Eiwa Blueberry Marshmallows

I once read a little blurb in an article about a woman who had a conversation with her grandmother about food in her childhood. She said that her grandmother loved sugar cane. She said that she had a stalk of it that she kept under her pillow and would savor over time when she was a child. Her granny spoke of it as if it were the most magical and sublime food experience that she ever had. The granddaughter was so impressed by what her grandmother said about how good sugar cane was that she obtained some to try. When she got it, she found that it tasted like sugar. It wasn't the most fantastic food experience ever. It just tasted like sugar.

I remembered this story because I think about old-fashioned vs. modern sweets sometimes. I think that things like marshmallows are not as popular because they entered our food culture at a point in time when the types of sweets that we now have access to either did not exist at all (because of a lack of diverse ingredients on hand) or were not mass produced due to cost issues. How can the lowly, simple marshmallow compete with the fatty, sugary, salty, greasy complexity of a peanut butter cup?

I'm an enormous fan of all things marshmallow, but the truth is that, even I don't crave them all of the time. Since returning to the U.S., I've had more marshmallows because there is a plethora of varieties compared to Japan. I'm not only talking about the short-lived joys of a fresh, sugar-coated Peep (once they're stale, then the rainbow has gone away), but also the unique flavor offerings that come out seasonally like gingerbread or pumpkin spice marshmallows. From my childhood, incidentally, my favorite candy was Mallow Cups and I only recently came across and sampled the joys of Vallomilk. Both are pleasures I've revisited on a few occasions since coming home.

In Japan, I didn't really care for the texture and the funky aftertaste of Japanese marshmallows, so I tended to just avoid them, but I decided that it was time to give them a better chance. I was convinced both by the flavor combination of blueberry and marshmallow and the price. I found these on sale for under a dollar (100 yen) at one of the Japanese markets in our area (Marukai, I believe).

A whiff inside the bag when opened reveals the scent of fake blueberry. The marshmallows are small and soft. They are a little chewier than an American marshmallow, but less sticky. If you try to pull them apart with your fingers, they're tougher than what I'm used to.

The marshmallows themselves are overwhelmed by the blueberry jam flavoring. I don't think they're incredibly sweet on their own, but the jam inside is quite concentrated both in terms of flavor potency and added sweetness. I'd prefer a bit more mashmallow in the mix to try and offeset the nearly cloying nature of the blueberry filling.

The ingredients list starts with "corn syrup" followed by "sugar" so the sweetness is not surprising. Other ingredients include dextrose, water, gelatin, corn starch, sorbitol, concentrated blueberry juice, pectin, and citric acid. The coloring comes from beet root. As I've mentioned on my other blog, the Japanese rarely, at least in my experience, use artificial colors.

Because these are so sweet, it's no surprise that the manufacturer recommends as a serving suggestion that you pour plain yogurt over them and wait 4-5 hours. I tried this "recipe" twice. The first time, I waited about 4 hours, but it just seemed like blobs of chewy marshmallow covered with a yogurt topping. I had hoped that the moisture of the yogurt would break down the marshmallows a bit and create a different texture. I found that leaving them overnight accomplished this and it was actually quite good. It still tasted like there was candy in my yogurt but the textural blend was more enjoyable.

Frankly, I'm a bit on the fence about these. I liked them fine, but I can't see craving them or wanting to have them again. My criteria for an "indifferent" rating is that I don't mind having them, but am very unlikely to buy the same thing once more. I could see sampling another flavor, but I think one small bag of blueberry was enough.

Kanro Blueberry Candy (product information)

Some time ago, when I was still watching television on occasion, I used to see a lot of commercials for a dried blueberry that was called "iki iki ai-beri". That last part means "eye berry". I've read that "iki iki" means lively, but the truth is that I never really looked into it. All I know is that the commercial was advertising a kind of special, extra juicy blueberry which was supposed to improve your eyesight. Hate your eyeglasses? Just eat those blueberries! Actually, they never made such claims, but they did imply them.

