Cisco's Vanilla Cream Dacquoise Cookies

My husband spied these cookies while we perusing Family Mart convenience store ("konbini") before heading up to the counter to pay our utility bills. He picked up the last remaining bag and said they looked good, but then put them back. I had a look at the ingredients list, which started with sugar, then quickly went to eggs, shortening, almonds, and "sugar water" then flour and thought these looked like something of interest. Any time eggs or nuts are high on the list, I'm happy as that means they're generally a variation on some sort of European treat. I'm even happier if the eggs end up being part of a meringue base.

The package cost 105 yen ($1.25) for a mere three cookies. Each cookie is about 5 cm long and 4 cm wide (2" x 1.6"), so they're far from cheap despite being "konbini" fare. There was also a coffee variety and it had just one bag remaining. I don't know if this was a good sign or not, but we decided to go for the vanilla. They are made by Cisco's, a division of food producer Nissin. Previously, I had sampled and indifferently reviewed Cisco's sweet potato cookies. Each cookie is 49 calories.

I had never heard of dacquoise before buying these cookies so I didn't know what to expect aside from what we could see in the picture on the front of the bag which is misleading. The cookies are a sponge with a lightly crisp film on top filled with fatty whipped cream. They smell like vanilla and "sweetness". The cookies are tender inside and slightly spongey. The cream is soft, very, very sweet and has good vanilla flavor. It reminded me of the filling in some snack cake I may have eaten many, many years ago back home, but I can't remember which it might be.

This is a very nice little treat, but it is incredibly sweet. If you're sensitive to really sugary treats, you'll want to give this a miss, but it does make a lovely pairing with coffee and if you just eat one cookie at a time, it shouldn't be too overbearing. I truly enjoyed this and it has already been decided that we'll buy them again (likely sampling the coffee variety).

Tokyo Choco Banana Bars

Recently, one of my students said that she waited in line for an hour to buy a modified Swiss cake roll. I asked her what made it so special that it was worth the wait and she said it was because the cake was not rolled in a swirl and was essentially like an omelet full of whipped cream. She said the whipped cream wasn't very sweet, so you could eat a lot of the cake without getting full. I never did extract a reason why being able to eat a lot of fattening cake was a bonus, but I told her that I would never wait in line to buy any food, no matter how popular it was.

It's not uncommon for a particular food to become very popular as a result of being hard to get when it is initially released, and then for it to later be more fully available. Things like this Tokyo Choco Banana start out that way. First, they are sold in one place only and become popular enough for people to wait in line for them. Later, they start to open up shops in other areas and finally they vanish because everyone gets bored with them. Incidentally, I discovered that the exact cake that my student waited in line for an hour to buy was available line-free at a local station. I don't have the heart to tell her about it though.


Tokyo Banana shops are mainly in major stations around Tokyo. The number of them has been steadily growing and their products' market infiltration has reached a point where select items are carried at all-purpose high-end sweets shops. My first encounter with their products was a sign at a tony store in my area that specializes in traditional Japanese treats. I actually heard of them quite a bit sooner than that via one of my readers, Nate; he had written to me last November and mentioned that he had bought a chocolate bar with a delicious banana cream filling. At that time, I hadn't come across this candy bar because it wasn't on offer at Tokyo Banana shops at that time. Clearly, it is either seasonal or available at certain shops only.


My husband bought a box of 3 of these bars for 530 yen ($5.94) at Shinjuku station when he encountered them. He loves banana sweets, but I'm only so-so on them. The box is designed as a gift or souvenir and does not include calorie information. The web site, however, says that one 40 gram (1.4 oz. ) bar is 243 calories. Each square is about 48 calories. The ingredients are vegetable oil, sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, banana powder, maltose, lactose, skim milk, egg yolk powder, emulsifiers and flavoring.

When I unwrapped the bar, I was greeted with a heavenly chocolate smell. It really had a terrific aroma. The first bite was of very strong banana at first and extremely fine, smooth, soft milky chocolate second. On the second bite, the banana flavor becomes slightly more subdued as the taste buds acclimate to it. The texture is wonderful for those who like fatty chocolates. It has a creamy center and smooth chocolate that feels rich and decadent on the tongue.

