ZOMG, Candy!

Just when I thought I’d exhausted the Qra Qra line (I previously reviewed lemon and milk), I found this bag of Strawberry Qra Qra in a newly discovered Rochester Asian grocery store. As a bonus, it was $0.89, a whole ten cents cheaper than at my previous Qra Qra source.

For some reason, the Qra Qra kangaroo gets to wear a crown on this bag. Qra qra kangaroo - try saying that quickly three times in a row!

The strawberry flavor on these chews is super genuine. Bright, sweet, tangy, and surprisingly tart - almost but not quite too tart.

I can really taste the concentrated strawberry juice from the ingredients list. You know how biting into a dried cherry yields a burst of chewy flavor? This is like biting into the dried cherry equivalent of a strawberry (forgive my ignorance if you can dry strawberries; I’ve only ever seen them freeze-dried). It yields a great punch of flavor.

The sugar shell on the outside has a bit of a grain to it that crumbles in the mouth. Most of the flavor is concentrated in the chewy center. Like the previous Qra Qra, the chew is long lasting.

Conceptually, it’s similar to a strawberry Starburst, but it’s executed to the nth degree. More chew, more flavor, more deliciousness. The lemon is still my favorite Qra Qra because I love citrus fruit candies, but I’d buy a bag of strawberry to go with my lemon anytime. An OM.

Back when I reviewed the Qra Qra Lemon, I pointed out the weirdness of the name. The Qra Qra Milk sees the Lemon’s unpronounceable Qras and raises it an inexplicable flavor. What exactly is a milk flavor, any way?

Milk flavored candy is actually a common find in Asian markets (I’ve reviewed a hard milk candy in the past), and I usually find them quite enjoyable. But chewing on milk? I dunno…

The Qra Qra did not taste like vanilla. Instead, it tasted of cooked milk, like the skin that forms when you heat up milk, with maybe a bit of coconut milk to it as well. It was almost savory and had a hint of salt in the finish.

The flavor reminded me of a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly but less buttery. The scent of it as it’s being chewed (and the lingering Qra Qra breath that one is left with) is spot-on buttered popcorn Jelly Belly.

While the Qra Qra milk was still quite chewy (chewchew chewchew), it wasn’t as long lasting as the lemon. Despite its chew-time advantage, the Qra Qra Milk did not disappear nearly as quick as its lemon counterpart did. I was torn between giving them an O or a — and ultimately settled on an O. While they’re not bad, they’re also not really good, but they are intriguing, so a bonus letter point there.

More from my stash of Korean candy, courtesy of Nana and Justin (past hits included Crunky Nude Balls). Nana phonetically translated the title to be “Ti Dui” but doesn’t know what the words actually mean. She also informs me that somewhere on there is a character for flavor, I think under the fruit pictures on the bottom seam.

Thank goodness for pictures. I guessed that these would be like peanut M&Ms, only with lemon, apple, and orange flavored shells, and I guessed right!

Unlike peanut M&Ms, the peanuts in the Ti Dui tasted unroasted and young (is that the right word for it? They felt like they needed more time to develop their flavors). I did catch one in the package that had some depth and tasted nicely roasty, though I now wonder if it was an anomaly, and I actually just ate a half rancid nut or something.

They come in four colors and flavors. All have a crunchy candy shell (slightly thicker and thus crunchier than M&M shells) around a layer of generic milk chocolate encasing a peanut. I appreciated the earthy color scheme, especially the lovely shade of green.

Yellow is lemon. It starts off with a light sweetness, which then becomes a bit tart before the chalky chocolate and peanut flavor come through. The shell alone tastes vaguely sweet but not fruity. For all of these, the fruit flavor is melded into the chocolate, I think.

Orange is orange. It tastes like just plain chocolate up until the finish, which is mellow and round with floral orange notes.

Green is apple. It has an immediate Fuji apple sweetness that reminds of apple Jell-o. It’s too weird for me. As past experience has shown, I do not appreciate the combination of apple and chocolate.

And finally, brown is just chocolate, meaning that it tastes like meh chocolate around a meh peanut for an all around meh-ness.

I give these an O. I’m not sure how much I appreciate the fruit and candy shell and chocolate combination, but I did manage to finish the package over the course of a few weeks, popping a few at a time. I really only found the apple one repelling, and I even ate those eventually. Then again, I did mostly finish them because I’d left the package at my desk, thus keeping them always in sight and in mind. Had I kept them elsewhere, I would’ve forgotten about them, probably.

Lotte’s Crunky Nude Balls were the most hilariously named of the Korean candies that Nana and Justin sent me. Here’s Nana’s description: “Bought just for the name…Crunky is a Korean Nestle Crunch rice chocolate; here the puffed rice is on the outside.” Like the Pepero, it’s “nude”, meaning inside out.

They came packaged in a plastic barrel with a flip-top, which was quite fun. Each ball was about the size of a grape and covered in tiny rice crisps. When I say covered, I do mean covered. There’s very little chocolate that showed through on the surface area of the ball.

