ZOMG, Candy!

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. An O.

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. An O.

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 O.

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…

When my friend Cassie went to Japan for a fun trip with her boyfriend (so jealous, by the way), she offered to bring me back candy. I eagerly requested Kit Kats. Why Kit Kats, a run-of-the-mill candy that’s all over the U.S.? Because the Japanese make about a zillion Kit Kats in strange flavors, and I wanted in. Cassie obliged, for which I am grateful. I’ll review the two normal ones today and make y’all wait until Monday for the weird ones.

Based on the packaging, this bar was either strawberry or strawberries and cream flavored, both pretty standard flavor combinations that go well with chocolate. I’m guessing that it’s strawberries and cream, based on the bar’s lovely, creamy shade of pink. All the boxed Kit Kats Cassie bought came in packs of four fingers separated into two individually sealed packs of pairs. Good for freshness; bad for the environment.

Like all Kit Kats, this was chocolate over crisp wafers. The strawberry was white chocolate that smelled lovely and floral. The strawberry flavor was sweet and genuine, which I appreciated, even though I found it overly sweet. An O from me, but I think others would like it more.

The Kit Kat Cookies that Cassie brought me was just one long, slightly larger finger. After I tasted it, I wished that I had a four pack of them. It was my favorite of the bunch, basically a normal Kit Kat with an extra layer of chocolate cookie.

The milk chocolate was nice and dusky, making me think that Nestle treats the Japanese better by selling them nicer chocolate. While the cookie layer doesn’t add much to the texture, it really deepens the cocoa flavor of the bar. Highly enjoyable and OMG-worthy.

Have a nice weekend, and come back on Monday for the weird flavors!

I got a set of five Meiji Mini Candies from my friend Michael, who is originally from Japan. I’m still looking for a place where I can buy them in the states.

Let’s go left to right and top to bottom, starting with the chocolate sugar-shelled candies (possibly called Marble Chocolate?). These were slightly thicker than M&Ms. Either the chocolate had a slightly fruity finish, or the shells were flavored. They were agreeable enough and get an OM.

The next three were variation on a theme, lemon, yogurt (?), and strawberry. I love the little character thingies in the corner. Japan does ridiculously cute so well! These were all little spheroids with sugar shells around a sugary flavored centers.

Strawberry was lightly pastel pink. It tasted bright, with a slightly sour strawberry preserve taste. It was so genuine that I wouldn’t be surprised if I found seeds inside. OM.

Lemon was yellow and tasted bright, tart, and effervescent, like a candy version of lemon zest. OMG.

Yogurt (I think) was white and had a little blue alien instead of a lemon or strawberry head. It had a sour tinge to it and reminds me of those little yogurt jugs you can get in Asia. The Chinese name for them literally translates into “sour milk”. Not for me, but a pretty genuine representation of what they were going for. O.

I was all sad that I had lost my Poifull notes. Then I realized that I didn’t lose them; I’d just already reviewed them here. If you’re too lazy to click over, they got an OMG.

I would buy the whole assortment just for the lemon sugar thingies and the Poifull. Of course, ideally I could just buy the lemon sugar thingies and the Poifull on their own, but hey, variety is the spice of life.

 I bought this chocolate bar, made by a Turkish company called Solen, at a random candy store in London. Embarrassingly enough, the first bar I picked up melted in my hands before I finished browsing the store. I may have snuck it back onto the rack and grabbed a new one when I checked out… Oops.

While there was lots of Turkish on the wrapper, it also thankfully, included an English translation: “milk chocolate with crispy rice and hazelnut cream.” The bar came in six segments of creamy, pliable, elastic chocolate and praline. I like my chocolate creamy, but pliable and elastic, not so much. And, as previously mentioned, it’s super soft with a low melting point (which also suggests a high fat content).

The praline wasn’t terribly hazelnutty, but the flavors are there. The crisped rice inside was airy and crunchy. Overall, it was nice, but it just lacked oomph, so it gets an O.

