Lotte Crunky Baked Cheese Tart

The concept of this bar seems stolen directly from the baked KitKat concept. It's a white chocolate bar designed to be briefly cooked in a toaster oven in order to caramelize the chocolate a little and change the flavor profile.

I tried this both "as is" and baked and it is a night and day situation. When it's "raw" and a normal chocolat bar, it is unremarkable with a somewhat cloying "dairy" flavor from the attempt at cheesecake flavor. It's crunchy and heavy in feel and not especially bad or good.

In my first attempt at baking some of this, I overdid it. The margin between golden brown and burnt is probably seconds wide. Even over-browned and nearly burnt, this tasted really good. The weird dairy flavor vanished and it had more caramel tones.

Like the baked KitKats, you not only don't want to overcook them, but you don't want to handle them while they're still hot or they disintegrate. In general, these are quite crumbly after being baked anyway. The texture becomes almost cookie-like. It's still very sweet and the impact of the little crunchy bits is reduced when the bar is baked.

I really loved this when it was baked. The cheesecake flavor isn't super strong, but it's still very enjoyable because of the caramelization and texture. I didn't mind how crumbly it became, though it was a mistake to try and eat it warm as it crumbled into tiny bits. If you can get your hands on one of these, be sure to wait for it to cool so it holds on to some integrity.

Note: This was part of my free ZenPop cheese sweets box.

Crunky (mini) and Hello Kitty Choco Marshmallow

Last week, I talked about the Dagashi box that I purchased from Oyatsu Cafe and this week I'm going to start reviewing the contents. I'm beginning with the two tiniest items and I have to say it's good that I've already had a lot of experiences with them in the past or I wouldn't have enough of a taste on hand to do a proper review. Yes, I'm winging about how small these were. I've gotten bigger freebies at sample hand-outs at events in the U.S. and attached to tissue packets given away on the streets of Tokyo.

First, there is the itty-bitty, teeny-tiny Crunky that appears to have been designed to be left on the Lotte Hotels pillows en lieu of a mint. The candy inside is literally about the size of an Andes Candy so you can get two tiny bites before it's all gone. On the plus side, I was impressed with how Lotte shrunk the whole thing down and made it look perfectly like its older brother with all detail intact.

I didn't expect to be reviewing this item at all as I was sure that I'd already reviewed the standard issue Crunky bar in the past. However, a search of my archives revealed that I had overlooked this Japanese version of a Nestle's Crunch or Hershey's Krackle bar. I covered a ton of variations, but never the regular bar and though they all have the same crispy bits, all Crunky are not created equal.

To illustrate this, I'll tell you an anecdote from back when I was working at Japanese office, one of my more obnoxious coworkers, a would-be Lothario (or, as they're sometimes called in Japan, a Charisma Man) who looked like Bruce Willis's "Mini Me", asked another of my coworkers, a man who spent all day day-dreaming of his own aikido dojo, to pick him up a Crunky bar at the convenience store on the first floor of the building we were working in. Dojo-boy brought Charisma Man a box of "Crunky Kids". The "Kids" version are like a nugget type of Crunky with a shiny exterior and the shape of a square pellet. Upon receiving his box of Crunky bits, Charisma Man exclained, "Aw, I didn't want the kids!" What he was saying was that no spawn of Crunky is as good as the original.

Incidentally, I'm happy to say Dojo Man is now in charge of his own dojo and doing well in life. I don't know what happened to Charisma Man, but it's possible he's actually functioning as Bruce Willis's Mini Me for all I know. Chances are he is off somewhere battling an STD of some sort though as one of the things he loved to brag about was how he only had intimate relations with "nice clean girls" and therefore didn't need to wear a prophylactic. At any rate, he didn't get his regular Crunky that day, but I got mine (albeit a tiny one).

The main thing that separates a Crunky from it's American crunch bar brethern is that it uses malt puffs inside instead of relatively bland rice puffs. This gives it a greater flavor complexity as the malt brings a nice depth to the mix of somewhat coffee-like, sweet milk chocolate in the bar. The texture really is the thing and the Crunky is nice crunchy with soft chocolate that melts quickly in  your mouth and has a silky, rich mouth feel.

The only difference between this mini version and the standard bar seems to be the size of the puffs. Either the usual puffs have been chopped up a bit to fit the low profile of the bar, or they've got tiny little elves crafting miniature versions of them for this version. Either way, this is tasty and it was quite a(n extremely brief) walk down my taste memory lane.

