What is a bento cake?

From the Japanese word for a boxed lunch. The cakes themselves came out of South Korea, where bakeries began selling single-serving cakes in the same kind of lidded box a takeaway lunch arrives in, hand-decorated and usually carrying a short written message.

The box is not packaging added at the end. It is part of the thing: a bento cake is meant to be handed over closed, opened by the person it is for, and eaten there and then rather than cut up and shared round a table.

A bento cake is a single small round tier, 4 inches across, and ours serve about 4 once it is cut into small slices. One or two people eating properly is the honest answer; the rest is for the fridge.

The bento box pairs the same cake with matching cupcakes, which is what to order when there are a few more of you. Both are in the table below.

Because almost none of the price is ingredients. A bento is baked, filled, coated and decorated by hand exactly like a large cake, and the small ones often take longer: piping a message neatly onto a 4 inches top is fiddlier than onto a ten-inch one.

What you are paying for is the work and the finish, not the weight of sponge. That is why a bento starts at £70 while a six-inch cake, which feeds twice as many, starts at £100.

• When it is a gift for one person. A birthday for someone living alone, a thank-you, an apology, a cake left on a desk.
• When the date is close. A bento needs 3–5 days, against 7–10 days, or at least 14 for two tiers for a custom cake — that difference is the main reason people order one.
• When the message matters more than the size. The lid comes off and the writing is the first thing they see.

Order a full-size cake instead when more than two people will eat it. The notice each one needs is in the table below.