Pocky Wagokoro Uji Matcha Cookie Crunch – Ｐｏｃｋｙ 和ごころ 宇治抹茶クッキークランチ

I feel I should have something a little more festive to review at this time of year, but I brought these home for my sister in England so it’s what we’ve been eating over the Christmas holiday. I briefly reviewed some green-tea flavoured Pocky before, but Wagokoro is a deluxe version focused on typical Japanese ingredients that comes in a larger box containing four servings of six sticks, as opposed to the usual two packets of eight or so.

With their thicker chocolate coating studded with crumbs of Uji matcha cookie, these pieces feel heavier and more substantial than the standard Pocky, though the basic biscuit is the same. The pale, leaf-green colour reminds me of pea-flavoured savoury snacks rather than matcha, but there is certainly a matcha scent and delicate flavour to them, as well the light taste of powdered milk that resembles rich tea biscuits, and a hint of saltiness.

Smooth and creamy but not too rich or sweet, the milk chocolate is of good quality and melts slowly in the mouth. The triple texture combination of chocolate, cookie fragments and biscuit works wonderfully, especially as the brittle crumble of the biscuit stick is very different to the firm crunch of the matcha cookie pieces.

Despite the emphasis on the green tea element of this product, the aroma was subtle and I found myself enjoying the texture of the cookie crunch over its flavour. I’m not usually a fan of biscuits but the addition of cookie crumbs to the chocolate gave the pieces a more satisfying bite and interesting consistency, which I really enjoyed, and I’d certainly be tempted by any further additions to this luxurious line.

7/10

Pocky Wagokoro Uji Matcha Cookie Crunch  107kcals per six pieces

Emial Tapioca Time Royal: Black Tapioca Mix Berry Latte – Ｅｍｉａｌ ブラックタピオカ・ミックスベリーラテ

While some brands keep me on a constant roller coaster of surprises and disappointments, Emial is one company that just keeps going up in my estimation. The more of their products I try, the more I like them, and this new berry latte may just be the best so far.

Recently I’ve cut down on dairy, meaning that now consuming thick, milky drinks can make me feel a little sickly, but tempted by this promisingly fruity-looking number I decided it was worth the risk, especially since I’d never found Emial products to be too rich in the past.

Colourful and durable, the plastic container has been carefully designed to evoke fruitiness – if you look closely you can see that the yellow silhouette is textured to resemble lemon peel. As the name suggests, the yoghurty drink contains large, juicy beads of black tapioca, as well as a generous infusion of berry pulp, mainly composed of strawberry and blueberry. Despite the implications of ‘latte’ this is not a caffeinated product and is more like a smoothie or milkshake. The consistency is creamy and silky smooth, as the fruit pulp is very fine. It has a light, fruity scent and good degree of berry tartness to it.

Although the straw provided is large enough to suck up the tapioca, I prefer to leave it at the bottom, until it is just covered by a shallow pool of liquid, and then eat it with a teaspoon like an old-fashioned tapioca pudding. It is hard to put the subtle flavour of black tapioca into words, it simply tastes like a firm, plain gelatin, perhaps mildly sweet, which offers a slight resistance when chewed – a complimentary textural contrast to the velvetiness of the drink.

For me, Mix Berry Latte was the perfect combination of milky indulgence and fruity refreshingness, and thanks to the inclusion of the tapioca it felt pretty substantial, despite being fairly low in calories. It seemed odd that Emial brought out this product, with its rather summery flavour palate and packaging, at the beginning of winter, but I’m glad they did, and I can’t wait to see what new products they introduce next year.

8/10

Kyoto Hanawarabe Candy – 京都のお土産：花わらべ

I’ve seen these colourful treats in various traditional sweet shops in Japan, but never been tempted enough to buy them, as boiled sweets rank fairly low among my candy preferences. However, I was given a little assortment by a friend and was excited to finally try them.

Unfortunately my sub-par photography doesn’t do them justice, but they are like beautiful, lustrous glass beads with the same semi-translucent qualities as some precious stones; it seems a shame to eat them.

In retrospect, maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t. Given the bright, popping colours of the candies, I assumed that they would have intense, tangy, fruity flavours to match – I had especially high hopes for the pineapple and orange. I suppose I should have done my research. These are decorative sweets and it’s all about the appearance: flavour is secondary.

Despite the different colours and designs, I couldn’t detect any variation in the flavour of these sweets. They had that odd quality particular to starch syrup products where sweetness becomes a sensation rather than a taste – an almost tooth-aching sensation with no interesting flavours or aromas to relieve it. While the glassy outer surface melts as smoothly as ice, the inner candy is grainier and finely perforated, so it contains a little air. It is very similar in both texture and flavour to the sticks of rock that you get at British seaside towns – a confection that I never liked even as a child.

