Fluffy and sparse
Delicious sweets are
Made mostly of air

Mio Tsuchiya, a confectioner who loves sweets more than she loves food, has compiled her fantasies, obsessions, and desires into a book. Marshmallows, meringues, chiffon cake, cotton candy, popcorn, and fresh cream. This book introduces eight types of airy, fluffy, and hollow sweets that are full of air from three perspectives: metaphors, stories, and recipes.

Mr. Tsuchitani says he will eat any kind of sweets from all over the world, past and present (except castella cakes), but the main reason he decided to focus on making air sweets this time was because of the value of air.

Air is free. And because it is invisible, it is not listed as an ingredient. However, air creates such deliciousness as an ingredient, especially in air sweets, that it should be listed at the top of the recipe.

The fact that weight and value are proportional is recognized outside of confectionery. Heavy = packed with content. So, what if we apply this to airy sweets? That was Tsuchitani's point of view. What would happen to the deliciousness of fluffy, hollow sweets if you took the air out of them? We hope you will find the answer in the book.

So let me introduce three aspects of this book.

[1] Mitate
According to Tsuchitani, "Mitate" is a very important way of thinking in his work as a confectioner. At Cineca, which he started alone in 2012, he has discovered a new way of expression by likening a movie to a piece of candy.If I were to be replaced by sweets, I would be able to eat everything.As the words suggest, Tsuchitani likens the objects in our everyday lives to airy sweets. You can enjoy dreamy, comical scenes such as a fluffy cotton candy futon on the bed, marshmallow foam in a cardboard box, and a chiffon cake neck pillow for the reader.

[2] Story
The eight pieces that Tsuchitani wrote in essay style have a pleasant rhythm, and each one is just the right length to read over a cup of coffee. With historical figures, familiar sweets, and the town of Asakusa, which is closely related to Tsuchitani, the straightforward emotions of his love for sweets and the sharp perspective of a confectioner are mixed together, and there is no doubt that anyone will find something new in the book.

[3] Recipe
Ten years have passed since Tsuchitani started his career as a confectioner, but he has not yet published a recipe book. This time, he introduces the recipes for the eight types of airy sweets that appear in the first half of this book. The distinctive feature of the recipes is, of course, that they contain air as an ingredient. Only by skillfully incorporating air can you make delicious airy sweets, and this must have been a world first. Confectionery, which mainly uses refined ingredients, is much more chemical than cooking in terms of both the way it is made and the structure. Tsuchitani's short notes explain sweets from a chemical perspective, so they are a must-read.

This book is probably the first in the world to include "air" as an ingredient in a recipe. This book is an attempt to create a book that contains all of Tsuchitani's "delicious places." The preface of the book includes the following passage:

The casual everyday scenery,
If it gets replaced with sweets,
I could eat this and that.
Is it a delusion, an excessive obsession, or perhaps a wish?
The sweets in the air and life blend together,
Time becomes sweeter for a moment.

Air is tasteless, odorless and free
Because he's a very humble person
Although we hardly notice it,
I can get through today
I think it's all thanks to the air.

Tsuchitani is always thinking. Can we make our everyday lives, which have become so ordinary without us even realizing it, more delicious, more cute, and more interesting? This book uses air sweets as a starting point to ask questions about our everyday lives, where we take what is "ordinary" without questioning it.

Profile

Mio Tsuchiya / Mio Tsuchiya
Confectioner. Born in Tokyo. Graduated from Tama Art University. After working in graphic design, he studied confectionery at a confectionery school in Tokyo. In 2012, inspired by movies, he founded cineca, which creates confectionery with a story. In confectionery, he has created an original method of incorporating the realizations he has made through observing everyday life and landscapes into the world of confectionery. Since around 2017, he has also been involved in planning, confectionery supervision, artwork production and writing. Recent work includes supervision and production of original confectionery for the "Peter Doig Exhibition" at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2020), and confectionery supervision for the "POWER CAKES" at the LUMINE All-Store Christmas Fair 2019. In spring 2022, he will launch "Awaimon," which focuses on the shapes represented by the space, and will be the owner of the confectionery and store.

Cineca
http://cineca.si/
instagram @cineca

Blind
https://www.awaimon.shop/
Instagram @awai_mon