Kanten-style Ujimatcha Jelly – 宇治抹茶の寒天風ゼリー（つぶあん入り）

After so enjoying 7-eleven’s matcha anmitsu I was curious when in the supermarket I came across what looked like a cheap DIY version, though I realised later that while this product contains the basic elements of anmitsu it doesn’t claim to be anything more than jelly. That said, it makes a pretty good-looking bowlful once you decant the individually packaged jelly cubes and anko.

The syrup is fruity, like the sugary juice from a tin of peaches. The jelly is not as firm as kanten but fairly solid – it has a little bite to it. The flavour is hard to identify, it certainly doesn’t resemble matcha or even tea, it simply has a vaguely sweet and artificial taste of gelatin. On the other hand, the anko is authentic and delicious: sweet and with a good proportion of whole beans to beanpaste.

The unsweetened beans in the syrup have a slight sour sharpness to them, which makes a nice contrast to the bland jelly. On the whole this dessert is nice and the quality is no less than you’d expect from a cheap supermarket product, but if you like this kind of sweet it’s worth going out to a cafe or even making it yourself to experience the real taste of
matcha and kanten.

Limited-edition KitKats: Yatsuhashi, Houjicha and Azuki Sando – KitKat：八つ橋・ほうじ茶・あずきサンド味

As I mentioned in a quick post a while ago, I bought a load of limited edition chocolates when I last visited Kansai, in particular three new varieties of KitKat (all mini size), which is what I’m showcasing today.

First, Houjicha flavour (yellow packet):

I’m not very knowledgeable about tea but this houjicha, or roasted green tea, is apparently from Kyuuemon, in Kyoto. The biscuit has almost no scent and, although it may be hard to tell from the picture, it is a strange murky khaki colour, neither very appetising nor particularly reminiscent of tea. Despite this, a mild, non-herbal tea flavour comes through as the milky chocolate melts and compliments the sweetness nicely, and this flavour is carried through to the cream sandwiched between the wafers.

Next, Yatsuhashi Biscuit (red packet):

Yatsuhashi, a cinnamon-flavoured treat which is a famous product of Shougoin, Kyoto, can come baked in the form of a crisp, arch-shaped wafer

or in its raw form, as a soft triangle of thin mochi folded over a paste filling, such as azuki or chestnut. (Above photograph is not mine! Credit to this site: http://www.gurum.biz/articles/18964.html)

This KitKat incorporates the crunchy, biscuit-type sweet, as shown on the box. As soon as I opened the packet I was hit by a very strong, almost overwhelming smell of cinnamon but thankfully it does not taste too heavily spiced and in fact the cinnamon blends smoothly with the chocolate, which is delicately flavoured with kinako. When you bite into it you get the pleasant crunch of the biscuit fragments in the creamy chocolate before reaching the flaky wafer center, which provides that oh-so addictive smooth/crunchy contrast that will have you reaching for a second bar.

Last but not least, Azuki Sando:

I bought this in Nagoya airport and it’s a limited edition product for the Toukai/Hokuriku regions. I’ve never tried the toasted red bean snack pictured on the box, but I must have eaten just about everything else azuki-related so I knew what to expect.

The distinctive earthy azuki scent hits you when you open the wrapper and the flavour comes through strongly as you eat the bar, especially if you let it melt in your mouth. True to the product name the inner structure mimics a sandwich, with layers of pale pink azuki cream in between the usual wafers.

It would have been nice if the cream was a richer red colour, like the beans themselves, but the taste was good and certainly different from anything I’ve had before.

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This weekend I’ll be taking a short road trip around Hokkaido (Toyako, Furano and Sapporo) so hopefully next time I’ll have some Hokkaido edition candies to write about^^

Coffee Jelly Round Two – コーヒーゼリー・パート２

After trying a couple of coffee jellies a while ago I started to look out for more varieties and realised there are must be at least twenty, but I settled for sampling another three this time, from Morinaga, Emial and Megmilk.

Firstly, Morinaga’s Espresso Coffee Jelly. Unlike Meiji’s jelly, this is made to be eaten straight from the pot but you can always decant it into a pretty bowl or cup for a more indulgent experience. The jelly didn’t quite survive the trip back from the supermarket without breaking up a little but you can still make out some kind of pattern on the surface.

It may just be a peculariaty of the particular one I bought but to me it looks like a design of roses so perhaps this is a little extra flourish from Morinaga.

