Krispy Kreme Japan Christmas Offerings (product info.)

All images from Krispy Kreme Japan's site.

I was never gaga about Krispy Kreme in Japan, and it is of limited interest to me here in the U.S. The only thing that has me visiting them here at home is the fact that they appear to be the only donut shop among the myriads of donut shops my husband has investigated since our return that sells a whipped cream filled donut. Okay, it's not actually "cream", it's "creme", which means it's spun corn oil (like the filling of the currently unavailable Twinkie). Nonetheless, it is the closest I can come to the angel cream donut that I so loved and occasionally partook of from Mister Donut in Japan. It's not nearly as good as the Japanese one, and is nearly twice as caloric due to size and heavy external glazing, but it's better than nothing.

At any rate, Krispy Kreme Japan offered a steady stream of seasonal donuts. All of them pretty much were boring attempts to redress the standard basic donut with different decorations. I would look at Krispy Kreme America's offerings and actually feel they were doing more imaginative things. This year, I actually have a chance to sample what is here rather than what is "there" (Japan). In the U.S., there is a gingerbread donut, a snowman which is a regular raised donut with snowman decorations, and a red velvet cake donut. My husband tried the gingerbread one, and while tasty, it was a bit dry. The rest we took a pass on because neither of us is crazy for red velvet cake and painting a snowman design on a regular donut seems no better than having said type of donut.

By comparison, in Japan, there are more seasonal offerings:

By far, the one I'd be most interested in is the mont blanc (chestnut paste/cream) one. I'd be more impressed by it if it didn't so clearly look like their standard raised donut with a moderate (though certainly more than modest) amount of chestnut cream. If I were still working in Shinjuku, I'd pick one of these up for a try. Note that I think this flavor has far less to do with Christmas than the seasonal introduction of chestnut sweets each winter. Consider this more of a pagan donut than a Christmas one.

And, equally by far, the one I'd be least interested in would be the strawberry cheesecake one. This is because artificial strawberry isn't my idea of a good time. I have no idea what this has to do with the holidays, but it could have a vague relationship with the standard Japanese Christmas cake. That's a vanilla cake with whipped cream frosting and strawberries on it. Yeah, I know, it's pretty tenuous. OKay, let's just say they don't have much in the way of imagination and everyone seems to default to strawberry when all else fails.

The real holiday deal comes through with a snowman of their own. That smile and a dollop of brown good dripping from his frosty bottom may make it look like he's got a bit of a case of holiday diarrhea going on, but he's filled with chocolate. The American snowman is just full of more donut, so kudos to the Japanese for issuing a festive snowman full of delicious brown stuff.

The thing which is most interesting to me is that the first 20,000 purchasers of a holiday dozen were/will be given candles. Each shop has a limited number and the Shinjuku Southern Terrace branch ran out pretty fast. Others may or may not still have some by the time this post appears, depending on supply and demand. The web site calls them "party candles", because nothing livens up your Christmas like candles and donuts. They go well with the Kentucky Fried Chicken that you'll surely be enjoying for the holiday.

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It's that time of year... well, not really, but Japan has caught up with the U.S. on offering up Christmas the minute the detritus of Halloween has been swept aside (which happens about 3 seconds after the shops close on October 31). Krispy Kreme is doing its part by re-issuing two of the three donuts it offered last year along with a mont blanc (chestnut cream) offering. The Christmas wreath, which I reviewed in a previous post, is nearly the same as before but a star replaces the dried cranberry "berries" from the previous version. The snowman, pictured here smiling despite having had a bite taken out of his posterior, is filled with berries, or sugary goop which masquerades as something vaguely berry-like. Of the offerings, only the chestnut one holds much appeal for the likes of me, but I'm guessing I'll give it all a pass this year. 

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This post is a bit late in coming, but since most of my readers aren't living in Japan anyway and can't get these items, I'm guessing the timing isn't incredibly important. Awhile ago, I posted an ad for Krispy Kreme's mini donuts. My husband picked up a box of said donuts and got some freebies that came along for the ride. Each donut is about half the size of a regular Krispy Kreme and the flavors are chocolate, berry, caramel nut, ramune (essentially bubble gum), milk, and "purin" (pudding/flan). The ramune ones are pretty vile, and I think the caramel was best.

Early buyers got a little booklet and a very small glass stuffed into a box as a freebie. The booklet makes it clear that they are marketing the small donuts toward children and encouraging the pairing of milk when eating them. The glass is on the delicate side and I don't expect it to live out the year when it is at the mercy of my clumsy hands.

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Click this for a much bigger version that you can read, if you read Japanese.

Krispy Kreme Japan started selling mini donuts on February 22, and while we haven't tried the donuts yet, we did get this nifty advertisement with a cut out car somewhere around Valentine's Day. The car is supposed to be a replica of an early (1930) Krispy Kreme mobile (a donut-mobile?).

As I was writing this, I translated 3 of the flavors by reading the katakana below each picture, then I realized that it's written in English above each picture. This is something that starts to happen after you have lived here awhile. You stop seeing English when it's right in front of you while you doltishly squint at the Japanese and read it.