Blueberries are supposed to be super healthy food. How do you take something pure and bursting with natural goodness and render it into junk food? You make it into candy. Kanro uses blueberry paste in the center of a hard candy to pack these candies with something which appears to be healthy but has probably been processed out of most of its real value. They recommend that you eat them at the computer at work and "relax". Personally, I'd rather sit at the computer and eat chocolate, but that likely won't improve my eyes or add the total amount of Vitamin A in my body. 

Random Picture #114

I'm pretty sure that I saw blueberry cheesecake KitKats were available in Japan in at least 4 different packages. I bought them as single stick bars quite some time ago and saw them as a regular bar with 4 fingers at one point. I also saw them in a conventional regional KitKat box. Just as I was leaving, I saw them on offer in these Mt. Fuji style boxes. The boxes are rather cute and very appealing from the viewpoint of being a souvenir from japan, but I wasn't too keen on the blueberry cheesecake KitKats when I tried them before and can't imagine these would be appreciably different. Still, I may have gone for them on "my way out the door" (leaving Japan).

Annin Dofu and Blueberry Cheesecake KitKats (Regional)

I vowed a long time ago not to seek out the regional KitKats nor to pay a premium price for them. I'm sure all of my readers will appreciate my faithfulness to this promise which has absolutely nothing to do with them and only deprives them of content they may desire. That being said, if a regional version drops in my lap at a low price, I'm not going to walk away. I may be cheap, but I'm not that cheap... yet.

My husband and I were taking a sweaty summer evening stroll and it was not the good kind of sweaty which involves inappropriate activity in a public space. It was the usual bath in a humid boggy atmosphere kind of sweaty. Anyway, he suggested that we pop into the Village Vanguard to look around at their usual array of imported food and Japanese snack oddities. It's always good to pop into one of their shops and listen to loud music that is supposed to let the patrons know how hip they are and  prime the rest of us for hearing aids in our elder years. They've been selling regional KitKats for awhile, and I guess they finally gave up on moving them so they reduced the price by half. Instead of 840 yen a box, they were 420 yen ($5.47). To this, we said, "sold", as this positions the price such that they cost almost the same as regular KitKats.

White KitKats are white. 

My husband chose the blueberry cheesecake because he'd had it before and liked it. I reviewed it before, and didn't much care for it, but figured I'd give it a try to see if this Kanto-Koushinetsu regional version was different. It turned out that it wasn't. It was exactly the same mixture of extremely subdued blueberry flavor paired with too pungent cheese flavor and overly sweet white chocolate. Each mini bar is 69 calories of disappointment, at least for me. My husband actually enjoys them, so it's all down to your tastes.

It was my adventurous spirit that compelled me to buy the annin dofu variety, which is labeled as a "Yokohama" edition. I've seen it in a lot of shops in Tokyo though, so they aren't doing a very good job of keeping it from wandering into other territories. Annin dofu is an almond jelly dessert which is actually made with apricot seeds. The Wikipedia page says that it is supposed to taste like almonds, but to me annin dofu desserts taste more like a funky fruit cocktail. That is pretty much how this tasted to me, like a very sweet non-standard fruit cocktail. It's a little unusual, but I liked it. I don't know that I'd buy it again if I had to buy a dozen mini bars at once, but I might occasionally pick up a single mini bar or a regular one if I was in the mood for something different. I wasn't over the moon about it, but I liked it fine. It gets a very marginal:

Plecia Raw Donut (rare cheese and strawberry)

Though these are called "donuts", they're not actually a donut in any way, so if you were hoping to satisfy your inner Homer Simpson, you're going to be disappointed. These are actually a cream-cheese/cream cheese pastry which requires refrigeration and has a short shelf-life which are ring-shaped. The beauty of a this shape of pastry is that the manufacturer can make it look bigger, but offer less substance.

These pastries are good example of how gelatin is the friend of pastry makers who want to offer the illusion of more without actually giving you more. It's also your friend if you want fewer calories. The gelatin mixed into the cream cheese mixture gives it a firmness without using fatty cream cheese for density.

