My husband often comes home with far more interesting items than I do, and he found this at a Lawson's convenience store near his workplace in Shinjuku. It's not interesting because it's a rum cake chocolate as there are many booze-flavored candies released in Japan (particularly around Valentine's Day). The thing that makes it unique is the association between Lotte and the cake maker Cozy Corner.
Cozy Corner is a chain that sells various attractive looking and fairly nice tasting cakes. I enjoy their mont blanc and creme brulee (when they offer it, which isn't all the time). The cakes are rather expensive though, so I only have one once in a blue moon. The little red circle on the front of the box, by the way, is where the Cozy Corner connection is made. That red logo with a bow is part of their design.
This bar is pretty big at 69 grams (2.4 oz.), and cost 198 yen ($2.22). This smells like rum and sweetness. The texture is a soft-ish chocolate shell with a softer center. My picture was taken just after the bar came out of the refrigerator so it looks more solid than it really is. Once it reached room temperature, the center became somewhat creamy. The balance of rum to chocolate is actually pretty good. It's mildly sweet and quite smooth, though not as smooth as Dars chocolates. There are 12 large squares and each is 34 calories. Two squares did me just fine.
I'm not really a great fan of booze-infused candy, but this was actually quite nice. For my tastes, I wish that the chocolate flavor had been a little more pronounced, but I leaned more toward a happy rating than indifferent because I enjoyed this even though it was outside of my normal range of tastes. I don't think the "cake" part of it comes through at all, but this is a fine rum chocolate.
