In this recipe I used soy milk)

20-30g Sugar (Depending on the sweetness of the pumpkin)

1 Egg yolk (small egg)

Sliced Chocolate

Tinned yellow peach

2: Steam and make the pumpkin soft in the microwave. Place the softened pumpkin, sugar, fresh cream (or soy milk) and egg yolk into a blender.

3: Blitz until it's mixed like in the photo above.

4: Pour the mixture from Step 3 into the tart shells and place into a 180℃ preheated oven. Lower the temperature to 140-150℃ and cook for 10-15 minutes. (You don't want to brown anything, so we cook it on a low heat.)

If it looks like it's about to start browning, cover with aluminium foil as this will prevent it from burning.

5: Once your cooked tarts have fully cooled down, use a round cutter to make a hat out of chocolate and a tear-drop cutter to make ears out of the yellow peach. The round ball on top of the hat can be made by breaking off some sliced chocolate and rolling it with your fingers.

Finally, drawn on the eyes, nose and mouth with a warmed chocolate pen!

The crunchy tart shells and moist pumpkin paste go pair together wonderfully! And the sourness from the yellow peach is perfect, making is really tasty♡

Kaori invites you into her world of character-themed food dishes in her recipe series!

Please check out her Instagram where she has uploaded many pictures of her character dishes!

This feature is made possible by Arisa Shirai, a cooking specialist who posts regular photos of her gorgeous food via her social media. She makes every day recipes look photogenic with her small twists.

This recipe shows you how to make a “Strawberry Cup Parfait.”

■Ingredients (serves 2)

・4 slices sandwich bread

・200g fresh cream

・25g sugar

・120g yoghurt

・8 strawberries

■How to Make

①Use a cup to cut circles out of the bread.

②Mix the fresh cream and sugar until they become frothy, then add the yoghurt and mix again

③Thinly slice the strawberries

④Add a piece of the bread you cut out and the remains, then the strawberry slices, and finally the cream you made in step ②. Repeat this until you reach the top, then finish it off by adding some more strawberries to decorate.

Doesn’t it look cute! The yoghurt and cream go perfect together so you can just scoop and lick everything out. It’s worthy of posting a photo of too. Be sure to try making it yourself.

■Arisa Shirai

Visual food creator & charaben researcher.

Arisa Shirai shows how fun it is to make and eat your own homemade food.

Instagram: arigohan

Blog: http://ameblo.jp/arinko0917/ 

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■Related article：A recipe for photogenic food #13 “Marshmallow Pops.”

With just a small touch, you can turn everyday food into a gorgeous dish worthy to be part of your SNS thread. This is the continuation of Arisa Shirai’s recipe series! With just a few ideas, an ordinary recipe can be shaped up to produce a photogenic masterpiece! Today we’ll be looking at a recipe for cute, round sushiー “Prosciutto ribbon sushi”.

■ Ingredients (Serves 4)

・ 4 Dry-cured ham slices

・ 1/5p Radish sprouts or salad cress (Kaiware)

・ 200g Japanese sushi rice

・25cc Sushi rice vinegar

■ How to make:

① Mix the vinegar with the rice.

②Roll and press the rice into a sushi shape.

③ Cut the ham into rectangular pieces

④ Make pleats in the centre of the rectangle and then use a remaining strip of ham to tie the middle to create a ribbon out of the ham.

⑤Add the Kaiware sprouts/salad cress to the top of the rice and wrap a remaining strip of ham around the rice. Finally, place the ham ribbon on top.

The sweetness of the rice and the saltiness of the ham are an exquisite match.

Although this sushi may look small and cute, it holds a lot of volume and is surprisingly filling!

■ Arisa Shirai

Visual food creator & Kyaraben researcher Arisa Shirai shows how fun it is to make and eat your own homemade food.

Instagram: arigohan

Blog：http://ameblo.jp/arinko0917/

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■Related article：A recipe for photogenic food #7 「SUSHI CAKE」

■Related Article: A recipe for photogenic food＃3 “Japanese Style Onigiri Pinchos”

This feature is made possible by Arisa Shirai, a cooking specialist who posts regular photos of her gorgeous food via her social media. She makes every day recipes look photogenic with her small twists.

