Fujiya Sweets Torte Nama Dorayaki

"Nama" in Japanese means "raw". I'm guessing that the reference in this case relates to the enormous dollop of whipped cream in the center of the dorayaki in the picture as this certainly does not appear to be uncooked in any sense of the word. Dorayaki, for those who don't remember or haven't seen my reviews of such treats, is two pancake-like slabs that sandwich a sweet jam filling. The filling is usually red beans or a mixture of beans and other things like chestnuts, pumpkin, or sweet potato. I favor the chestnut ones, but the red bean ones are fine as well.

I have never had one that came with a whopping pile of whipped cream, but the idea certainly holds appeal. My husband is a sugar hound and I'm a fat fiend. He'll take the heavily frosted things and I want the stuff that's slathered in whipped cream. In fact, I'm pretty sure that gelatin was invented not as a way of using bones from animals, but rather to offer a preferred conveyance for whipped cream. Gelatin as a dessert is so lame that no one would blame you for adding a little something to make it better. I believe this is also the reason people invented "Jell-O shots". Knowing that you are getting intoxicated makes it feel more worthwhile.

Getting back to this candy, I've reviewed a few of the Sweets Torte line before and am very likely to review more in the future. The concept is to recreate a particular confection and offer up both the flavor and texture elements of the food being imitated. It's done using multiple layers of chocolate, jammy fillings and cookies. The possibility that you're going to get something special is pretty good, but there's no guarantee.

The first bite reveals most of the anko (sweet bean paste) notes that you've going to get before the sweet and rather soft chocolate flavor merges in and dominates. The cookie base is slightly crispy, but not as brittle as other versions of this that I've tried have been. The flavors don't reveal themselves in layers so much as in a melange which is mainly overwhelmed by milky bittersweet chocolate. I don't get any sense of the flavor or texture of a dorayaki-style pancake at all. That is where the biggest disappointment comes from. If that is not present in some fashion, then this is just really a mildly adzuki-tinged chocolate.

It's actually pretty tasty, but only if you're looking at this as a chocolate and not as something which is supposed to be unique. I paid around $2 (200 yen) for this small box with five candies about the size of a very large coat button. In terms of value for the experience, it's a very bad buy. So, while I can say I will be more than happy to eat the rest of these, I would not buy it again as it's just not special enough for the price.

Chichibu Jizou-san Sesame bean cake

I don't travel much in Japan anymore either for pleasure or for business. There are several reasons for this. The big one is that I've been in Japan for a long time and therefore have already spent hours and hours of my life exploring many places. It's rather a shame in some ways because when I used to crack open all of the nooks and crannies of various areas, I never paid heed to the food. I was mainly in it for the second-hand record shopping, looking for rare collectibles to add to my personal booty or to sell to others (and this was before eBay).

Fortunately for me, one of my students travels for business and has been kindly picking up regional sweets for me to try. I'm immensely grateful for her efforts and this lovely bit of manju (traditional Japanese sweets usually made with beans) is courtesy of her. She got it in Chichibu. That's a city which rests in a bowl created by surrounding mountains in what might be considered a suburb of Tokyo called Saitama. In the summer, my student tells me that this topography causes Chichibu to be a sweltering nightmare. She bought these bean cakes in a nondescript 6-pack while killing time and sweating. I'm the lucky recipient of one of them.

This picture was lightened a bit to show texture and composition better.

The picture on the package is a mascot for Chichibu, O-jizuou-san (地蔵さん).  The cartoon pretty much tells you that this is the name of a Buddha representation. I don't know how much these cost, but I don't think they were outrageously expensive or very cheap. If I had to guess, I'd think 6 of them cost between 500-800 yen ($5.77-$9.22). The ingredients list included sugar, sesame seeds, and red beans.

These smell heavenly, like sesame seeds but with a real nutty and rich aroma. The texture is also lovely. It has a moist cake with an almost fudge-like bean filling (minus the sense of fattiness). The beans are very finely ground and form a ganache-like filling. Based on the sheer volume of black sesame seeds, it's no surprise that this is very flavorful. There's a good rich sesame flavor complimented by the mildly sweetened red beans.

