Even though I'm not a fan of mixing chocolate with vegetables like sweet potato or pumpkin, I find it hard to resist anything containing either of those vegetables. When I saw this box of chocolate sweet potato cookies, I immediately thought of Koala's March biscuits because the hexagonal box shape is the same, they both sell for about 100 yen (about a dollar) and are typically stocked near the cash register. However, Koala's March cookies are made by Lotte and these are made by Glico.
The box features a happy cartoon sweet potato winking at you as a little girl tugs at a vine attached to it. I never understood the logic of having a happy version of the thing being chopped up and eaten as a representative on the packaging. Am I supposed to think the sweet potato coyly wants to flirt with me until I decide I want to eat it (hence the winking)? The package also boasts that there is 3% sweet potato and 1.7% cocoa mass in the cookies. They don't boast about it on the front, but eating all 50 grams (1.7 oz.) of these will set you back 259 calories.
The cookies are quite small and there are about 20 of them in the box. It'd be very easy to eat them all in one sitting from a volume point of view unless you were making a concerted effort not to do so. They're so tiny that eating them feels a little like tossing goldfish crackers or popcorn in your mouth.
The cookies smell vaguely of chocolate and even less so of sweet potato. The first bite reveals a very strong sweet potato taste which is not entirely pleasant. Once your taste buds get over the flavor shock, the sweet potato flavor mellows a lot. As long as you keep eating these tiny, crispy cookies, you're having a good experience. If you give your tongue time to recover, then it starts all over again with a big burst of overly strong flavor. Clearly, they're not kidding about being 3% sweet potato.
The chocolate flavor is very weak. To get any sense of it, you have to let the side with chocolate on it melt on your tongue for awhile. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this though as I think the balance of chocolate to sweet potato is pretty good when you just eat them as you would any other cookie. These are nice and I'd certainly consider getting them again if I was in the mood. I'm not sure that they could be any better, but I wouldn't say that they're absolutely the greatest cookie ever. However, they're a nice enough tea time treat for their price and the size.
4 comments:
These look like quite a yummy little snack. I like Koala no march but I'm not a fan of the brown colour on the outside of the pretzel, it's got a horrible taste. I'd much prefer these! :)
Hii, I just want to say thanks for all the great Japanese snack reviews! I'm such a kid at heart, and I love munching on snacks especially Japanese and Korean ones, they taste so different and unique! I appreciate what you do here since I always get overwhelmed with the amount of snacks available in Asian Grocery Stores. Thank you for trying them out and honestly telling us what you think :) Cheers!
Hi, innerchild, and thanks very much for your kind words and taking the time to comment!
Hopefully, I can at least save some people outside of Japan some cash on expensive exports. ;-)
I guess I will try them last if I ever spot them on the grocery shelves.
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