During my time in Sapporo, Japan, we visited the 白い恋人 / Shiroi Koibito Park (one of the most well-loved snacks from Japan), and my partner booked us a short cookie-making workshop as a surprise! We couldn’t make the actual famous Shiroi Koibito cookies, but well, any cookies are better than no cookies 😉
The park was a short walk from the station at the end of one of the Sapporo subway lines – you can see a large welcoming “CHOCOLATE FACTORY” sign from afar 🙂
Seeing the “Chocolate Factory” sign from afar got me really excited 😀
There were various other exhibitions in the Tudor-styled park (e.g. history of chocolate, various chocolate-related artifacts etc.), but we spent most of our time in the cookie-making experience (and also having a softserve ice cream, but that’s a bit off topic).
Experience workshop – parents were watching their kids participating in the workshops. Yup that’s where we were heading!
Even though there were many participants, the set up was pretty organized, because Japan
Before starting on the workshop, we were asked to wash and sanitise our hands, before putting on the baker’s hat + apron.
Looking somewhat like legit bakers
Clearly fitting right in with the rest of the participants (to be fair, there were also some other adults who also joined the workshop on their own, not just kids pictured here!)
He picked this class because this was the only available one with slots where we actually get to make cookies (vs just drawing icing on cookies). Quite funny because the cookies are so cute and pink, but I suppose that’s what kids like + it’s Japan + it’s a cookie theme park.
Photo reference for us on our working tables to remind us what we are working towards – helpful because the instructors didn’t speak English 😀
Even though the instructors didn’t speak English, we managed to get through the workshop quite smoothly using hand gestures and making random noises to ask for help and to confirm any clarifications we had.
Most of the cookie dough was already pre-made, but we had to mix the pink coloured / strawberry-flavoured dough on our own
Set up for us – with the ingredients (dough already pre-made) and equipment laid out
Mixing was relatively clean as we just squished the mixture of dough, pink stuff, and flour in the bag
After mixing the dough, we did the main activity which was to roll the dough and cut them into the right cookie shapes. It sounded super easy, but we actually had some slight struggles with it (oops). Perhaps experienced bakers would know how to better administer a rolling pin onto a mound of dough, but we took some time to pick it up and kept getting dough dough on the rolling pin which made it difficult to properly flatten the dough to cut the shapes 😦 (we later figured out that we need to roll it gently on the dough)
Rolling the dough and cutting pink dolphin pieces
There was some extra dough and we got creative with the shapes (using the cookie cutters differently + with our free hands), and also put on the toppings they provided.
I made a watermelon / pizza, and also loads of tiny clouds, and some pineapple tart-inspired designs
Very professional bakers with their outputs
After we were done with the pieces, the staff popped them into an oven to get them baked (we were to come back ~30 min later to pick them up)
One really cute touch was that we got to customize the cookie box with our photos and some basic decorations. There was a photo booth where we could take a photo, edit it, and see it printed on the box immediately:
Final product looked pretty adorable! For the hoops that the dolphins jumped through, they gave us some coloured translucent cubes – these were hard candy that melted into the empty space, and became lovely translucent coloured parts:
The cookies tasted alright – I’m sure they would have been nicer fresh from the oven, but we were off eating ice cream so by the time we picked them up, they weren’t that hot anymore. Tasted of strawberry and sweet toppings!
Details of the workshop
Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes, I believe this exclude the baking time, where you can walk around the park and return to pick the cookies up later
Price: 1,944 JPY (~24 SGD), inclusive of all materials and customization of box – reserve a slot online if you have preferences for the type of workshop (or you can check what is available in-person on the day itself)
Level of “fun”: 3/5
I suppose it’s always been fun playing with food, and it’s never gets old trying to make cute shapes out of stuff (think play dough etc.). Getting the chance to do it in a relatively stress-free environment made it quite enjoyable (don’t have to worry about the dough screwing up, cos it’s already pre-made). The customization of the box was also a fun touch, plus the fact that you’re in a cookie theme park does add to the whole atmosphere of cookie making 🙂
Level of difficulty: 2/5
This is a very simple workshop as the parts in baking where one is most likely to mess up was handled by the staff (creating the dough, baking the cookies). The most difficult part for us was rolling the dough smoothly without creating holes etc. (we managed to get the hang of it after a while). Even if you don’t get it, the instructors come by to save you 🙂
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