Japanese design studio Nendo has created an ice cream cake, featuring a group of small chocolate houses intended to remind people of returning home for the holidays (+ slideshow).

Created for Christmas, the Village ice cream cake designed by Nendo will be sold at the Champs Élysées Häagen-Dazs shop in Paris throughout the winter festive season.

The houses sitting on top of the ice cream base are made from milk chocolate and filled with fudge and pieces of caramelised nuts.

"Christmas is about homecoming, about spending time together with family, so we created a cake that's a small village, composed of houses clustered closely together," said the designers. "We thought the winter wonderland scene would emphasise the warmth and cheer inside each home."

Chocolate bridges, given to customers who buy more than one cake, can be used to connect several villages to each other, turning the cakes into table-top centrepieces for large parties.

The "undulating landscape" design of the surface of each cake means that they will fit together no matter which ones are chosen and how they're arranged.

"The rooftops have different patterns, and we dusted the rooftops and cake with white chocolate powder like snow, so that the village is nestled gently and quietly in the snow," said the designers.

The cakes come in two flavours: a caramel and nut-based cake with milk chocolate houses, and an orange and dried fruit-based cake with berry-scented chocolate houses.

Häagen-Dazs has previously collaborated with Swedish design collective Front to design a cloud-shaped ice cream cake, and with London designers Doshi Levien to create an ice cream cake, which looked like a white cratered moon.

Photography is by Häagen-Dazs.