This jelly feels firmer than usual because it contains kanten, yet has a surprisingly creamy texture, meaning that it feels more like a coffee pudding than a jelly. Being espresso I thought this might be a more adult-oriented product and expected the flavour to be bitter, however it is extremely mild and the cream syrup is very sweet, with a hint of caramel.

As you can expect from Morinaga, which is famous for its caramel, this is a delicious, rich and milky dessert but you will be disappointed if you are looking for a true espresso taste.

The next product is another in the Sweet Cafe range from Emial, just called ‘coffee jelly’.

Of all the coffee jellies I’ve tried so far this has the strongest and most authentic roasted coffee flavour, which lingers as a pleasant aftertaste once the sweetness of the creamy sauce has faded away. On top of this, the sauce itself has a hint of coffee which enhances the flavour of the jelly instead of detracting from it with an overly rich taste.

The jelly chunks are firm and fairly large and at 230g one pot provides a generous serving. Although only faintly bitter the coffee in this dessert is more notable than in the other jellies I reviewed, so I’d recommend Emial for coffee lovers.

Lastly, Megmilk Cream Sweets coffee jelly.

The texture of this jelly is firm and dense and it has the best cream sauce – unlike the thin milky sauce of the Meiji jelly this is properly creamy and taking the first spoonful is like spooning the thick top off a cream hot chocolate.

The coffee taste of the jelly is good too, it’s not bitter but there is a nice hint of dark, roasted flavour.

The combination of rich cream and firm, only slightly sweet jelly works perfectly and there is an ample amount of sauce so that the　flavours and textures are well balanced in every spoonful.

I still have many more jellies to taste but I’m trying to keep things varied so next time I’ll look for something new, like cake or ice cream. Not long until Easter and chocolate!

Tsujiri Cafe, Kyoto – 茶寮 都路里、京都

Tsujiri is famous for making excellent tea but they also make various sweets and desserts that you can eat at one of their cafes in Kyoto, which are so popular that the average waiting time to get seated, at any branch, at any time of day, is about 50 minutes. However, as I discovered on my trip to Kyoto last week, it’s well worth the wait. I visited the Tsujiri at Kyoto station where the queue was so long that it had to be divided into two separate sections, but it wasn’t long until we joined the line directly in front of the entrance, from where we could see the mouth-watering model ice creams in the display case.

Once you get inside the atmosphere is surprisingly relaxed: the staff aren’t rushed off their feet and it’s not hard to attract attention when you’re ready to order. You are given hot tea which is, as in most Japanese restaurants, unlimited.

Most of the parfaits are based around Japanese ingredients such as red bean paste, green tea, kanten and mochi, and chocolatey/fruity flavours are scarce, so this is a great place to get the Japanese take on a western dessert. I went for the Hinamatsuri parfait, seeing as it was a limited edition for spring and featured unusual components like marshmallow and floral syrup.

Looking at this parfait you can understand why Tsujiri is so popular. While some cafes simply stick some ice cream, sauce and cornflakes in a glass and charge you 700yen for it, in this parfait no two layers are the same and there is a great variety of textures, flavours and colours, which all compliment each other perfectly.

The Hinamatsrui parfait contains: sakura whipped cream with pink sugar hearts, sakura and matcha-flavoured marshmallows, three kinds of tea-flavoured castella sponge cake, plain and sakura mochi, sakura ice cream, matcha ice cream, anko (red bean paste), matcha jelly, vanilla ice cream and finally sakura syrup. It would take too long to describe individually all the delicious elements but suffice to say it was a cut above anything I’ve eaten so far and I think it does merit the high price tag (over 1,000yen).

My husband had the sweet potato parfait and it looked so colourful and tasty that I almost regretted my choice, but that’s inevitable in a place where everything on the menu looks incredibly good. Besides parfait there are plenty of traditional Japanese sweets on offer and a few savoury dishes too (you can see the full menu here), and in addition there is a gift shop with a large selection of teas and confectionery to choose from. We bought some ‘Matcha squeeze cookies’, perhaps so-called because they look like they have just been squeezed out of a piping bag.

The texture is dense and crumbly and the flavour is unashamedly strong green tea, not sweetened with a lot of added sugar as in many matcha chocolate products.

Tsujiri is certainly pricey and the long wait can be a deciding factor if you’ve only got a short time to spend in Kyoto but if you have a sweet tooth then you definitely won’t want to miss an opportunity to stop by. That said, there are plenty of great cafes that you don’t have to queue for, so for the sake of balance here are a couple of other desserts I had in Kyoto, at less well-known places: