Fluffy, Weightless, Delicious—Some of the Best Sweets Are Made Mostly of Air.

For confectionery artist Mio Tsuchiya, who loves sweets more than three meals a day, imagination, obsession, and longing come together in this unique book.

Marshmallows, meringues, chiffon cake, cotton candy, popcorn, and whipped cream—eight kinds of airy confections, each filled with pockets of air, are explored from three perspectives: reinterpretation, story, and recipe.

Tsuchiya has a passion for sweets from every corner of the world (with one notable exception: castella sponge cake). Her fascination with "air sweets" began with a simple realization: the true value of air.

Air is free. It is invisible. No recipe ever lists it as an ingredient. Yet in these confections, air deserves to appear at the very top of the ingredient list, for it creates much of their lightness, texture, and deliciousness.

We often assume that weight is proportional to value—that something heavy must be richer, fuller, or somehow better. But what happens if we apply that idea to sweets whose greatest pleasure comes precisely from being light and full of air? What would remain if all the air were taken away? The answer unfolds throughout this book.

The book is composed of three interconnected chapters.

1. Reinterpretation

According to Tsuchiya, mitate —the Japanese practice of seeing one thing as another—lies at the heart of her work as a confectionery artist.

Through her project cineca , which she founded in 2012, she developed a unique way of translating an entire film into a single sweet. In this book, she extends that playful imagination into everyday life. What if ordinary objects were quietly replaced by airy confections? A bed becomes a blanket of cotton candy. Marshmallows become the protective packing inside a cardboard box. A person reading a book rests their neck on a chiffon-cake pillow. Familiar scenes dissolve into landscapes that are at once dreamlike, humorous, and strangely believable.

2. Stories

The eight essays written by Tsuchiya are light in tone and perfectly sized to enjoy over a cup of coffee. Historical figures, beloved desserts, and the streets of Asakusa—where Tsuchiya lives and works—appear throughout these charming narratives. Her boundless affection for sweets is accompanied by the keen eye of a confectionery artist, offering readers unexpected discoveries in even the most familiar treats.

3. Recipes

Although Tsuchiya has worked as a confectionery artist for more than a decade, this is the first time she has published her recipes.

The book includes recipes for all eight air-filled sweets introduced in the first half of the volume. Their defining ingredient, of course, is air. Only by carefully incorporating air into the mixture can these delicate confections achieve their distinctive texture and flavour.

Confectionery is, in many ways, closer to chemistry than to cooking. Throughout the recipes, Tsuchiya's notes explain the scientific principles behind each sweet, revealing how something as intangible as air becomes an essential ingredient.

This is, perhaps, the first book in the world to list air as an ingredient in a recipe.

It is an attempt to gather together everything that makes Tsuchiya's work so distinctive. The preface begins:

What if the ordinary scenery of everyday life
were quietly transformed into sweets?
Perhaps everything around us
could suddenly become edible.

Is it imagination?
Excessive affection?
Or simply a wish?

As airy sweets gently mingle with everyday life,
time itself becomes sweet for just a moment.

Air has no flavour,
no scent,
and no price.

Its quiet humility makes us forget it is there.
Yet perhaps the reason we make it through each day
is simply because of air.

Tsuchiya is always asking herself the same question: how can ordinary life become more delicious, more delightful, and more surprising?

Beginning with sweets made of air, this book invites us to look again at the everyday things we have long taken for granted.

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Mio Tsuchiya

Confectionery artist. Born in Tokyo. After graduating from Tama Art University, Mio Tsuchiya worked in graphic design before studying confectionery at a pastry school in Tokyo.

In 2012, inspired by cinema, she founded cineca, a project dedicated to creating narrative confections inspired by films. Her distinctive practice transforms observations from everyday life and ordinary landscapes into edible forms, developing an original approach that bridges storytelling and confectionery.

Since around 2017, she has expanded her activities to include exhibition planning, creative direction for confectionery, artwork production, and writing.

Recent projects include the conception and production of original confections for the Peter Doig Exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2020), and confectionery direction for POWER CAKES , LUMINE's 2019 Christmas campaign.

In the spring of 2022, she founded Awaimon , a confectionery shop and creative project exploring forms shaped by the Japanese concept of awai —the poetic space or interval between things.

cineca

Website: http://cineca.si/
Instagram: @cineca

Awaimon

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