This was my first experience with anything maybe by Plecia.  They're a maker of confectionery in Yokohama. It's a relatively young company, having been established in 1994 and has a line-up of pastries that seem to focus on the food not being quite cooked and have translations which should amuse. These two cakes are "raw" and another chocolate offering is "half-baked". There are also "runny" and "burned" puddings and pies. They also make mundane pound cakes.


In both cakes, the texture is super light, like a mixture of cream cheese and whipping cream. It's firmer than one might expect because of the gelatin. The cake doesn't lend much overall because it has gotten moist from contact with the topping. It doesn't add much flavor either, but makes a bland and sufficiently pleasant base.

Blueberry:

The first bite of topping is very mild in flavor. It's not very sweet until you reach one of the blobs of blueberry jam. Except in the spots with blueberry, it has a subtle, sweetened cream cheese flavor. The blueberry jam areas taste a lot like, well, blueberry jam. I really liked this, particularly since it is only 128 calories for something which is reminiscent of actual cheesecake.

Strawberry:

Because the strawberry is pureed throughout the cram cheese topping, this smells and tastes more strongly of berries. It really does taste a lot like someone has mixed a berry or two with the cream cheese mixture. This one was only 100 calories, but I wasn't fond of it. The strawberry flavor was too intense for me, but I think that was a personal preference and no slight about the cake itself.

Before writing this review, I had already bought 3 of these cakes, so clearly, I like them. I think if you're looking for a cheesecake-style treat which is light and low in calories, these can't be beat. However, if you want something really decadent and are indifferent to how much it causes your fat cells to inflate, you may find this a bit anemic for your tastes. Personally, I'd buy these again.

Meiji Sweets Gum Blueberry Cheesecake

There's an episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes into the Kwiki Mart and asks Apu if he has a new beer which has brew with Skittles candy floating around in it called "Skittle Brau". Of course, no such product exists, but Homer is not dissuaded. He gets a 6-pack and a bag of Skittles and makes his own candy/beer combo.

This scene comes to mind because this Meiji Sweets Gum is a mixture of gum and candy. I didn't realize that it was literally a "sweet" plus "gum". I thought it was just going to be blueberry cheesecake-flavored gum. I guess someone was thinking that gum would be better with a blob of chewy candy in the center.

I picked this up at Inageya supermarket for about 100 yen ($1.07). They also had double caramel and strawberry vanilla on offer, but I'm a sucker for cheesecake. There are 7 pieces of gum in the box, and it's 51 calories for the whole box. Unlike many types of gum in Japan, this isn't sugar-free. It is made with "sugar water", though it also includes Maltitol and other artificial sweeteners.

The cheesecake portion of this is the off-white candy in the middle and the blueberry the gum casing. The first bite has intense blueberry flavor and the cheesecake candy center follows a bit sluggishly behind. The tastes are intense and pretty good at first. The main problem is that the flavor lasts for a maximum of two minutes and dies very rapidly. The gum is soft and fine, but soon it's just jaw exercise. Clearly, this isn't made for long-term chewing. In fact, I'm not sure why this has been rolled out in gum form at all. It would seem more effective to make this a chewy candy through and through.

If this were a hard candy or chewy candy, I'd probably consider buying it again, but as gum, it's not flavorful enough for a long enough period of time. While I was happy to chew this for a few minutes and I liked the taste, I wouldn't buy it again because of the long-term flavor shortcomings.

Blueberry and Strawberry Cheesecake KitKats

The number of KitKat flavors in Japan is pretty well known by most people actually living here and abroad. In fact, I'm guessing we're not too far away from Nestlé Japan exhausting all the potential flavors and having to travel the road of the Harry Potter Jelly Belly jellybeans. That is, we'll get flavors like "sumo wrestler's sweaty salty belly" or "geisha lipstick" in the near future.

Until such a time as Nestlé Japan formulates a taste resembling things like the "emperor's belly button lint" to continue to expand its line, we'll have to amuse ourselves with the ever changing sizes and packaging that are being offered to add more variety to the KitKat line. You can now buy single finger sized bars for about twice the cost of a regular bar's contents. The cheesecake varieties I'm reviewing here were 40 yen (43 cents) each and were sold individually whereas you'd get 4 fingers for about 100 yen (around a dollar) in a regular bar.