When I opened the little marshmallow packet and looked at the nicely formed little wad of mallow, I was transported back to my memories of the Japanese version of a treat I love in the U.S. One of the things that rarely worked for me in Japan was the basic marshmallow. They seemed like they were all formulated and injected into molds and were quite rubbery and had a funny taste which I couldn't identify.

Though this little wad had a nice and potent tiny dollop of intense bittersweet chocolate in the middle, it doesn't escape the all-too-common weaknesses of other Japanese marshmallows. It is too firm and chewy and brings to mind a pencil eraser when you compress it between your fingers. It's sweet and has a decent flavor, but the texture is just all wrong.

I think that some people have remarked in the past that Japanese marshmallows are different because they don't use animal-based gelatin and instead use agar agar (from seaweed). That may indeed be the issue, but, if so, I'd rather eat hooves and bones and enjoy a soft, tasty marshmallow. Yes, I am a horrible, horrible person. And, yes, this is a sub-par marshmallow even for a kids' snack. I'd probably rate it a bit better keeping in mind that this is dagashi (kid's snacks), but it's actually not so different from all the other marshmallows I had in Japan. I did have some nice marshmallow snacks in Japan, but only if the marshmallow was a lesser component in the mix. The best thing about this marshmallow was the adorable package it came in.

Source for both products: Oyatsucafe "Dagashi box" (part of a $15/month subscription box)

Crunky Ball Nude (Gianduja)

Despite the highly provocative naming of this particular line of confections, I have been resisting the allure of the Crunky balls. This is mainly because, while I love the malty crisped rice nature of the basic Crunky, I have been disappointed in at least half of the variations that have been on offer. Those that I did like tended to get by based on format alone. That is, a chocolate covered Crunky almond couldn't lose because it's an almond and a wafer bar won me over because it was a wafer and I love those. The addition of Crunky wasn't much of a merit.

The thing that "got" me to buy these balls was the fact that they are gianduja, or made with hazelnut paste. No, it wasn't the fact that I could make enough verbal hay out of the "nude balls" name that I could metaphorically line all of the stables at the Kentucky Derby, though that certainly would have been a reasonable motivation. Frankly, I would like to know why these are called "nude", but short of having a conversation with someone at Lotte, I'll probably never know for sure. Let's just assume that it's the filthiest possible explanation we can imagine and move on.

I found these for 100 yen ($1.30) at Lawson 100 convenience store, but you can find them pretty much anywhere these days. Note that with the yen growing oddly more powerful, the prices when translated into dollars continue to see inflated, but things are pretty much the same in Japan. One box is 57 grams (2 oz.) and has 27 balls about the size of a largish malted milk ball. Each morsel is about 11 calories and the entire box is 292 calories.

When you pop open the foil package and give it a whiff, it smells like regulation consumer chocolate. If they're cool, the outside is dull looking. Mine melted at room temperature in the Tokyo summer and then looked good and shiny, but also created a big mess all over my hands. I suggest storing them in the refrigerator if you're an anal retentive type and don't want them to melt and reform into a large mutant mass of malt puff and gianduja.

The first bite provides some potent hazelnut chocolate flavor. The bulk of the candy is made up by a giant malt puff inside which is light and crunchy and seems fairly flavorless at first. The second bite brings across a sense of coconut, though I think this was my taste buds fooling me about a mix of nutty and malt flavors. I enjoyed the first bite, but was less a fan of the second.

These are not bad at all, but I set the bar pretty high on gianduja. Nutella and anything made by Ferrero. In fact, I wonder if these are to some extent inspired by Ferrero Rocher, a ball-shaped candy which is made up of a thin wafer shell filled with hazelnut paste and coated in milk chocolate and nuts. This is like a low-rent version of that in which the delicious wad of hazelnut paste is replace with puff and used sparingly on the outside coating and malt puffs replace the more expensive nuts. Maybe they have nothing to do with each other, but I think there's more "crunk" and too little gianduja for my tastes. I'll finish this box, but I'll keep buying Crunky mini bars instead of this latest variation.

Ryoma Sakamoto Purple Potato Tart Crunky

And so, we come to the end of my dalliances with political revolutionary Ryoma Sakamoto themed candies, because, frankly, I'm sick of them. His likeness has been slapped on everything these days and the snacks his face is applied to are nothing special. Though I liked the yuzu cookies, the other items haven't really lit my fire. This Crunky would be included in that sad group.