The rice crisps were nuttier than I expected. I wonder if they were brown rice crisps?  They tasted almost like cornflakes or sesame seeds. The rice crisps were also found within each ball.

The chocolate was thick with dusky hints of malt. The texture paired well with the airy puffs of rice. The sesame/cornflake notes were a different taste experience. I’m not sure exactly how much I appreciated the flavor pairing, but the texture and delivery of the chocolate treats was quite fun.

I give these an OM. I bet they’d be even better with cookie bits or more normal-tasting rice puffs.

More candy goodness from Korea! Nana translated the name of these red gummy grapes into “my gummy,” which I’m guessing is the brand.

The gummies inside were soft and gooey, with barely any bite to the texture. Each gummi was shaped like a bunch of grapes, prettily purple with just a tinge of pink when the light shines through it.

The gummies were lightly sweet with a floral flavor that was quite genuinely that of red table grapes. There was a big 50% on the package. Despite my complete lack of ability to read Korean, I’m going out on a limb and guessing that they’re made of 50% real fruit or fruit juice, as they certainly taste like they are.

These were far better than most grape flavored gummies that are available in the states, as it tasted like the actual fruit. An OM.

Hooray for globetrotting friends! My friends Nana and Justin recently finished up a three year stint teaching English in Korea (next stop for them: Scotland). Before they left Korea, they were kind enough to buy and mail me a bunch of Korean candy for the blog. Thanks for the help, as always, Nana and Justin!

First up is Lotte’s Pepero. I thought it would be fitting to start with one of Nana’s favorites. According to Nana, this box was “nude”, which is how Korean’s refer to inside-out. It’s basically like an inside out Pocky, with a hollow cookie shell filled with chocolate.

The box had a sealed plastic bag full of Peperos. I kind of chomped right through them and lost count of how many there were. The cookie shell was rather mild, with a hint of buttery nuttiness.

The Peperos weren’t so much filled with chocolate as lined on the inside with chocolate. In other words, I could suck air through it like a straw. The chocolate was slightly fruity with a chalky cocoa hit.

Like Pocky, these are more cookie than candy. Also like Pocky, they’re a nice snack, and I polished off the box fairly quickly, but I don’t know if I’d ever seek them out to buy them again. They’d remain an impulse buy for me - that is, if I could find them in the states; I think I’ve seen them in Asian grocery stores before? - so an O. I do see why Nana likes them, though!

You can probably guess that today’s review is not of an American candy. American companies may give their products weird names to make them memorable, but they’d never go for something as unpronounceable as Qra Qra. Asian companies selling in the U.S., however, totally would.

I love the packaging on this product because a) it says chewchew chewchew, and b) because the kangaroo is weird and inexplicable but kind of cute, and its ears are the wrong shape. Hooray Asia!

Hard to read print on the bag (white on yellow? really?) notes that Qra Qra are “chewy like gum, but melts like candy”. Never mind the messed up parallel with mismatched parts of speech - it’s a good description of what the candy is.

Each Qra Qra is about the size of a small grape or a large blueberry. They have a hard candy shell, but they’re also texturally homogenous. Each Qra Qra has a stiff, long lasting chew that’s quite sproingy. It’s a bit like Hi-Chew, but it gets stuck in your teeth less, and it’s a bit like Starburst but not as slick - the Qra Qra are almost grainy or fuzzy on the tongue.

The flavor on these is tremendous! Each has a bright, sweet, and bitter lemon bite that’s so acidic that it stings the tongue and so sweet that it burns the throat. I know that sounds awful, but it’s wonderful and addictive. Once I finished a Qra Qra, I was ready for another, even as my tongue tingled and my throat burned.

The candy does eventually melt away after about 40 seconds or so of chewing, and admirably enough, the flavor never dissipates throughout the long chew. It’s a good thing the chew lasts for a long time, as there are only about a dozen Qra Qra per pack, and they disappeared all too soon.

An OMG that warrants a special trip back to the tiny Asian grocery store where I found them. I know they come in at least one more flavor! If the price ever goes down ($1.00 for 12 Qra Qras is pretty steep), I’m upgrading them to ZOMG! status.

One of my dad’s specialty, usually-only-cranks-it-out-for-dinner-parties dishes is taro root with chicken. He poaches chicken, uses the resulting stock to cook sliced taro root for hours, until it’s buttery and meltingly soft, and mixes in the poached chicken (pulled into thin slivers that disappear into the “melted” taro) and chopped scallions. It’s delicious.

So, taro + chicken =  delicious. Taro + chocolate? We’ll see. I bought this box of Choco Roll Taro solely because it was so weird! If you’ve never had it, taro is a root vegetable that’s sort of like an extra starchy, slightly sweet and nutty, purple potato.

Ever thought, “Gee, I like mashed potatoes, but I bet they’d be better with chocolate instead of gravy”? Well, some Asian person thought the equivalent for the taro. From the looks of the purple frosting and cherry covered thing on the box, the Choco Roll Taro might be based off of some pre-existing dessert concoction.

