Sequoia Baked Apple Chocolate

While Nestle is grinding out new KitKat flavors as if the bar's consumers had the gustatory attention span of a 2-year-old, Furuta releases a couple of new and unique Sequoia chocolate wafer bars a year. Even though I have been less than thrilled at times with the Sequoia offerings, the scarcity of new variants always makes it more exciting to come across one. Perhaps absence does actually make the heart grow fonder, even when the one you're missing is the red-headed stepchild of the wafer-based chocolate family.


I found this bar at Family Mart for about 50 yen (55 cents). It's the same size and weight as regular Sequoia bars which is about 10 cm x 2.5 cm (about 4 in. x 1 in.). These bars are pretty solid, but the weight is not given on the wrapper. The package describes the composition of the bar as an outer shell of baked apple chocolate (including cinnamon), "milk cream" around the wafers, and milk chocolate on the bottom. When you open the packet, you can smell the apple flavor.

This bar is good on some levels, and less so on others. On the plus side, the flavor has depth and the texture has complexity. You can taste apple, wafers, sweet white chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate to varying degrees. Unfortunately, the overly sweet white chocolate flavor dominates such that there are only hints of the apple and bittersweet flavors. The texture is an interesting mix of almost fudgey or ganache-like interior filling, grainy sugary goodness, crispy wafers, and a slightly firm chocolate coating. Both my husband and I were disappointed that cinnamon did not figure very much at all in the flavor profile despite it being mentioned as a relevant component.

I liked this despite the indifferent rating I'm giving it. The main question I have to ask myself though is, 'would I buy it again?' The answer is no and that's mainly because it's just too sweet. I only ate about 1/3 of it for this review and I consumed it in 3 bites with a cup of tea. I could easily see this being just too sweet if I didn't have a beverage or ate more at once. I would recommend this as a curiosity to anyone inclined to sample it, but I doubt anyone will be missing it when it's finished with it's run on convenience store shelves.