Misuzu Castella Cakes

こんにちは！

I love pastries. They are really one of my favorite things on the planet. If I could eat muffins, cakes, cinnamon buns, etc everyday I would be the happiest person alive...and probably very overweight...and have diabetes. My soft spot for these sort of things found me drooling over these very cool looking individually packaged doughnuts at Mitsuwa. I've NEVER seen them there or in Asian Food Market before and I was immediately smitten. They had retro font packaging and were..I'd sat about 3 inches in diameter. They were also about $6 for only a few doughnuts...and so I found these small (though not round) mini-cakes for $3.49. Yay!

This is like the best of many worlds, my friends. I've already described my enchantment with Japanese pastries in general. These are also small, adorable, and a great pastry to have with some tea/coffee without being high in calories or fat.

There are 4 servings in the pack with amounts to 5/6 cakes per serving. In total it's only 118 kcals! Cool!

The mini cakes are about 1.5 inches in diameter...so about a bite or two each. The cake is sweet and a little spongey and it covered by a nice crunchy layer of sprinkled sugar. They tasted very fresh despite being imported and consumed over the period of a week. I figured this would mean they are chocked full of preservatives (like Entamen's cakes) but the ingredient list is very short and there's not really anything crazy on it.

These are great...one day I may suck it up and buy the expensive doughnuts but for the price, these were a fantastic discovery.

Puccho Apple Cider Candy

こんにちは　みんなさん！

Today I tried one of the many Puccho candy varieties. I've never had one before but there are a ton of flavors. This was an impulse buy from my last sojourn to Asian Food Market. It was $2.29 for the package which contains 10 candies.

There are a lot of bubbles on the package...I don't really know why since apple cider nor chewey candies have bubbles.

The side displays what one should expect of the candy. The main white chewey part is apple cider soft candy, the white pieces are "shuwashuwa kishiritsubu" (I honestly don't know what it's trying to say but I think these were the sour pieces), and the red pieces are just apple gummies.

Despite the fact they are well within the expiration, the "soft gummy" was a bit hard. It took some persistence to chew but it was pretty tasty overall. It was both really sour and really sweet but balanced. I don't know that I would be able to tell any difference between this and just plain apple flavoring though! I may try some of the others eventually...but I still feel like this is more expensive than I wish to pay for a candy.

Food of the Gods- Melon Pan

おはよう！

Just wanted to stop by this morning to make you all a little jealous- I am currently consuming one of the foods of the gods for breakfast- melon pan. I don't know what it is but I LOVE Japanese/Asian breads. They have this innate sweetness to them and despite other breads with fancy fillings (red bean, cream, etc.) melon pan always tastes so great. The bottom part is normal delicious sweet bread and the top is like a soft crunchier cake.

(The Japanese blurb says something about delicious things and secrets/tricks...weird.)

Went to Mitsuwa on Sunday and got a few cool items to review...I will be posting a full post tomorrow so stop back soon!

Also on a pastry side note...tried fresh taiyaki at Mitsuwa and while it was pretty good, I just am never 100% into read bean paste (too thick and sweet). It was a cultural experience, however, and I am better for it! For those of you who don't know what taiyaki is...it is a very popular street treat in Japan and basically consists of waffle dough cooked on fish shaped plates with red bean paste filling inside. Have any of you had melon pan/taiyaki/other Japanese breads?

Glico Butter Pretz

こんばんは！

Pretz (pronounced purettsu) is one of those old school Japanese snacks. It's been around in the US as long as I can remember drooling over Pocky as a new and exciting foreign specialty as a dorky high school student. Ahh those were the days...

While other friends and family went nuts for the snack, I was a little put off by how basic it seemed. If I'm gonna eat a Glico biscuit, it darn well better be covered in chocolate and called Pocky!

I didn't even try Pretz until a few years ago when I saw "Pretz Meets Wine" on the shelf at Asian Food Market. Now, if my snack requires me to consume wine, you know I will purchase it post haste. The box was large and colorful and showed the fancy cheese flavors baked into the little biscuit straws. By the way, it did go well with wine.

(Look at how easy that is to open! )

Since I have NEVER seens Pretz Meets Wine again, I decided to stop trying delude myself into thinking it would magically appear and buy a normal Pretz. The little box was $1.99 and contains one pouch with approximately 30 or so little biscuits. They weigh in at about 124 kcals for the whole box.

(pictures of light small cylindrical objects never come out well...)