Each individually wrapped Choco Roll Taro is a pink and purple speckled taro root center inside a round wafer roll, all covered in a yellow-y white chocolate. Don’t worry - the purple center isn’t nearly as bright as it looks on the box. In fact, the mottled pink/red flecked center is rather pretty.

The taro center tastes like pasty, extra-starchy mashed potato with a hint of nuttiness and lots of added sweetness. The extra sweet comes through in the finish and ends on a rather fruity note.

The wafer layer is unremarkable: airy, bland, and crisp. It serves its textural and structural purpose well, at least. Finally, the white chocolate outside is kind of greasy and pretty bland. I’m not a white chocolate fan, so I have little experience in picking out flavor notes in white chocolate. It just tasted like regular old sweet white chocolate to me.

All in all, I think I’ll continue to take my taro with chicken rather than chocolate. The flavor combination is just too strange for me to appreciate, and that strangeness overrides any ooh factor that the interplay of paste and crunch and melt could have brought.

I ate half of a roll to taste; the rest of the box disappeared when I moved. I may have given it away back in New Haven, or it could be buried in my candy stash somewhere. Either way, a taste is plenty Choco Roll Taro for me. It gets a no lettered – for being harmlessly not tasty.

I’ve wanted to try Meiji Gummy Chocos ever since Cybele from Candy Blog gave them a rave review. I had looked for them every time I went into an Asian grocery store and finally, FINALLY! found them last month in Austin, TX. They came in single flavor and fruit mix tubes; I went with the fruits mix, which contains strawberry, muscat, and orange.

Each Gummy Choco is about the size of a chocolate covered peanut, only they’re chocolate covered gummies. To be more specific, they’re dyed white chocolate around a millimeter thin layer of real chocolate around a gummi center. The chocolate layer is just thick enough to be noticeable while not warring with the sproingy gummis inside.

I like to eat these by chipping off the outside chocolate layer and letting it melt in my mouth before I chomp up the gummi. The coating only tastes faintly of cocoa, since it’s mostly white chocolate, but it’s pleasantly sweet. I think a greater proportion of real chocolate would have overwhelmed the gummi center anyway.

Strawberry is a pastel lavender color. I guess they were shooting for pink? The gummi is bright and fruity and does an admiral job of balancing out the sweet, milky coating. When this one is chomped all together, a strawberry finish lingers.

Orange is a pinkish orange color. This gummi is only mildly citrusy, with a zesty finish that comes through after the chocolate is all gone.

Muscat is a pale yellow green. The inside gummi tastes lightly of white grape, which is quite a different flavor from most purple grape gummis. It’s mild and floral and almost peachy.

I didn’t love these as much as Cybele did, but I did enjoy them and would buy them again for candy snacking. The sweet coatings get to be a bit much after a while, but they’re manageable a palmful at a time. An OM.

Now that I’m in upstate New York, I’ll have to begin my search for these again. I may just have to ask my mother to buy and mail me more. I especially want to try the peach only tube.

I’m sure I left y’all on the edge of your computer chairs last Friday when I promised weird Japanese Kit Kat reviews. Here are the remaining three in order of escalating weirdness.

Apple and chocolate aren’t an unheard of combination, but I’ve not enjoyed it in the past. In the Kit Kat iteration, it’s less bad, but it’s still not good.

Visually, it seems just like a normal Kit Kat. Though it smells strongly of Fuji apples, it initially tastes mostly of chocolate. Then the apple comes in. It’s weird and unpleasant and kind of earthy, more like an apple core than an apple. A –.

Next up, Muscat grape. Or, more specifically, Muscat of Alexandria. I don’t really know if a Muscat grape is any more special than the white seedless grapes you’d pick up at your local supermarket, and I also don’t know what makes Muscat of Alexandria special enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry. Or its own Kit Kat flavor.

I also don’t know why people thought grape flavored chocolate would be worth making. This bar is white chocolate with a pale green tinge, at once pretty and alien. I think it smells more like lychee than grape, but the taste is white grape all the way through. Would you want to eat grapes and white chocolate in the same bite? I wouldn’t, but I did try this bar, and I didn’t like it. Another –.

Finally, the mystery flavored Kit Kat. I don’t know Japanese, but I know some Chinese, and there’s a lot of character overlap. I could make out the characters for “university” on here, which didn’t help at all. I guessed that it was candied sweet potato with black sesame seeds. Cassie had no clue, and my boyfriend thought it may be tofu. We consulted my friend Michael, who lives in Kobe. Turns out I was sort of right; it is sweet potato and sesame.

The “university” part was to signal that it was a limited edition bar, released for exam session when Japanese students test to get into universities. Just goes to show you how candy can teach you about other cultures. Can you imagine an SAT Kit Kat being sold in the U.S.?

This was another white chocolate bar, tinged pale yellow. It was slightly nutty with toastiness that may have come from the wafers. I don’t really get sweet potato, exactly. The white chocolate is the most prominent flavor. Another –.

Thanks for the flavor adventure, Cassie! I enjoyed tasting them, even if the flavors weren’t that enjoyable. Guess there’s a reason they’re not widely available outside of Japan. Now, if only I could find a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat…