The Bourbon petit series is available everywhere in Japan. Boxes of these snacks in their long tubular packages are often placed on the top shelves in convenience stores and supermarkets. You can get a decent portion for about a hundred yen ($1.20). In addition to the tiny chocolate cakes I reviewed previously, they also offer a large range of small cookies and rice crackers. Whatever your fancy, you can get a night's snacking worth in one of these packets without totally pigging out. In the case of these wafers, 45 grams (1.6 oz.) provide 229 calories, or about 12 calories per cookie.
These don't smell like much of anything, despite being liberally covered in kinako powder (toasted soy bean flour). Each little cookie is about 2.5 cm (a little under an inch) square and looks more like a flat biscuit than a wafer. However, inside are layers with firm cream filling. They're nicely sweet without being overbearing and have a lovely toasted soy flour. Sometimes kinako comes across as very peanut buttery, but these are much closer to the soy side in flavor.
I absolutely loved these. They are fresh, crispy, sweet, and flavorful. If you like kinako, absolutely try these.
Since the review of your Petit Green Tea Choc Chip biscuit, I've been on a look out for them. Sadly, once again, places like Hirose and Marushouku do not sell them. :(
ReplyDeleteLove the review as always.
I'm really surprised that these aren't sold everywhere because they are pretty much everywhere here. It's actually very interesting for me to hear that other people can't find them in other areas of Japan because it teaches me something I don't know about distribution and availability. Sometimes I think a trip to the countryside would be in order just to investigate what the shelves look like!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment!
As for me, I think I have to explore big cities such as Kyoto and Tokyo... (hoping to go to Kyoto for Christmas)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. :)
I really think I need to find something with Kinako on it here in Canada!
ReplyDeleteare this products are HALAL ?? because my colleague had been bought many kind of this products and gave to us including MUSLIM. so i just wanna ask if the products is HALAL or NON HALAL
ReplyDeletee.m.m.a.: Unfortunately, I do not know enough about Islamic food handling guidelines for certifying something halal or not. Based on reading a Wikipedia entry and what I know about the contents of the product, I would guess that these are okay as they are basically soy flour, flour, sugar, and some type of fat with flavorings, salt, and some common food additives. They use processed fats, but I believe they would be processed vegetable fats (not animal fats).
ReplyDeleteMy best guess is that these should be halal, but I would not take my word for it due to my lack of authority on both the exact process of preparing this product and my absolutely inadequate understanding of what is required to certify something halal. In my experience, Japanese food manufacturers do not certify food in any way in accord with religious considerations since it isn't really a culture that concerns itself with religion of any sort. Food is never certified as kosher, for instance.
I'd probably say that this is mashbooh (questionable). The main problem is that I don't have concrete information about the content of the fat used in these (is it completely free of any animal fats such as pork-based lard?). I believe it is, but can't say for certain since the manufacturer does not clarify and I don't know if machinery which makes this never makes another product (such as sembei) which may use forbidden animal products.
I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful, but thank you for reading!