Perhaps I would have judged these less harshly if I’d known what to expect. As far as appearance is concerned there’s no denying that they look gorgeous, and presented in a pretty box they would make an excellent gift. Unfortunately, once they’ve been consumed and you can no longer admire them, the lingering memory of taste and texture is what forms your impression, and I was disappointed.  I always feel guilty if I give a very low rating, but it’s purely my opinion, so I’ll be honest and award these:

4/10

Tirol Choco Skyberry – チロルチョコ スカイベリー

I’d never heard of the Skyberry, which according to its website hails from Tochigi – the ‘strawberry kingdom’, before coming across these new Tirols. Initially, looking at the image of a huge strawberry superimposed on Tokyo’s Sky Tree building, I thought ‘Okay Tirol, I see what you did there, Sky Tree, Skyberry…’ but it was only when I came to check the ingredients and found that the dried fruit component of these chocolates includes 12.5% ‘skyberry’ that I realised Tirol weren’t responsible for the pun: skyberries already really existed. They are of course just a variety of strawberry named for the tower, no doubt with a premium price tag, and anyway, the quantity involved here is almost negligible: these are basically dark chocolate and strawberry flavoured candies.

There are four different wrapper designs which depict the transition from sunrise to night, certainly a good gimmick to entice customers into buying four at once.

The smooth surface of the dark chocolate coating is embossed with some kind of motif but I’m not sure whether it’s a letter or a logo or a purely abstract pattern.

A rich chocolatey scent greeted me on unwrapping each piece and the taste was satisfyingly dark without being bitter. The cookie and dried fruit pieces are concentrated at the pink, strawberry-flavoured chocolate base, meaning the candies have a tendency to crumble at the corners, though the blending of colours from mahogany into magenta is pretty.

Flavour-wise the biscuit was a little disappointing. White and Biscuit is my favourite of the standard Tirol range, as the perfectly salted cocoa taste is addictive, but I couldn’t detect any of the same saltiness and bitter cocoa notes in the biscuit here, so it was rather overwhelmed by the very sharp, almost sour flavour of the strawberry. I wonder whether perhaps the acidity of this flavour was enhanced in the hope of concealing the fact that there is very little real fruit contained in these chocolates (they contain strawberry powder and vegetable-based food colouring). The sharpness even drowned out the potential smooth creaminess of the fruity chocolate, which could have compliment the dark chocolate nicely.

Visually both the external packaging and the sweets themselves look great. The dark chocolate was good and I enjoyed the contrast of dense chocolate, crumbly biscuit and powdery, airy freeze-dried fruity pieces, but the ‘skyberry’ element was just too sour for me and I would have liked a little more strawberry sweetness. Nevertheless, I’m tempted to try them again, if only to see whether my impression is different the second time around.

6/10

Tirol Choco Skyberry  ￥20   42kcals

Kanro Maison de Confiserie Petit Chocolat Mint – Kanro メゾン・ド・コンフィズリー プティ・ショコラミント

I don’t often eat hard candies because it takes such a long time to get through a whole packet and I get bored of the same flavours, but the lovely vibrant turquoise of this packet caught my eye in the supermarket and I couldn’t resist.

The tagline for Kanro’s Maison de Confiserie brand declares these sweets to be ‘France in a mouthful’, but I’m not convinced that there’s anything particularly French about mint chocolate chip ice cream. I suspect that, as with the meaningless writing on so many hundred yen shop gift bags, French has simply been used to suggest that this a chic and grown-up product.

The candies are individually wrapped in attractive shiny turquoise and chocolate-brown packets that reflect the mint/chocolate flavours, though the actual sweets inside are paler than the images suggest. All the pieces were perfectly star shaped with a nice sheen to them and a light cocoa scent.

I was pleasantly surprised upon first tasting one – it really does taste just like mint chocolate ice cream!…for about ten seconds, after which the refreshing mint fades away and you’re left with a flavour similar to weak hot chocolate of the kind you make using boiling water. It’s a little chocolatey but there is no milkiness or creaminess to make it more substantial.

These were certainly nothing spectacular but the initial minty hit was enough to keep me from abandoning them to the back of the cupboard and I found that they make a nice accompaniment to evening hot chocolate. I don’t think I’ll buy them again but I’ll enjoy the ones I have left.

6/10

Kanro Maison de Confiserie Petit Chocolat Mint  ￥178    12.9kcals per sweet