The flavor was good! It assuredly tasted of butter but was not overpowering, just a subtle richness. I like the shape of the biscuits much better than traditional crackers for snacking purposes (with wine or otherwise ;) ). I'll likely pick up other flavors of Pretz to sample. The "salad" flavors worries me though...salad as a flavor doesn't make much sense to me.

Meiji Spicy Choco Stick Cinnamon & Black Pepper

おはよう！

Sorry for the delay folks! I was on a trip to Florida then had to rush back due some family health issues. All's well in the end...and I did get a chance to go to Mitsukoshi market in Disney's Epcot! Epcot's Japan pavilion is pretty incredible with it's meandering paths and recreated buildings, but Mitsukoshi takes the cake. It is an actual, and very old, department store chain in Japan. Cool stuff XD

So this week I tried Meiji's Spicy Choco Stick. There were a few varieties, though the other flavors escape me now...I thought the cinnamon and black pepper combo seemed the most appealing.

My favorite part of this packaging is that little red blurb that claims it goes well with alcohol. No lie, I did have these with a glass of wine but I don't know that it made a huge difference with the flavors.

This photo even shows serving it IN a glass of some sort of unnamed liquor. They really are going for the 21+ crowd with this, huh?

As for flavor, I'll admit I don't quite get this trend of spicy/savory/sweet combination. I've had chili chocolate before, bacon chocolate, sea salt chocolate etc etc but I'm never quite as impressed as I'd like to be. If I want chocolate, I want sweet chocolately chocolate. This falls into my "huh?" category as well. I didn't taste ANY cinnamon in the chocolate or biscuit. The cracked black pepper was VERY prevalent and was baked into the biscuit. It did take like fresh black pepper though, not wimpy stale pepper. My husband, who liked the chili and bacon chocolate, liked this as well.

I like the direction they are going in with the off kilter additions and mature flavor profile (and the suggestion to consume with alcohol ;) ) but I personally would not buy them again.

I should be back to regular updating now!

Toko Cola Ramune

こんにちは！

Now, I may get speared for this but I'm only iffy on ramune. I've tried a bunch throughout the ages...original, melon, strawberry...but I always find the flavors a bit too fake and too sweet. I saw cola flavor this past trip to Asian Food Market so I thought I'd give it another shot since I'm a big fan of cola.

Total English on a package always put me off a bit, but it does say "Made in Japan" on the back so my fear was somewhat releived. I don't know if Toko makes all ramune but they make this flavor.

(That's the glass ball in the top compartment after I opened the bottle)

I think my grudge against ramune is due in part to the bottle itself. Yes, it is cool. Yes, it is novel. For me, however, they are hard as heck to open. I guess I have weak hands or something but I either need someone else to open the bottle or a tool like a wooden spoon handle (and yes that is how I opened this bottle). If you haven't had ramune, there is not a traditional cap but a small glass ball blocking the opening that you must push down with a plastic device given to you. The ball then rests in the top compartment while you drink, although it irritatingly gets in the way of the opening on occasion.

OK now for the flavor- do you know those gummy cola bottles? This tastes like them but lightly carbonated. Very sweet with only a slight cola flavor...definitely not my idea of a refreshing cola beverage. Less sweetness, more cola and more carbonation is needed to make this a viable ramune option. Sorry ramune- you have not earned any more points in my book!

Bourbon Tomato Chili Crackers

こんいちは！


With a basket full of sweet things at Mitsuwa, I decided I should try a savory flavor when I saw the display of Bourbon's crackers. It kind of amuses me when I see a name like Bourbon- where did that come from? This is a Japanese company that makes cookies and crackerｓ yet they are named after an American whiskey. Heh...

As you can see, there are a TON of flavors of these crackers and at under $2, it was an easy choice.

The packaging is great, once again. The little plastic tubes really protect the product and so, depite coming all the way from Japan, not a one is broken. There are 2 servings in the tube at 130kcals each, which is similar to your average Wheat Thins serving.


Now, I'm kinda torn on the flavor. I didn't get chili at all at first. After consuming maybe like 10 crackers, I could taste a whisper of spice. The tomato hits you in the face when you first eat it. It's similar to the tomato flavor of a mass-produced generic marinara sauce in powder form. Not disgusting but a little too tomato-y to be natural. After the first cracker, it seemed less potent and little more savory and I certainly enjoyed the following crackers more than the first. I would not get this flavor again but the texture of the cracker was good as was the value and so I may pick up some of their other varieties.