Frankly, Crunky has really let me down in most of its variations. While I like (not love) the regular bar, its malt puffs don't seem to work well with other flavor mixtures or textures. I think the puffs are too strongly flavored and compete with whatever they're with, and mainly milk chocolate works with them. Someone at the Crunky product design level needs to say that when they use the Crunky brand to crank out derivative products, they should use bland crispy rice, not their regular malty puffs.

I had some small expectations for this because "purple potato" is essentially the brother of another color of the yellow-fleshed sweet potato, and I love sweet potato. The candy even smells nicely sweet potato-ish and the very first sense on the tongue also conveys that lovely tuber's essence. Unfortunately, that hint rapidly turns into strong sweetness and malt puff flavor once you start crunching your funky crunchy little morsel. At the end, you're just in textured malt puff and buttery white chocolate land. If you adore white chocolate, that's not a bad place to live, but it wouldn't be my residence of choice.

You can pick these up nearly anywhere for about 100 yen ($1.20) for a box of 10 individually wrapped slabs. Each is only 22 calories and 3.9 grams (.14 oz.), so you're essentially getting a Hershey's kiss portion with about three times the wrapping with every bit. They aren't bad at all, merely not great. Though I think that they may be loved by malt puff and white chocolate fans, I wouldn't buy them again and I think it'll take me some time to finish the box. I'd rather spend my calories on other chocolates most days.

Crunky Wafers

If you have worked in a Japanese office, then there is a very high chance that you have had the experience of being given snacks or treats. Most of the time, such food items are purchased as souvenirs (omiyage) when a coworker travels for business or personal reasons. Often, you get seasonal or regional foods.

During the 12 years I worked in a Japanese office, there were many occasions on which I was given such snacks. I often asked the office ladies (it was always women who doled out treats as men did not serve food or drinks in a Japanese office), known as "O.L." in Japan, what I was getting because the packages did not describe the contents. The information about the food was usually on the box that it came in and I never saw the boxes themselves.

One day, I was handed something and asked the O.L., Tomomi, what I was being given. Tomomi was well-known for wanting to practice and improve her English and this gave her a chance to try and come up with the right words for a fairly simple conversational exchange. She told me that the food she was handing me was what sounded like "way-haas". After some good-natured confusion, I figured out that what she was saying was "wafers". In Japanese, wafers are ウェハース (we-haa-su). Now, every time I see wafers, I think "way-haas" instead of wafers.



Since I love way-haas, I was pleased to see this Crunky bar at an AM/PM convenience store. I don't remember exactly what it cost, but I think it was around 60 yen (66 cents). The bar is quite small at 6 cm x 5 cm (2.4 in. x 2 in) and has 75 calories.

It smells like a Crunky bar with a plain wafer scent mixed in. The texture is very crispy and it's quite dry. It's more solid than a regular wafer because of the relatively thick and firm chocolate filling. The filling is not a cream like most wafers. It's actually thin layers of Crunky chocolate crunch bar. It's not too sweet and has a nice chocolate flavor with a wheat-like wafer flavor. You can't really detect the malt puffs in the Crunky filling.

I liked this, as did my husband. It is a very "utilitarian" kind of treat because it's not exotic, super sweet or rich. A lot of the pleasure is in the texture and the lack of heavy sugary sweetness. If your really like wafers, this is definitely worth giving a try, but this may not be for everyone.

Crunky Chestnut

I'm a sucker for anything chestnut, but I haven't been keen on white-chocolate-based Crunky bars since trying the caramel latte bar. It's not that there was anything so wrong about that bar, but I haven't been wowed by the Crunky variants. Like plain KitKats, the regular milk chocolate version of Crunky seems to always be superior to the imaginative flavor offerings.

For those who are unfamiliar with Crunky, it's Japan's version of a Nestlé's Crunch bar, which is available in Japan, but in limited markets. The main difference between Crunky and Nestlé's bar is that the former is made with crispy rice and the latter with malt puffs. That makes the crispy bits in a Crunky carry more of a cereal flavor in addition to adding texture. In Nestlé's bar, the crispy rice bits don't do much for the flavor profile.

This particular Crunky smells a bit like coffee and caramel, but in a very subdued way. One of the ingredients for this is caramel, so that part isn't surprising. I think that chestnut often carries a bit of a muted coffee-like flavor. One of the other ingredients if tamarind, a fruit that is used to make jams, drinks, and frozen confections in some Asian countries. It's also a natural laxative, though I'm hoping that has nothing to do with this bar.

