I used to buy these Emial desserts, consisting of coffee/tea-flavoured jelly in a creamy sauce, a lot, but due to the rather narrow selection of varieties I’d neglected them for a while. However, having recently returned from a holiday to Bali and still in tropical mood, my attention was caught by the newest Sweet Cafe addition: Coconut Latte.
The milky sauce has a light toasted coconut scent and delicious coconut flavour too. The consistency is a little thicker than the usual cream sauce made with dairy and when I first peeled back the lid on the pot the cream had congealed slightly at the surface, as tinned coconut milk has a tendency to do. A quick stir soon blended it back to a smooth consistency.
The jelly chunks have the same texture as those present in previous Emial cafe jellies: firm enough to hold their shape but melting like butter in the mouth. While the flavour is undeniably evocative of coffee, it is closer to the mild, sweetened taste of bottled iced coffee, and lacks the deep, roasted notes and bitterness of the real thing. It seemed as though there was a higher ratio of jelly to sauce than usual, perhaps due to the coconut milk being more concentrated than the typical cream sauce, but this didn’t affect the overall balance of the product.
I thought that coconut milk was a fresh new idea for the Emial range and the release was timed perfectly as the weather is growing warmer and people’s thoughts are beginning to turn to summer. That said, I’m not sure that coconut and coffee works as well as previous combinations in this line, so I probably won’t buy this again.
6/10
Emial Sweet Cafe Coconut Latte
The Sweet Japan Blog 