Millennium-Japanese Cedar Baumkuchen

This was a Christmas gift from my parents - Baumkuchen named "Millennium-Japanese Ceder."

The cake has a story. There is a Buddhist temple called the Shoshazan Engyo-ji on the top of Mt. Shosha in Himeji, Hyogo prefecture, Japan, which was founded by Shoku Shonin in 966. The temple has many treasures that can tell its history and its supporters' faith in Buddhism over a century. One of the treasure is a picture scroll that Shoku Shonin's life was painted on. The wrapping paper of the cake was the a copy of a highlight in the scroll. And the cake itself represents over a thousand year old Japanese cedar trees surrounding the temple. A local traditional Japanese sweet store, Kineya, has created the cake under supervision of the temple's priest.

 The dignified box of the cake.

 

And a picture scroll-wrapped cake in the box.

There is the sequel to the story. Because of its complex of the wooden buildings and its unique environment surrounded by woods, hidden from this modern world, the temple was used as a shooting location for a movie, The Last Samurai, in October 2002. When the one week shooting was wrapped up, one of the main characters of the movie, Tom Cruise bought as many as 50 of the cake as a memory of the location and took those cakes back to the US. After then, the cake has became so popular. I hadn't known anything about the cake and the whole story until this Christmas.

J has eaten some different kinds of Baumkuchen before. He thought this was the best so far! For me, it was very good and its crunchy almond and cocoa coating and sweeten red beans cream in the core were nice changes from ordinal Baumkuchen, but honestly I won't say "the best." But it was a very special gift and a great start of our Christmas vacation. We thank my parents so much for such a thoughtful gift!