The sweetness of this is not too overbearing, and the chestnut flavor seems light and earthy. It has the sense of tasting like real chestnuts at about 50% their actual intensity. Since chestnuts aren't powerfully strong anyway, it's just a bit more muted than I would prefer. I would have preferred a richer taste and I think a little salt might have developed the flavor profile a bit better.

One of the things I like about Crunky is that it gives you a lot of great texture without too much sweetness. That being said, I have to ask myself if I would buy one of these bars again. As decent an experience as this was, I'm not sure that it's an experience worth repeating, particularly if you're calorie conscious (and I am). The entire 48-gram (1.7 oz.) bar is 269 calories. There are 24 little blocks and each has 22 calories. For such a small amount of pleasure (about half the volume of a Hershey's kiss which weighs in at 25 calories), I'm not sure it's worth a repeat beyond the novelty of a first experience.

Crunky Biscuit

One of the things which helps me post with the frequency that I do is the fact that I can share whatever I buy with my husband. I couldn't possibly eat 4 or 5 days worth of treats myself without putting on a lot of weight or chopping out a bunch of healthier calories. Unfortunately, this symbiotic relationship has been put (at least) temporarily on hold because my husband had a blood test with some discouraging results. It's not necessarily at a serious point at this time, but he needs to lay off the sweets and shape up his diet a bit for a time.

Fortunately for me, there are avenues to pursue which allow me to keep reviewing without a second snacker on hand. One of those would be AM/PM's selection of single portion packets. I'm not sure why that particular convenience store is the one that carries the most small packages of individual snacks, but it does make it easy for someone to sample without having to put away a ton of junk food. The only problem is that you pay quite a lot more per serving for the luxury of buying just one small serving at a time.

Since I like (plain) Crunky bars, I figured that I'd pick up this single-cookie biscuit for 40 yen (43 cents) at AM/PM. For those who don't know, a Crunky is like a Nestle's Crunch type of bar with malt puffs instead of rice and Japanese-style milk chocolate (that is, slightly bittersweet) instead of American-style milk chocolate. I wasn't sure what to expect, but when I opened the package, I was a little disappointed to see that this is simply a cookie with Crunky bar in the middle. The filling is hard milk chocolate and has the same malt puffs as a standard Crunky. There were no modifications made to the recipe to make it a cookie filling.

The cookie on the outside is a nice enough sandwich cookie. It had a stronger flavor than some cookies because it was baked to a darker state than some of these types of cookies. This brought out the grain flavor. The main problem with this is that neither the cookie nor the Crunky are enhanced by their pairing. It's like a marriage between two nice people who are poorly matched. The cookie would be better off married to a cream filling. The Crunky is actually better off staying single.

Since there was only 1 cookie to eat (62 calories), I ate all of this. I wouldn't buy it again, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have finished a bigger bag by myself. It's probably not quite fair to give it an indifferent rating. I imagine that I'd be giving it an "unhappy" rating if this were in a larger portion, but I did eat it all, and it wasn't an unpleasant experience. However, I can't recommend it.

Crunky Pumpkin Purin

In addition to missing out on American holidays, there are some holiday-related dubious pleasures that I also cannot take advantage of. One of these is the post-Halloween candy sales where everyone goes out and picks up snack-size bags of treats bearing a Halloween motif for a fraction of their former price.

I can say now that I have had my first experience in Japan with buying reduced price Halloween candy, and that it was completely planned. The Crunky Pumpkin Purin (pudding) candy had been recommended to me by a few friends so I went looking for it. When I found it, the 238 yen ($2.65) price for 49 grams (1.7 oz.) rubbed me the wrong way. To offer you a point of comparison, a regulation size Crunky bar is also 49 grams/1.7 oz. and sells for only 100 yen ($1.11). I found this at Family Mart in a bargain basket on November 2 for 119 yen ($1.32).


This variation is essentially a broken up bar with it's squares wrapped in foil packets and put in a nicely designed Halloween themed box. Each square is 3.9 grams (.14 oz.) and 22 calories. It's a monument to wasteful packaging in the service of cuteness. The candy itself is very sweet, as is so often the case with white chocolate-based bars. That being said, the strong sweetness works well with the pumpkin flavor.

