Ariake Yokohama Harbor Double Marron Cake

Yokohama is where Japan opened to the world.

The port took foreign ships from 1859, and Western baking arrived through it — which is why the city’s signature souvenir is not a rice sweet but a cake, and why that cake is shaped like a ship.

Ariake has been making Yokohama Harbour for over sixty years, and it has been the thing you carry home from the city for most of that time: a small vessel of soft sponge, sold at every station kiosk and department store counter in the prefecture.

What makes the Double Marron interesting is that it is quietly two traditions at once.

The outside is castella, the honey sponge the Portuguese brought to Nagasaki in the sixteenth century and Japan has been perfecting ever since — here rolled thin and baked soft.

The inside is not a Western filling at all. Ariake builds its harbour-an on shiro-an, the smooth white bean paste at the heart of Japanese confectionery, then works chestnut paste and whole candied chestnuts through it.

The result eats like a European cake and finishes like a wagashi: dense, moist, restrained in sweetness, with real pieces of chestnut giving way under the sponge.

The packaging deserves a mention of its own.

It was drawn by Ryohei Yanagihara, an illustrator who spent his career in love with ships and with this particular port town, and the vessel on the wrapper is the Queen Mary 2 — the largest passenger liner in the world when she was built in 2003, shown as she first entered Yokohama harbour in March 2009.

Each Double Marron is individually wrapped in its own printed sleeve, which is what has made Ariake Yokohama Harbour a default gift for sixty years — a box arrives ready to be opened and handed around, one ship at a time.

About this item
Item Name : Yokohama Harbor Double Marron
Brand : Ariake
Item Form : Cake
Number of Items : 5, 8, 12, 16 Counts (Box of 1)