Popin Cookin: play with your food!

Kracie’s ‘Popin Cookin’ sweets range is like sugary DIY for kids. It’s also for adults who love cute, strange, delicious Japan stuff. Make your own ‘just add water’ candy by yourself, with your friends, or against your friends (as a speed race).

And it’s fun! Mix up weird packets of goop, heat it up, and try some of the strangest Japanese candy ever.

Get your apron and chef’s hat out

First point, very important: you don’t really need to know how to cook for this.

The instructions on the back of the box look long, but it’s simpler than you expect. They’re just split up by ‘ingredient’, and you do a lot of the same things for each one. Everything’s made by adding water and mixing together, followed by a little time in the microwave.

With Popin Cookin, you can ‘make’ a bunch of things. Like… candy ramen. Or candy sushi. Even a candy mini pizza. It’s topped with meat and veggies, and comes with smiling potato bits and a grape soda.

Some of the kits still look like sweets: donuts, cake, purin, taiyaki, ice cream, all the fun stuff. So it’s easy to whip up a quick mini lunch and dessert, except they’re both dessert.

All the bits you make with a Popin Cookin kit are totally edible. No preservatives or artificial colours, and some bonus added calcium in most of them. Just don’t chew on the paper accessories.

Recipes that are even easier than pie

Every DIY kit starts out as packs of powder. One for every ‘ingredient’ – meat, or rice, or icing, or whatever. Mix it up with however much water the box tells you to use for each pack. There’s a plastic tray with spaces for each mixture, and utensils like spoons and knives.

Cut the triangle tray off the corner before you start! It’s for measuring the liquid into those teeny food-shaped moulds. Use too much water, or not enough, and the taste/texture might not turn out well.

You gotta be precise. So, in a way, Popin Cookin teaches kids (and impatient grown-ups) about measuring things out and being precise. That’s kinda cool. Edible and educational!

When you’re checking the microwave times, remember to adjust for the power level. The instructions are designed for Japanese microwaves, and the voltage is different compared to other countries. A kit that takes 30 seconds in a 600-watt microwave needs less time in a higher-powered version.

Your tastebuds will freak. out.

Think it’s weird so far?

In some kits, the textures of the foods seem right… but the flavours are totally different. Looks kinda authentic, tastes kinda funky! The ‘kiddies lunch’ set has chocolate ‘meatballs’, apple-flavoured fries, and an omelette that tastes suspiciously deliciously like fruit punch.

Other Popin Cookin sets taste much more… real. Which is equally strange for a candy kit, if you think about it too hard. In the burger set, the buns, cheese, meat and fries all have the right flavours. And the takoyaki set should have the taste of Japanese mayo.

Pop over to DEJAPAN and get things cooking

Bet we gave you an appetite for weird Japanese candy.

Go on, be brave – put in your order for a Popin Cookin kit online.