I felt the pumpkin flavor (and smell) was very strong in a positive way, and that there was a hint of salt. My husband said he couldn't detect it at all, but something was there that he couldn't identify. I think that was because he was expecting pumpkin pie rather than the squash-like flavor of Japanese pumpkin. The texture is just right with enough malt puff crispy pieces (not rice) to lend texture without undermining the pumpkin flavor.

This is a nice thing to have around for a small treat with tea, but I wouldn't buy it at the original price. I would also warn those who don't like super sweet treats that this is not for them. That being said, I'd certainly buy it again if it rolled around again next year for a more reasonable price.

Crunky Almond Chocolate

Back when I was still working at a Japanese company, I used to fuel my late day energy lag with chocolate covered almonds. Most convenience stores carry at least one of several varieties of them. My favorite was Meiji's. The only problem was that the box was 105 grams (3.7 oz.) and resistance was futile. Buying a box was tantamount to admitting that I was going to overindulge in a big way. Chocolate-covered nuts are very dense in calories.

The Crunky Almond chocolates come in a box which is more manageable at 37 grams (1.3 oz.). The whole box is 212 calories or 22 calories per candy and cost 99 yen. Because the Meiji box is bigger, it costs about 180-200 yen. Note that Lotte, which makes Crunky products, has their own version of chocolate covered almonds both with and without crispy bits in the coating. These Crunky almonds seem to duplicate their existing product.


The candy looks and feels almost exactly like other types of chocolate-covered almonds. It's smooth and shiny and has almost no smell at all because of the shiny waxy coating. This gives them a very polished look, like part of a good bridge mix.

Despite my affinity for chocolate-covered almonds, I strung out eating this box for quite awhile, eating about one-third at a time. The first time I tried them, I couldn't sense much chocolate taste at all, but I think that was because my sense of smell and taste were suppressed for some reason. Initially, I thought that it was the waxy coating on the outside because sucking on them for awhile seemed to open up the flavor in a way that just crunching on them didn't. The second and third samplings were much richer and more appealing. The chocolate is deep, familiar Japanese bittersweet chocolate. It pairs well with a deeply roasted, crunchy almond.

The "Crunky" crunchy bits didn't do much for the overall experience except dilute the intensity of the chocolate a small amount. There's a hint of their malted puff flavor as a leftover taste, but it's not very strong. The almond and chocolate mostly overwhelm the puffs. The puffs do add a bit more crunch to the chocolates, but I'm not sure that it really needs it since the chocolate coating is solid and a little hard and the almond very crunchy.

These were quite good, but I can't say that they're necessarily better than a regular chocolate-covered almond. The main benefit of these over the other varieties is that the portion control is nicer for someone like me who finds it hard to resist the bigger boxes. I'd definitely buy these again, but if I saw them side by side with the Meiji almonds in the same portions, I'd still probably go for the pure chocolate coating of the regular chocolate-covered almonds.

Caramel Latte Crunky

Before Nestlé started releasing hundreds of varieties of KitKats in Japan (yes, there was a time when that wasn't the case), Crunky was the candy du jour for most foreign folks. How can you go wrong with a bar which resembles a Nestlé's Crunch and has a funny name? Of course, the venerable Crunky is not this version of Crunky. The old favorite is plain chocolate with crispy malt puffs. That bar, incidentally, was changed some time in the past year. They increased the number of malt puffs such that the bar has become more puff than chocolate. It has a much heavier "cereal" flavor than it used to have.


This variation on the Crunky keeps the explosion of malt puffs, but mixes them with white chocolate. If you're hoping that it's lower calorie because of the cereal aspect, you're in for some bad luck. It's 269 calories for the entire 48 gram (1.7 oz.) bar. When you give it a sniff, you smell that telltale sweetness of white chocolate with undertones of caramel and malt. The malted puffs are not excessively airy so the bar is dense, but crunchy and easy to bite into. It is called caramel latte, but I didn't detect any sort of coffee flavor and there is no coffee in the ingredients list. The caramel part was subdued and that was okay with me because a weak caramel flavor is preferable to strong, fake caramel flavors.

This is a pretty nice bar, but the explosion of malt puffs carries it close to the edge of being a cereal bar. That doesn't bother me at all. In fact, in the milk chocolate Crunky, I like it, but I'm not a strong fan of caramel or white chocolate so this is one of those things I'd nibble at very slowly and not buy again. For those who like caramel, this might be the bee's knees, but only if they aren't looking for something super rich and decadent.