“Like a sudden shower over Edo, this sweetness reminds us: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect — and that’s where its beauty lingers”
- Cakepopz Title
Matcha Monsoon - Medium
Cakepopz, green tea storms, and edible zen with a drizzle - Inspired by
Utagawa Hiroshige’s “Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake”
Matcha Monsoon
Curator’s Notes:
In “Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake” (1857), Utagawa Hiroshige turns a fleeting downpour into poetry. Figures hurry across the bridge beneath paper umbrellas as silver rain slants through a haze of muted blues and greens.
What might have been a mundane moment becomes a study in movement, mood, and the beauty of impermanence — a reminder that even a sudden shower can wash the world new.
Ingredients
- Vanilla Cake
- White Chocolate
- Organic Matcha Tea Powder
- Yuzu
- Roasted Hazelnuts
Flavour Harmony
- Vanilla cake & White Chocolate: the rain and misty atmosphere in the print evoke the creamy, gentle touch of white chocolate and vanilla cake, adding a sense of softness, sweetness and calm.
- Matcha Tea powder: the lush greenery along the riverbanks and the trees in the background in this print reflect the deep, tranquil greens of matcha. It’s earthy flavour with natural sweetness and a slight bitterness has a balancing and palette-cleansing quality much like the effect of this sudden shower in Hiroshige’s print.
- Yuzu: the bright, refreshing quality of yuzu represents the sense of renewal. Maybe somewhere beyond those dark clouds there’s a brightness waiting to break through, much like the hope and clarity after a sudden rainstorm.
Interpretation: Much like the fleeting sweetness of a matcha Cakepopz, this woodblock print invites us to linger in transience: to taste the calm between raindrops, and to find beauty in what passes as quickly as a shower in spring. To this day Shin-Ōhashi Bridge connects the Tokyo districts of Chūō and Kōtō – however it has seen it’s fair share of fires, storms and floods and it’s been rebuilt many times in different styles since it was originally built in 1693.
You could say that the bridge in Hiroshige’s scene symbolizes much more than a physical connection – it’s a link between nature and people, between tradition and modernity. In this recipe I have blended traditional Japanese ingredients (matcha & yuzu) with Western confectionary techniques (Cakepopz & coating in white chocolate deco melts infused with matcha) – a cultural and artistic dialogue.
Both the Cakepopz and the artwork celebrate Japanese aesthetics – especially the concept of wabi-sabi, the beauty in imperfection (the looks), impermanence (it’s gone before you know it) and natural simplicity (use of simple, organic ingredients).