Being a huge fan of cheesecake, I was looking forward to sampling these bars. Opening the wrappers provided further encouragement as they each smelled rather strongly of cream cheese and vaguely of their respective berry flavors. The bars look identical to one another despite being different flavors and I wondered if I'd be able to tell the difference between them if I mixed them up.

Taste, unfortunately, did not go hand-in-hand with the scent of cheesecake. I found the cheese flavor to be very subdued and mainly the bars just tasted of the sweetness of white chocolate. The strawberry bar carried some of the tartness of berries, but the blueberry one was quite weak in my opinion. All in all, these were a big disappointment for a cheesecake fan.

I wanted to test how strong the berry components were in a blind taste test so I gave my husband half of each bar and asked if he could tell which was which. He immediately discerned which was strawberry and which was blueberry, but he his impression of the intensity of the berry flavors was the opposite of mine. That is, he felt that the blueberry was more powerful. He did agree, however that the cheesecake component was very weak and mainly the bars were like white chocolate flavored with berry, though he does like white chocolate more than I.

These are not bad bars, though they are a little too sweet for my tastes. The portion control of buying these packets is very appealing, but the expense and wastefulness certainly are cause to hesitate. There was no calorie information given on the packet, but I'd guess that these are probably about the same as any other KitKats and will set you back 50-60 calories per finger. There is a list of ingredients which includes "natural cheese". Note that sometimes "cheesecake" in Japan includes things like Gouda or processed cheese and not cream cheese so it's hard to know what the cheese component in these really is, not that you could actually taste it anyway.


As a footnote to this review, I'll mention an experience my husband had with these bars. In Tokyo, it's not uncommon for certain buildings to rent their space to a seller for a few days or a week then for a new seller to rent that space. Each seller offers different items. One week it might be kitchen wares and the next a tea seller. Sometimes, they sell a potpourri of discounted items. My husband was looking around one of these short term sellers shops and saw that 30-unit cases of strawberry or blueberry cheesecake KitKats that would normally sell in convenience stores for a total of 1260 yen ($13.88) were on sale for 500 yen ($5.50). My husband wondered if they were sold off the back of a truck or something and continued to look around the shop.

The seller noticed his attention and came up and gave him two free samples. A short while later, he offered him the box for only 400 yen ($4.40). In the entire time we've lived in Japan, we've never spontaneously been offered a discount to entice us to buy. It's just not that common, at least in Tokyo. At that price, my husband decided it was worth it to buy them, though we both are still curious as to why there was such a drive to unload these. The expiration date on the box is September 2009, so it's not like they're anywhere near their sell-by date.

These KitKats are also reviewed at Snack Love.

KitKat Triple Berry

You can't tell from the picture, but this KitKat is in one of the most beautiful boxes you're going to find on a run-of-the-mill candy bar. It has a star pattern embossed across it which you can only see when the box reflects the light in just the right way. It's very sparkly and quite attractive to people who are easily impressed by shiny things.


Across the bottom of the box, it states that there is 2.8% cranberry, 1.1% blueberry, and 1.9% strawberry. On the back, it mentions that this content is included in powder form, so don't expect little bits of real fruit to enliven the taste of this bar.


Even though there is supposed to be more cranberry than strawberry, the bars smell pretty much like strawberry. It's a muted smell which seems a bit like strawberry frosting. The berry flavor is infused into the bar both in the pink filling between the wafers and the marbled white chocolate exterior.

I'm always suspicious of white chocolate-based KitKats, but this was surprisingly good. While it's a little sweeter than a regular KitKat, the berry flavors are multilayered and enjoyable. The first note is muted cranberry, followed by strawberry and finishing with the blueberry. The only thing that is missing is the sharper or sometimes sour notes of the respective berries, but I'm not sure that would have worked well in a KitKat anyway.