 The nice-looking Valentine's Krispy Kreme donuts. My husband was given these by a generous and kind student for the holiday. Two are still in our freezer waiting for him to want a morning sugar rush.

The doughnuts represent relatively poor value economically, but I'm guessing based on my experiences with various Krispy Kreme offerings  that they aren't going to impress on the taste front either. No matter how cute they look, I'm not likely to partake, but my husband is much gamer (and more interested in all things doughnut) than me.

Krispy Kreme White Day White Chocolate Caramel Donut

"White Day" is today, March 14. For those of you who don't remember what that is based on my brief mentions of it in past Valentine's Day posts, it's a made-up holiday in Japan in which men give women sweets. Since the Japanese custom is for women to give men chocolate on Valentine's Day, this allows the confectioners to double-dip into consumer pockets.

There is a plethora of White Day stuff on sale in shops as I write this. Much of it is actually white in color such as cookies, marshmallow snacks, meringue and white chocolate, but some of it is just plain old chocolate or other types of treats in new packaging. None of it is really anything special, and that's why I'm not reviewing any of those things specifically. Some of the offerings are little more than bags of marshmallows. I'm sure those will light some office lady's fire.

White Day donuts and drink plus an image of the box of donuts you can buy with these special items included. Image pinched from Krispy Kreme Japan's site.

Not one to be left out of a marketing opportunity, Krispy Kreme has issued two specialty donuts for this holiday. One is the white chocolate caramel heart that you see above, mangled by the wax paper it was wrapped in. The other is a ring donut with chocolate frosting, crunchy chocolate flakes, and one lone little almond stuck on it. There's also a special drink, but it's just a "Ghana milk chocolate" drink which I'm pretty sure is plain old hot chocolate.

My husband picked up the chocolate caramel heart donut on his way home from work (along with donuts he knew he'd like) because he was curious to see if it was any good. I was very skeptical based on my experience with their Valentine's Day donuts. The basic donut is just a plain raised donut with no filling. The coating is some sort of high fat white chocolate glaze which is dull and waxy. There's some cocoa powder on the right corner which is meant to artfully show a dusty pattern. There's also some caramel goo that they draw loopy hearts on the donut with. Of course, if you buy a single donut and it's wrapped up like ours, it looks like just plain scribbles rather than hearts.

The donut smells like your basic donut. It was fresh and decent in terms of it's basic qualities as a baked good. That being said, that was about all it had going for it because there was very little in the way of taste. The white chocolate coating, caramel sauce and cocoa powder had almost no taste at all. They weren't sweet and mainly served to leave a kind of waxy coating in your mouth from the fats used in them (and those fats definitely did not include butter since there was no buttery flavor).

This donut is 336 calories of disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it. My husband and I each took one bite and tossed the rest in the trash. I don't know what Krispy Kreme Japan's problem is, but they need to start making specialty donuts that taste like something. They don't have to be very sweet, but they could at least have some sort of actual flavor like, say, vanilla or caramel.

Variety Friday: Japanese Krispy Kreme Christmas Donuts

Krispy Kreme all over the world offers special holiday donuts at this time of year. It's interesting to compare the fare in Japan to that in the U.S. in particular because of the notion that Japanese people don't like their sweets as sweet as Americans. Therefore, one would expect that the Japanese specialty donuts would be less elaborate and sugary than the ones back home.

Before I get to the holiday donuts talk, I'd like to mention that my research into the nutritional information of American and Japanese Krispy Kreme donuts turned up a curious bit of information. The original glazed donuts, which one might expect to be exactly the same in both countries, are actually 10% higher in calories in Japan than in the U.S. What is more, the chocolate glazed in the U.S. is 250 calories and the Japanese one 299. My guess is that this is related to fat content since Japanese sweets and baked goods often skimp on the sugar but not the fat.

The Japanese menu offers a donut that trumps any of the American offerings in terms of calories. The Thanksgiving special donut, a chestnut glacé number filled with custard, weighs in at 413 calories whereas the highest American offering are the apple fritter and caramel cream crunch at 380 each. So, even though Japanese versions of treats are less sweet, they aren't necessarily less fattening.

image taken from the Krispy Kreme Japan site

For Christmas, Krispy Kreme Japan is offering up two cranberry donuts. One, the "snow cranberry tea" variety, is filled with jelly and topped with pistachio pieces and dried cranberry fragments. The other, the "holiday cranberry ring", is little more than a plain raised donut with white frosting, sprinkles and a few dried cranberries to simulate the look of a wreath. I opted for the less elaborate cranberry ring to sample as it weighed in at 254 calories while the jelly one came in at a whopping 379 calories!

the "holiday dozen box", which appears to be the only way to get the snowman donuts, and only two of them at that (image taken from the Krispy Kreme site)

In America, they're offering a really enticing looking gingerbread crunch doughnut and snowmen donuts. The snowmen are pictured on the Japanese web site and their nutrition information for both "red" and "green" snowmen are on the .pdf for the Japanese donuts, but my husband couldn't find them for sale at the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme that he occasionally patronizes. If you'd like to see the American donuts, you can check out the web site in the U.S., though the holiday specialty items will vanish by the end of the year so you'll have to have a peak soon before the pictures are taken away.


