If you visit a cafe in Japan and order an elaborated decorated, adorable cake - it's possible you may have just ordered a large plate of vegetables.
'Salad cakes' are a huge craze in Japan right now, thanks for Nagoya cafe owner and food stylist Mitsuki Moriyasu.
She created the '' (decorated vegetables) as a healthy alternative to classic baked goods.
While the cakes aren mainly fresh and cooked vegetables, the cakes may also include 'sponge' - a fluffy mixture of soybean powder, eggs and vegetable oil - and the 'frosting' is a mix of cream cheese and tofu. It's coloured with natural vegetable colourings, like beetroot juice.
VegeDeco salad cake. Source: VegeDeco via CNN.
Moriyasu said that she started making the cakes due to her two sons having food allergies, so she'd tinkered with recipes for years to find alternatives for sugar and wheat.
She told that after she started to make the cakes, she posted a photo online, and then people started flocking to her restaurant to try them.
"I decided I wanted to make something that looks cute, and also has lots of vegetables. So I made a cake -- but with lots of veggies. They are colorful and gorgeous ... and the customers enjoy eating them."
Vegedeco salad cake. Source: Vegedecosalad.com
Moriyasu has now created around 50 designs, all with different flavours and combinations of vegetables.
"It looks like a normal cake, but it's made of only veggies. You can have it for breakfast, lunch, and it's very suitable for dinner with wine," Moriyasu told . "Each cake tastes different, depending which vegetables we use, but I would say it tastes like something you've never had before."
As well as selling the cakes at her restaurant, the cafe owner has also started running classes on how to build the cakes at home.
Moriyasu told, "Without using sugar and wheat, I realised you can still have a fun and surprising experience eating a salad that is shaped like a cake. Eating beautiful color energise and makes you smile. That's our wish. Chefs toss 'chocolate dirt' on a newspaper and offer you a trowel as dessert. There is nothing that cannot be made interesting and delicious."
Japan certainly isn't the first to delve into the world of savoury cakes (see: Sweden's ), but a cake that can help you hit your '5 veg a day' mark in just one meal is certainly a pretty fresh idea.
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