For this recipe, we will take a look at how to make “Marshmallow Pops.” They might be simple, but they look gorgeous, and are a perfect Valentine’s Day gift!

■Ingredients (serves 6)

・6 straws

・6 marshmallows

・50g chocolate

・Your favourite chocolate pens and toppings

■How to Make

①Pierce the marshmallows with your straws

②Dip the marshmallows into the melted chocolate

③Decorate with chocolate pens and toppings to make different designs

If you use giant marshmallows, then one will be enough to fill you up. And all the different ways to decorate them are limitless! You can even finish them off by tying the straw with a ribbon.

■Arisa Shirai

Visual food creator & charaben researcher.

Arisa Shirai shows how fun it is to make and eat your own homemade food.

Instagram: arigohan

Blog: http://ameblo.jp/arinko0917/ 

With just a small touch, you can turn everyday food into a gorgeous dish worthy to be part of your SNS thread. This is the continuation of Arisa Shirai’s recipe series! With just a few ideas, an ordinary recipe can be shaped up to produce a photogenic masterpiece! Today we’ll be looking at a recipe for “Japanese-style Avocado Gratin”. This recipe is as simple as putting the ingredients together and grilling!

■ Ingredients (Serves 2 people)

・ 1 Avocado

・ 1 Egg

• Powdered cheese　—　to your taste
• 20g Cheese
• 20g Bacon

・ 1/3 teaspoon olive oil

・ Soy sauce — to your taste

・ Salt — to your taste

・ Pepper — to your taste

■ How to make:

① Cut the avocado into two equal halves then scoop out the insides of each avocado half using a small, round measuring spoon. Make sure that you scoop out round balls of avocado and save these for later. Do not throw away the skin of the avocado.

② Pour the egg, soy sauce, salt and pepper into the avocado skin and mix.

③ Add the cheese, bacon, round balls of avocado (from step ①), powdered cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil to the avocado skin.

➃ Grill in a toaster oven for 7 minutes (Wrap in aluminium foil when the top turns golden brown).

And you’re done!

The bacon and cheese combination is perfection. Enjoy your hot and creamy avocado dish!

■ Arisa Shirai

Visual food creator & researcher of colourful bentos. Arisa Shirai shows how fun it is to make and eat your own homemade food.
Instagram: arigohan

Instagram：arigohan

Blog：http://ameblo.jp/arinko0917/

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■Related article：A recipe for photogenic food #7 「SUSHI CAKE」

■Related article：A recipe for photogenic food #6 “Potato salads parfait”

With just a sprinkle of inspiration, create gorgeous dishes worthy to upload on your SNS stream! Welcome to Arisa Shirai’s recipe series! With just a few ideas, turn ordinary food into a beautiful photogenic dish!


Today, we will be looking at a recipe for “Kohaku-tou”. Literally translating to “amber sugar”. These traditional Japanese sweets sparkle like jewels.

■Ingredients

・Powdered agar —　3g

・ Sugar — 140g

・ Water — 150ml

・Your favourite fruit sauce, liqueur or syrup—　1tbsp

（I will be demonstrating today’s recipe using a teaspoon of the following: strawberry syrup, blueberry syrup and Blue Hawaii.)

・Tupperware

■How to make

① Pour the water, sugar and powdered agar into a pan on medium heat. When the mixture starts to form strings, start to mix thoroughly.

② Add the syrups to your Tupperware container.

③ Pour the mixture in the pan into the Tupperware container from a spoon and mix well. Once mixed, smooth out the surface of the mixture and leave to set at room temperature for more than 2 hours.

④ Once the sweets are fully hardened, remove the block from the container and using a kitchen knife, cut the block at an angle to create uneven cuts, enhancing the jewel-like texture of the sweets.

⑤ Leave the sweets in a ventilated environment for more than two days to dry the sweets, enhancing the crunchy texture. You can also eat them before drying them.

A mild and sweet taste, crunchy on the outside, yet soft on the inside — a wonderful combination! Switch the syrups for juice or alcohol for new fun flavours!