As for the donut I sampled, it was a good donut, though generally succeeded because the basic yeast-risen donut is tasty on its own. I'll note that I didn't eat it fresh, but rather saved it for the next morning's breakfast and gave it about 12 seconds in the microwave to "wake it up" a bit. The frosting and sprinkles were just right to lightly sweeten it. The bite with the cranberries was really tasty, but just one bite. It would have been nice if this had been topped all over with cranberry fragments like the jelly version, but then it wouldn't look like a wreath.

I'd rather have had a shot at the gingerbread donut that is available in America, but I'm guessing the whole concept seems too sweet for Japan. I've noticed that the Japanese donuts are far more likely to use bits of fruit in them or to at least offer the illusion of fruit than the American ones. Though I do love cranberry, I wasn't going to eat a calorie bomb to get more of it and the donut I bought had very little of it, hence the reason I'd rather have had a chance to sample the gingerbread one.

If anyone in Japan has sampled the "snow cranberry tea" version and has the time to offer their opinion in comments, I'd love to hear them. I can't recommend that people go out of their way to try the one I did, though if you are in the mood for a plain glazed Krispy Kreme donut and want to try something a little different this time around, the "holiday cranberry ring" isn't much further off the mark and is unlikely to disappoint.

Valentine Krispy Kreme Donuts (Japan only)

Before all the Krispy Kreme haters jump on the soap boxes and start to talk about how bad the donuts are or how they are the nutritional scourge of all human civilization, and how I am a total idiot for forking over my hard-earned cash for buying these, let me say that they were a gift. Personally, the only Krispy Kremes I like are the original glazed, and even then occasionally. I actually like Mister Donut more, though I can't say that I eat donuts often or am an aficionado of them necessarily. No, my husband is the one who adores donuts. He even dreams about them from time to time, but that's a story for an entirely other sort of blog.

These donuts are on sale at Krisipy Kreme branches in Japan from January 21 to March 14. The reason the sale ends so late is because of the clever way in which Valentine's Day was essentially cleaved in two as a sweets buying fest. The Japanese have women give men sweets on February 14 and the men give women sweets on March 14 for "White Day." The donuts are meant to cover all the available holiday sweet treats territory so that Krispy Kreme doesn't have to come up with any more specialty items.

The donut on the left is a "mocha chocolate heart". It didn't fare very well in transit. You can see that the whipped cream frosting smeared all over the wax paper that was meant to keep it safe and sound. The topping is bitter chocolate cookie "crunch". The truth is that it isn't very crunchy or very bitter, but rather more firm and soft. It's like stale cookies. The frosting is coffee-flavored whipped cream and the streaks of brown coating are just some sort of coffee flavored white chocolate stuff.

The mocha chocolate heart smells like coffee and caramel, though there is no caramel in it. It's not very sweet and has a mild coffee flavor and no chocolate flavor that I could detect. I didn't take a picture of the inside of the donut because there's nothing in there but more donut. This is pretty "bready", though the yeast donut flavor certainly isn't bad. I like whipped cream-based frosting, but this was all texture and little taste. While I have no issues with a less sweet donut, I wish the flavors were more multi-layered and/or intense. I will note that a round version of this particular mix of ingredients was available at some point in Krispy Kreme Japan's history, and it was just as unimpressive in its previous incarnation.

The donut on the right is a "strawberry double heart." The pink coating, which is also like a colored white chocolate in that it is firm rather than soft like frosting or icing, is made with Polish senga sengana strawberries as are the little freeze dried bits of strawberry on one side. There's a white chocolate heart stuck on the right side, which is where the "double heart" name comes from. This donut smelled of strawberry in a good way. It also had a reasonable though relatively weak strawberry flavor including a hint of tartness. The underlying donut was fresh and yeasty, but, again, there is no filling in it. This is definitely the better of these two donuts.

Both of these donuts are 180 yen (about $2) each and not bad as long as they are fresh. However, the flavor is just really weak on both of them and the textural elements pretty "blah". I wouldn't buy these and I wouldn't recommend them over other types of more flavorful donuts from Krispy Kreme. These are clearly made for style over substance, and the mocha one seriously does not travel well, so it's unlikely to look pretty for a recipient.

Most baked goods with any sort of glaze or frosting have been altered to reduce the sugar and increase the fat for the Japanese market. One of the reasons that Japanese sweets are sometimes as high or higher in calories than American sweets despite having less sugar is the higher fat content of those sweets. Sugar, like salt, can intensify and carry flavor (which is why humans tend to like sugary and salty things). If you reduce the sugar, you've got to enhance flavor through other methods and that so often doesn't happen in Japan and Krispy Kreme joins a long line of pastry makers who haven't adjusted the flavor profile while reducing the sugar.