The sesame adds a great nutty flavor and the occasional meaty nut-like textural element. The only drawback is that the seeds are whole and you can get them stuck between your teeth. However, this is really a great presentation of classic Japanese sweets elements (red beans and sesame).

My student called this a "grandmother's snack" and she said that she didn't feel that it was really exclusive to Chichibu. She felt that one might be able to find similar cakes in other areas of Japan. I'm sure she's right, but I don't know if they are all going to be as well made as this one was.

Onagaya Taiyaki

Taiyaki is a traditional Japanese sweet made with what looks like and is similar to pancake or waffle batter. It has a filling which is often made of beans or custard in my experience, but can be any from a wide variety of fillings including savory ones.



There's a taiyaki place not too far from my home which I have walked past many times, so I've seen the process hundreds of times. There are two fish-shaped mold pans (like a large muffin tin with fish-shaped holes) which batter is poured into and a dollops of filling are placed in the center of one side. The two sides are then joined together and the batter is completely cooked and the filling warmed up or melted.

Recently, we got a flyer for a taiyaki place, Onagaya, opening up in our neighborhood. This one produces taiyaki which is a little different than usual because it is white and made with tapioca flour-based batter instead of pancake-style batter. They sell a great many varieties including black and red bean, grean tea, blueberry cheese, strawberry cheese, and mango cheese. We decided to sample their unique taiyaki and chose white bean, custard, and chocolate.

The texture of these is rather rubbery and the outside feels tacky, but is not actually sticky. The inside is good quality, sticky and hard to chew and like mochi. You have to be very careful to chew it well to prevent choking. The chewy shell was a little on the thick side in these sweets. I had to make an effort to take small bites and these were tough to bite off and cut in half with a knife. If you have a chance to sample these, don't underestimate the danger of eating them too fast or the difficulty of chewing them.

from left: chocolate, custard, white bean

custard: The vanilla pudding in this is rich and smooth. It has a nice vanilla flavor and is at the right sweetness level. The mochi mainly adds its texture so it was a pretty nice combination.

white bean: This was somewhat of a disappointment. It was good, no doubt, but the beans didn't have a strong flavor aside from sweetness. Both the mochi and the beans are mainly lending textural elements so you're getting two interesting textures, but a very bland flavor profile.

chocolate: Like the custard, this had a good pudding center which was creamy, smooth and rich with a bittersweet bite.

All of these were good, high quality and well made. The main issue was with the combination of tough, chewy mochi-like outer shell with those fillings. If the shell had been much thinner, I think this would be a definite repeater, but chewy, tough wrapper with a squishy filling isn't really a match made in heaven. One of these days, I hope to do a review of the more traditional taiyaki from our local shop to contrast the experience I had with these ones.

Kinako Ohagi KitKat

This is a shiny new KitKat that was released yesterday. My husband came home from the gym brandishing it. I normally regard all things kinako with happy anticipation, but I've got two KitKats (sports drink and vegetable - reviews to come in the near future, hopefully) in the fridge waiting for sampling, so I was a little less excited about another being added to the pile. Nonetheless, it looked interesting and I would have purchased it if I had come across it first.


The traditional Japanese sweet pictured on the box is a ball of what looks like rice-based cake (mochi) covered in kinako powder and filled with red beans. I wasn't familiar with "ohagi" and didn't come up with anything definitive when I did a search, but I believe that it is a sweet which has a different name depending on the time of year. In fall, it's called "hagi" and has other names including botamochi. "Hagi" comes from some fall flower, as best I can tell.


The bar smells vaguely of kinako, which isn't surprising considering that the kinako is infused with the chocolate on the outside as well as the cream between the wafers. The first bite is mostly milk chocolate, but the chaser is highly reminiscent of the dreaded Oshiruko KitKat. That taste is a bit of a woodsy, vaguely "mossy" flavor. It's hard to describe, but it is what you think forest dirt might taste like. I realize that this flavor is not the kinako, but the mochiko puffs that are embedded in the chocolate. Both the Oshiruko KitKat and this one have those puffs in common.

This wasn't bad, and I will probably eat the rest, but I definitely wouldn't repeat it because of the flavor of those puffs. The overall flavor is okay, and I'm betting I'd love this if they took out the mochi puffs, but they just ruin the finish for me.

This is also reviewed at Jen's KitKat blog here.