As with most Japanese KitKats, the box contains two packages with two fingers and I ate two fingers for my sampling. While I really liked the bars and felt the flavor was very well-balanced, I still had that throat burning sensation that one sometimes gets from having eaten candy that's too sweet. These KitKats aren't any more sugary than average (115 calories per two fingers is in line with the usual for KitKats), but the sweetness seems to build in your mouth as you eat more. Also, there's a definite cloying berry aftertaste that lingers after you eat half of the box.

This is a nice bar, and I did enjoy it, but I think it'd be better with some coffee or tea to cleanse the palate a bit between fingers. If you see it, you'll want to buy it for no other reason than it looks pretty, and it's so very Japanese looking.

This is also reviewed at Tasty Japan.

Puré Blueberry Gummy

As a kid, I don't recall ever eating a gummy bear or any of the other popular forms of gummy. In fact, the only gummy I recall were fish that could be bought as penny candy back when such a thing existed. To be fair about my age, I'm not that old. Penny candy died out before I was 10 years old and it was never really good penny candy. You could get one gummy fish for a penny or a really tiny lame gumball, but you couldn't get a Reese's miniature for anything less than a nickel.

Because I never craved gummy (or gummi, if you like) and I value my teeth too much to eat a lot of sugary candy, I rarely try such things, but the idea of something fruity caught my fancy today at the store and I found this little 46 gram (1.6 oz) bag of sweets. These candies are made by Kanro which has the tagline, "a fairytale in your mouth." I'm not sure if that's supposed to be enchanting or scary. I guess it depends on which fairytale it is. If it's the three little pigs, I'm guessing we're talking mouthwatering pork products. If it's Snow White, it could be dwarven ale (good) or poison apples (bad). I shudder to think what I'd be tasting if it's Rumpelstiltskin.

Kanro makes a lot of candy made from sugar syrup rather than sweets like cookies, cakes, or chocolates. It's also a relatively small company compared to some of the bigger guns in the Japanese confectionery business. They make hard candies and throat lozenges as well as these gummies. In fact, I've been a regular consumer of one of their herbal sugar-free lozenges during most of my stay in Japan. These lozenges are quite effective, though they still seem to have the power to make my teeth ache despite being sugar-free. These Puré brand candies appear to be the only brand of gummy they make and come in four flavors, blueberry, pink grapefruit, lemon and grape.

The English on the bag says of Puré blueberry gummy says "blueberry juice that is sweet-sour tasting with the texture of fruit." This statement is half true. These candies are sweet and sour, but the only way they have the texture of fruit is if you're talking about something which resembles thick fruit leather. These gummi feel soft when you squeze them with your finger, but are tough to bite into. It's very hard to bite one in half and then you have to chew on it for a bit to warm it up so it softens. By the time that happens, it's all nearly dissolved in your mouth.


The candies are covered in citric acid powder, but it looks like good old coarse bits of sugar. In fact, one reason I bought these is that they resembled Sunkist fruit gems. Trust me when I say the similarities are all superficial. These are nothing like a fruit gem either in taste or in texture.

When you give the bag a sniff, it smells sour and not overly fruity or perfumey. It doesn't smell much like blueberries, but it does smell a bit like some sort of fruit. Each candy is vaguely heart-shaped. When you first bite into it, you're hit full on with the sour notes, but that gives way to an increasingly sweet taste and finally a pleasantly perfume-like berry taste. The experience is very nicely multi-layered and vastly different from my experience with generally sweet American "blueberry" candy. It's as if the candy changes as you masticate it. This keeps it from being too sweet or too sour.

The ingredients for this are relatively predictable. They include sugar, water, gelatin, concentrated blueberry juice, and pectin. Vitamin C and Calcium are also added in to enhance nutritional value. Each candy is 12.3 calories and has 2.88 mg of Vitamin C. Though you hardly would scarf down the whole small bag at one go, you could easily snack your way through one throughout a day if you kept them in your desk drawer.

I didn't expect to like these much, but I really did enjoy them. They are much closer to the experience of eating a real blueberry taste-wise than I expected. While I'm still not a fan of the rather tough texture, I'll probably buy these again some time when I'm in the mood for a fruit-flavored candy and feeling reckless about my teeth. I recommend giving them a try if your run across them.