Another Asian treat sent as a free review sample by Asian Food Grocer. I was given free reign to pick what I wanted. In addition to pineapple Hi-Chew, I asked for Flower’s Kiss Candy because I was intrigued by the name. Would the Flower’s Kiss Candy taste like flowers? Thankfully, nope.

The Flower’s Kiss Candy turned out to be a sweet, fruity hard candy. Though it comes in a large assortment of prettily decorated wrappers, they’re all the same - a bumpy pink/red hard candy. It dissolved smoothly but also crunched up nicely and cleaved cleanly, a plus for me since I’m impatient and chomp on my hard candies.

Flavorwise, the Flower’s Kiss Candies reminded me of the Asian Juice candy I’ve previously reviewed. It’s lightly sweet and fruit-punchy, with an almost floral peach high note to its flavor. If it makes any sense, this particular candy’s peach flavor makes me think of fat pink Asian calligraphy peaches rather than the usual yellow/red peaches. An OM from me. I’m glad I asked for these from Asian Food Grocer; I’d seen it on the shelves of Asian grocery stores before but had never dared buy it in case it tasted like flowers. Yay for free samples!

In addition to a bag of Crunch Ball Crispy Candy, Nana and Justin also mailed me a nice assortment of Hi-Chew candies in strawberry, grape, and green apple. They were so good that when Asian Food Grocer, an online retailer of Asian food, snacks, and candies contacted me with an offer to send me my choice of their products to review, I asked for a pack of pineapple flavored Hi-Chew. In hindsight, I should’ve asked for Hi-Chew in every flavor they sold; they’re good, and Asian Food Grocer sells Hi-Chew in flavors that I haven’t seen at my local Asian grocery store. Missed opportunity, I guess. But I’m not too sad, as I got other Asian candy goodies, the reviews for which will post later.

Let’s start with the three Hi-Chew from Nana and Justin.  If you’ve never had them before, Hi-Chew are small rectangular chewy candies with wonderfully bright fruit flavors. They come in a stick of individually wrapped candies, and their chew is fairy non-sticky and almost bouncy. I think they’re like the Starburst of Asia, but better because their fruit flavors actually taste like fruit. For example, I usually don’t especially like strawberry flavored candy, but I enjoyed the strawberry Hi-Chew because it tasted so genuine - you could almost taste a tinge of strawberry seeds.

Similarly, grape Hi-Chews actually taste like grapes, without any whiff of cough syrup artificial grape flavor. They taste like sweet black grapes. The apple didn’t taste at all like an apple Jolly Rancher. Its flavor was more subtle, more Fuji/Braeburn sweet than Granny Smith tart.

My favorite of the Hi-Chews I had was the pineapple. I can’t express often enough how Hi-Chew taste so vibrantly of actual fruit. The pineapple Hi-Chews were bright, sweet, slighty tart, and carried just a hint of the slight bitter astringency of a real pineapple’s core. Pineapple flavored candies aren’t too common in the U.S. I wish they were more ubiquitous, and I wish they all tasted like a pineapple Hi-Chew.

The pineapple Hi-Chew gets an OMG; the other flavors get an OM. Hi-Chew in general are pretty easy to find near the checkout counters of Asian grocery stores, though flavor selection does vary.

My friends Nana and Justin have been living and teaching English in Korea for I think a year and a half now? I’ve been following their adventures in Asia through their blog, in which they’ve done a great job of chronicling the different cuisines they’ve had the opportunity to try.  They also ran a few features involving themselves drinking weird stuff. They were kind enough to send me a package of candy, and though there were no weird drinks, there was the weirdly named “Crunch Ball Crispy Candy.”

Methinks the name lost something in translation. The bag made the candy look like peanut flavored hard candy. The crunch part could refer to the hard candy, and the ball clearly refers to the shape… but what makes it crispy? I usually associate crispy with chips and fried things, not candy. Hmm…

It turns out that these candies are basically little balls of peanut brittle. Heavy on the brittle, light on the peanut, which is great for me, as I hate getting bits of peanuts stuck in my teeth (which is also why I’m not a big fan of nuts in candy in general). They cleave just like traditional brittle does, and like traditional brittle, it sort of gets packed in the molars. The peanut bits are pretty small, but they definitely bring their nuttiness to the ball. The prominence of the brittle makes these fairly sweet but not so sweet that I couldn’t eat more than one in a row.

