SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.

TOP

» Japan
» What do you do with a very large novelty Starbucks mug? Make a very large dessert!

Featured

Weird
Studio Ghibli
Jobs

What do you do with a very large novelty Starbucks mug? Make a very large dessert!

Krista Rogers Dec 8, 2015
Tweet

A certain reporter we know recently decided to make 20 kilos (44 pounds) of ‘Fruiche’ dessert in his very, very large Starbucks mug…

Starbucks Japan began selling the “Big Logo Mug” exclusively through its online store on December 1. Being big fans, we naturally snapped one up right away—with its hefty price tag of 86,400 yen (US$703.64), the mug wasn’t a cheap purchase by any means, but since when have you ever known RocketNews24 to go the safe route?

After Mr. Sato’s recent (mis)adventure lugging said mug to the Starbucks location in front of JR Shibuya Station to get a cup of joe, he was at a bit of a loss for how to best make use of his brand-new possession. As quickly became blatantly apparent, the mug is too cumbersome to drink from on a regular basis…but that got Mr. Sato’s creative mind-wheels spinning—maybe he could cook something in it instead!

Mr. Sato and some of our other Japanese reporters eventually decided to whip up a very, very large batch of Fruiche, a simple chilled dessert that’s very popular in Japan and requires only milk to be added to it before being placed in the fridge for a while. We have to say, it came out pretty darn good, too!

Check out the video of Mr. Sato’s culinary adventure below then scroll down for the step-by-step description.

To make the Fruiche, we needed a lot of ingredients to fill the ginormous mug, which measures approximately 37 centimeters (14.6 inches) in height and 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) in diameter.

Estimating that roughly 24 liters (6.3 gallons) of dessert could fill the mug, we calculated the necessary ingredients accordingly and set out to buy a whopping 60 boxes of Fruiche mix and 12 1-liter cartons of milk. See, kids? Math is useful when you grow up!

▼ The culinary adventure spoils

We weren’t worried about getting the milk, which can be bought easily in bulk at the supermarket. Even if the store ran out of stock, we could just swing a local convenience store to grab the necessary remainder.

However, finding 60 boxes of Fruiche was trickier than we thought! A long time ago, even small, local stores used to carry it regularly, but nowadays it’s not a guaranteed find even at large chains or convenience stores. It took Mr. Sato and the others a long time to find 60 boxes—but find them they did!

▼ Preparing the Fruiche mix packets

While they were off buying the above ingredients, we also made sure to preemptively chill the mug in the office fridge. But even such a seemingly simple task wasn’t so simple after all–we ended up having to take out all of the shelves just so that it could fit inside!

Once we had procured all of the ingredients, it was finally time to begin making the Fruiche. But then we had another realization–the mug was being substituted as a giant bowl, but what could we use to stir the contents with? We had no choice but to go out to buy a giant ladle from the hardware store!

We then proceeded to begin dumping the Fruiche mix into the mug and stirring the milk in little by little:

Keep stirring, guys! Mix it until your arms want to fall off.

▼ Also note our new giant teddy bear friends taking a breather from all the hard work in the background.

Naturally, the mixture got more and more difficult to stir as the volume increased. We couldn’t take a break from stirring or else it wouldn’t come out right, so we had no choice but to take turns pushing our muscles to their limits. However, at this point, something entirely unexpected happened–the giant ladle broke! The dessert mixture must have been too much for the handle to handle (no pun intended…).

Not to let this little setback get in the way of our mission, we somehow managed to keep stirring and filled the mug to the top. All in all, we used up 50 of the 60 boxes of Fruiche mix and 10 of the 12 cartons of milk, producing an incredible 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of Fruiche. Adding in the weight of the mug, it actually came out closer to 30 kilograms (66 pounds) in total. Now the final challenge was just to move the mug back into the fridge to let the dessert chill and harden.

▼ Have you been faithfully hitting up the gym, Mr. Sato?

After leaving it in the fridge for 30 minutes, we were pleased to see that it had hardened quite nicely!

We probably just broke a record for the largest tub of Fruiche or something:

The chilled mixture was too hard to scoop with regular spoons, so we ended up using a trowel to dish it out instead:

So what was the verdict? Everyone agreed that it was a massive success! Despite the exponentially larger-than-normal size of the recipe, it came out tasting like a perfect Fruiche.

We hope that other potential buyers of a Starbucks “Big Logo Mug” will use our story as a reference for how to best make use of their own giant mugs. Hear that, everyone? All you need is a 86,400 yen-mug, 50 boxes of Fruiche mix, 10 liters of milk, and you too can enjoy an unusually large treat! And preferably, one crazy man to help you along the way.

▼ Mr. Sato approves.