Minamoto Kitchoan Kurikinton – 源 吉兆庵 栗きんとん

I’ve mentioned kurikinton, the little sand-coloured sugary chestnut parcels, before, in my review of the Look chocolates based on the sweet. This time I’ve got the real thing, made by the Tokyo-based company Minamoto Kitchoan and presented in a simple yet elegant bamboo box wrapped in a paper sleeve.

Each piece is about the size of a large grape and, similar to Chinese dumplings, is marked by small creases where it has been pressed into shape. They do not give off much scent but sniffing them you can detect a faint syrupy aroma of vanilla and boiled chestnut.

The consistency resembles a stiff cookie dough, but without the slight oiliness that would be produced by the butter. While not sticky to the touch, it quickly forms a delightfully sticky paste in the mouth, with a little graininess due to the flecks of dark brown chestnut skin and fragments of pale golden flesh. They have the thick richness of a good quality peanut butter but, as I stated before, are not at all oily and may even crumble a little when you bite into them.

Consisting simply of chestnuts, which are naturally sweet, and sugar, kurikinton are of course rather saccharine. However, the earthy and mild chestnut flavour acts well to moderate the concentrated sucre of refined sugar so the sweetness is not cloying, though combined with the dense texture you wouldn’t have to eat many of these before they began to get sickly.

Although these little parcels look small, they feel fairly heavy in the hand and one can be quite filling. Therefore I think it’s best to eat them alone, as opposed to after a meal, so that you can appreciate them in all their dense, sweet glory, without finding them stodgy. Being a popular seasonal treat, kurikinton are produced by many major Japanese confectionery companies, and while the basic recipe should be universal, size, weight and sweetness may vary, so it’s worth shopping around to find the brand that best suits your tastes.

NB: Kurikinton also refers to a lumpy, sticky yellow paste of mashed chestnuts and sugar eaten as part of New Year’s cuisine, so don’t be confused if you come across this.

Minamoto Kitchoan Kurikinton (4 pcs)

7/10

Look Chestnut Desserts: Mont Blanc/Kurikinton – Look 栗のデザート：モンブラン・栗きんとん

Similar to the Dars I reviewed recently, Look (made by Fujiya) consists of a slim wallet-sized box of 12 individual chocolate pieces, but unlike the uniform flavour of Dars, there is an assortment of two to four flavours. The seasonal chestnut-based desserts mont blanc and kurikinton are the inspiration for this addition to the Look range, which features six of each variety, in four different designs.

The inner plastic wrapping is helpfully illustrated with cute pictures that indicate which flavour is which and it opens along the top, making it easy to slide out the cardboard tray inside one row at a time and slip it back in again to close the box and save some for later if you like.

Inside the shiny gold and silver wrapping, the appearance of the chocolate is equally attractive: the compact chunks embellished with simple line motifs have a nice lustre to them and the Look logo is perfectly imprinted on each one. On the left are the pieces based on my all-time favourite cake, mont blanc (or monburan, as it becomes in Japanese), a mountain of delicately piped marron cream concealing a centre of fresh cream and whole chestnut, all perched on a spongecake base.

The heavenly roasted chestnut scent of the mont blanc chocolates is very much like the real thing, as is the lovely pale cappuccino colour of the filling. The tiny crunchy toasted sugar fragments in the center create a very different consistency from the moist smoothness of the puree and cream in the actual confectionary but the brittle sugar works well with the rich, creamy chestnut-flavoured filling. As for the kurikinton, these candies represent a traditional Japanese sweet made from mashed chestnuts and sugar, which has a slightly stodgy, concentrated sweetness like that of marzipan. Beneath the milk chocolate coating is a buttery golden center that gives off a nutty maple aroma. It is a little sweeter than the montblanc and has a liquid filling that blends with the smooth chocolatey components, when sucked, to create a creamy syrupy consistency as it melts. The syrup is harder to detect if you simply bite into the chunk, as there is only a drop in each one, and will probably be completely drowned out if you eat it in one go.

Look’s ‘chestnut desserts’ reproduces the colours, flavours and scents of the originals in a new form with a new variety of textures. Both pieces were delicious but the creamy mont blanc was particularly good and I would happily buy it as an individual product. Although the box doesn’t state that these are a limited edition, I’d get hold of them sooner rather than later, while autumn is still in the air.

8/10

Fujiya Look Kuri no Dezato  279kcals