Morinaga Lemon Tea Cookies

There are two ways to read the name of this product. One is "lemon" tea cookies and the other is "lemon tea" cookies. In most Western countries, "tea cookies" are a category unto themselves. In fact, you can find a lot of recipes on the internet for tea cookies and tea cakes. It was with that thought in mind that my husband picked up this box of sandwich cookies. He loves lemon cookies and was keen to give these a try.



I should have paid closer attention to the box design when we picked this up at Seiyu supermarket (157 yen/$1.75). The illustration is the same as the one that appears on bottles of Morinaga's various tea beverages. These are cookies flavored with tea, not cookies that are lemon and designed to be eaten with tea.


When my husband opened the first packet anticipating a nice lemon cookie, he gave it a sniff and said, "oh no." These smell strongly of Earl Grey tea and not at all of lemon. The biscuit is a nicely crisp butter-cookie-style-cookie. Since they're made with shortening and margarine, they don't have any real butter taste. The tea flavoring is carried in the cream filling in the middle and it's relatively strong. The lemon portion is incredibly weak. You mainly detect it as a faint aftertaste.

These are very nice cookies if you like tea flavoring, and I do, but my husband hates it. The only thing that makes me hesitate about buying these again is that they are 64 calories each for a cookie little bigger than an Oreo. That's a bit on the hefty side for a small treat. I really like the cookies themselves though, and would recommend trying them if you want a nice tea time snack without the tea.