Ms. Hirai decorates bonsai with royal icing on cookies in Yokohama.
YOKOHAMA, Aug. 4 ― Risa Hirai decorates bonsai with royal icing on cookies.
Bonsai translates in Japanese to “tray planting,” an art that uses cultivation techniques to produce small trees, which mimic larger scale ones, in shallow spaces.
The 28-year-old Japanese cookie artiest specializes bonsai on baked cookies.
She uses an icing bag like a pen to draw lines, swirls or any other designs that are as simple or complex as she likes.
Once cookies are decorated, they can be stored in a freezer container for up to three months, she says. She sells her cookies, which cost about 700 yen ($6) and above per piece.
Hirai also decorates sukiyaki, a Japanese traditional hot pot with thinly sliced beef, tofu, napa cabbage and potato starch noodles, on her cookies.
Now she tells her dream: “One day, I would love to decorate yaoya grocers that line up full of fruits and vegetables.”