Flavorwise and texturewise and conveniencewise, these guys are great, and they get an OMG from me. Thanks, Nana and Justin!

I received my box of Poifull from my friend Michael who bought them for me in Japan in a set of assorted mini boxes. I’ve never seen these guys in my local Asian supermarkets, but I’m definitely going to start looking for them now.

As you can see from the photo, they’re look like jelly beans or Mike and Ikes. And they sort of are, as they have a hard sugar shell with a jelly innard. But the insides of the Poifull were much bouncier than those of jelly beans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they squeaked between my teeth. The nexture was almost rubbery, which you may think would be unpleasant, but that wasn’t the case.

Poifull come in four colors and flavors. Purple was grape and tasted like a red grape. Pink was apple, in the sweet Fuji way as opposed to the sour Granny Smith way. Yellow was pineapple, which carried a wonderful acidic tang, and green was muscat, which is a kind of grape. Its flavor was noticeably different from the purple grape. The concept of Poifull was simple yet well executed, with vibrant fruit flavors that carried a wonderfully bright tang, earning them an OMG from me. My tiny box quickly disappeared, and while fruity/sour Jelly Bellies may make a good substitute until I can find more Poifulls, they just don’t bounce against your teeth like the Poifull do.

More Japanese candy fun thanks to my friend Michael, this time in the form of Gummi Sushi. The Japanese are quite good at coming up with cute things (Hello Kitty much?) and clever things, and they certainly haven’t skimped on cuteness and cleverness in their gummis. Better yet, unlike the gummi hamburgers or pizzas that you can find at most party stores,the Gummi Sushi actually tasted good.

I like the cartoony sushi chef guy on the packaging and the clearly illustrated instructions on how to eat sushi gummies. Just in case you couldn’t figure it out for yourself. And I liked the little pictures of fruit - an apple, a cantaloupe melon, and a strawberry - on the bottom to help those of us who love Japanese candy but can’t actually read Japanese.

The gummies themselves are sealed inside a second bag and arrayed on a plastic tray so you can marvel at the cuteness of the gummi shrimp and rice and things. The gummis are sweet and fruity smelling, with a scent that reminds me of those little lychee gelatin pots.

The gummis are very soft (a case of good double-bagging!) and slightly greasy to the touch. And they’re so cute! Red is strawberry, white is apple, and orange is cantaloupe. While the apple and strawberry go well together, the melon flavor of the cantaloupe is so strong that it’s not so good for pairing. A sweet concept with a sweet and tasty execution earns these an OMG.

These Morinaga Choco Balls were amongst the wide assortment of Japanese candies given to me by my friend Michael. It took me a while to find the name of these. The Morinaga logo is fairly clear in the top left corner (they make the pretty ubiquitous Hi-Chew candies), but the Choco Ball 40th Kyorochan seal is harder to notice. I wish I knew what Kyorochan means - maybe Choco Balls are celebrating a 40th anniversary? If so, then I’m not surprised that they’ve been around for so long. One taste of these Choco Balls had me addicted.

The Choco Balls are basically a crunchy chocolate cookie inside a shiny white chocolate coating - think Whoppers, but with different flavors. Usually I don’t enjoy white chocolate, as I find it way too sickeningly sweet, but here, it’s delicious. Like many Asian chocolates, the white chocolate shell has a creamy, fresh milk essence that’s refreshing. Maybe that’s why that toucan-looking thing on the box has a dairy cow print body.

The balls are perfectly-sized for popping, making it easy to get addicted.They’re smaller than Whoppers but bigger than M&Ms, and wonderfully, uniformly spherical. The clever packaging has a built-in spout near the top, and I found myself constantly reopening it to pour more Choco Balls into my hand so I could pop them in my mouth. I wish they came in a bigger box, as mine was all too soon emptied. An OMG for sure.