Krispy Kreme White Day White Chocolate Caramel Donut

"White Day" is today, March 14. For those of you who don't remember what that is based on my brief mentions of it in past Valentine's Day posts, it's a made-up holiday in Japan in which men give women sweets. Since the Japanese custom is for women to give men chocolate on Valentine's Day, this allows the confectioners to double-dip into consumer pockets.

There is a plethora of White Day stuff on sale in shops as I write this. Much of it is actually white in color such as cookies, marshmallow snacks, meringue and white chocolate, but some of it is just plain old chocolate or other types of treats in new packaging. None of it is really anything special, and that's why I'm not reviewing any of those things specifically. Some of the offerings are little more than bags of marshmallows. I'm sure those will light some office lady's fire.

White Day donuts and drink plus an image of the box of donuts you can buy with these special items included. Image pinched from Krispy Kreme Japan's site.

Not one to be left out of a marketing opportunity, Krispy Kreme has issued two specialty donuts for this holiday. One is the white chocolate caramel heart that you see above, mangled by the wax paper it was wrapped in. The other is a ring donut with chocolate frosting, crunchy chocolate flakes, and one lone little almond stuck on it. There's also a special drink, but it's just a "Ghana milk chocolate" drink which I'm pretty sure is plain old hot chocolate.

My husband picked up the chocolate caramel heart donut on his way home from work (along with donuts he knew he'd like) because he was curious to see if it was any good. I was very skeptical based on my experience with their Valentine's Day donuts. The basic donut is just a plain raised donut with no filling. The coating is some sort of high fat white chocolate glaze which is dull and waxy. There's some cocoa powder on the right corner which is meant to artfully show a dusty pattern. There's also some caramel goo that they draw loopy hearts on the donut with. Of course, if you buy a single donut and it's wrapped up like ours, it looks like just plain scribbles rather than hearts.

The donut smells like your basic donut. It was fresh and decent in terms of it's basic qualities as a baked good. That being said, that was about all it had going for it because there was very little in the way of taste. The white chocolate coating, caramel sauce and cocoa powder had almost no taste at all. They weren't sweet and mainly served to leave a kind of waxy coating in your mouth from the fats used in them (and those fats definitely did not include butter since there was no buttery flavor).

This donut is 336 calories of disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it. My husband and I each took one bite and tossed the rest in the trash. I don't know what Krispy Kreme Japan's problem is, but they need to start making specialty donuts that taste like something. They don't have to be very sweet, but they could at least have some sort of actual flavor like, say, vanilla or caramel.