Prime Gateau Berry Cookies

Back when I was working for a company that dealt with a lot of manufacturers, I used to talk to students who worked in food sciences. Part of their work was learning how to prepare, process, and package food so that taste was preserved or enhanced. From listening to those students, I got a sense of how hard it must be to perform the proper alchemy to produce a tasty food product.


I know from experience that incorporating any sort of fruit flavor into various foods is tricky at best. Too much and you're overwhelmed by unpleasantly intense flavor and too little and the taste whispers so softly that you can't get a sense of it. You might guess that these cookies have erred on one side or another or I wouldn't be bringing the whole thing up.

These berry gateau cookies are similar to the cocoa version that I reviewed earlier. There are 8 individually wrapped cookies for about 170 yen ($1.90) a box and each cookie is about 33 calories. From external appearances, the berry cookies seem to be identical to the cocoa versions except that the cookie portion is pink.


The cookies smell of chocolate and faintly of strawberry. The cookie portion looked a bit rough compared to the nice, smooth cocoa cookies. It's as if the dough had been overworked or raggedly cut. The cookie is crisp and the chocolate on the soft side. The first taste is one of intense dark, slightly bitter chocolate along with strong, tart strawberry. The two flavors appear to be battling to overpower each other and the result is fairly unpleasant. Since the second bite is less strong than the first, it becomes more bearable after the first bite, but not necessarily good.

For my tastes, the chocolate is just too deep and intense, particularly when paired with a strong strawberry flavor. What was worse was the fact that I was left with a strong, unpleasant aftertaste that lingered for quite awhile after eating the cookies. I definitely would not buy these again.

Van Houten Prime Gateau Cocoa

I had noticed this box of Van Houten cookies at the local market for several weeks before GirlJapan encouraged me to buy them. Though I'm a fan of Van Houten, I had been resisting them because of the price, and the fact that I've had an overabundance of chocolate goodies on hand since before Christmas and I'm trying to focus more on other types of snacks for variety. However, it really doesn't take much arm-twisting to encourage me to sample something chocolate.


These are essentially a chocolate covered crispy cookie. There are 8 small cookies (about the size of a half dollar) in the box. They smell like cocoa, unsurprisingly, since that is what Van Houten does so very well. The chocolate on the outside is mildly bittersweet and the tiny cookie is super crispy and fresh. The flavor is very deep and intense. It's sweet, but not too sweet. When my husband tried it, he said that it actually tasted like a cup of hot cocoa in cookie form. Ironically, this is exactly what GirlJapan said as well in her recommendation of them. It's quite a feat really, and my hat is off to Glico for fulfilling the promise of the box's cover graphic. What is more, each cookie is only 33 calories and you don't really need to eat more than one to get a fix.

These are excellent and my only reservation is that they're slightly expensive. Eight small cookies are about 170 yen/$1.90 a box. However, these should be considered a "premium" cookie despite the fact that they are mass-produced. As a small indulgence, they are well worth the price.