Though I'm not a fan of banana chocolates, the texture of this really drew me in. My husband, on the other hand, found the banana flavor so intense that it came across as fake to him. I think this is the sort of treat that one might take to or not based on how strong banana flavors are perceived. This was a real borderline product on the rating. My husband would have given it indifferent, and I actually would not be inclined to buy it again, but really did enjoy it. I gave it a grudging "happy" rating because it's so high quality and I did like it, but am unlikely to purchase it again for myself due to a low affinity for all things banana-flavored.

Note that these bars can be purchased at the airport in addition to being available at scattered shops throughout Tokyo. They can also be bought on-line if you can read Japanese.

Kabaya Fresh Moist Caramel

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has ever taken a look at the average person next to me and thought there wasn't much to him or her. It doesn't have to necessarily be a matter of beauty, but it could be that you expect somehow to see a spark that would draw you magnetically to a person who you might form a beautiful friendship with. Sometimes sparks don't fly until you actually strike that rock. Until you hit it, it just sits there looking dull.

The Kabaya fresh caramel packet sat askew amongst dozens of other packets in a cardboard box with its top cut away at a slant for "display". Yaaaaawn, another packet of little buttery caramel squares. Note that the caramels in Japan are excellent for the most part, but how many buttery, tasty little cubes do I want to sample before I lose interest. Also, honestly, I'm just not a maniacal consumer of caramel. It's good, but it's not something I seek out or feel overly tempted by.


My husband is a great fan of caramel so he fished out a packet for himself, remarking that it felt nearly empty and quite insubstantial inside. He knew he wasn't getting much for his money, but we forked over 188 yen (about $1.80) for 40 grams (1.4 oz.). Note that we got this at a discount shop and the retail price is 210 yen ($2.05).

Usually, I take pictures before a package is opened, but I was so disinterested in it that I told him I wasn't going to review it and he could tuck in. When he revealed what looked like little packets full of liquid caramel which he wasn't sure how to eat, I noticed that the boring person sitting next to me was showing some spark.


There are 5 double packets of caramel goo. It exists in a state which is somewhere between melty liquid state and solid form. You can't handle it with your fingers, but it also doesn't slide around like molten caramel. It's like super soft, fresh taffy that never gets firm or hard. You're supposed to pull the packet open and then the whole thing easily peels away and you can pop it on your tongue without even handling it. The volume is small and they are relatively flat and 3.5 cm (1.4 in.) x 2.5 cm (.99 in.) so it's easy to eat all of one at once. I took a bite out of it though to see how it fared. It pulled like super soft taffy.

The texture is smooth, soft, and cool. The flavor is sweet, super buttery, and rich. Note that the first ingredient is real cream. They reminded my husband of See's caramel in Scotchmallows or their regular caramels. See's is a mid-range premium candy maker in the U.S. and this is a consumer product in Japan. He was very impressed and wouldn't hesitate to have them again if they weren't so pricey for the volume.

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.

Lotte Mexican Chocolate

A few years or so ago, the dark chocolate boom hit Japan. One could find bars which were so bitter that the only way they could be endured was with a sweet drink on the side. In fact, the instructions on some boxes explicitly said that was how the bars should be consumed. The highest concentration dark chocolate bar was 99% and you were eating baking chocolate for all intents and purposes. The benefits of polyphenols in dark dark chocolate set the boom in motion about a half year or so behind the popularity of dark chocolate in the U.S.

Lotte makes a great many of Japan's chocolate bars, both the staple finds and flash-in-the-pan types. At the moment, they have a range of fruit-based bars which I actively avoid since most such things are flavored white chocolate. They also make my favorite all-purpose (read: cheap) milk chocolate bar in Japan, Ghana. Ghana is available for 88 yen in a local market and can be seen as the equivalent of a Hershey bar, albeit with a much higher fat, glossier, and less sour chocolate. That's not an indictment of Hershey's chocolate, mind you. I like the chalkier texture and yogurt-like undertones of Hershey's chocolate, but U.S. chocolate is very different from that in Japan.

I've read good things about Mexican chocolate so I decided to give this bar a try when I saw it in one of the tonier markets in our area. It wasn't cheap at 238 yen ($2.20 USD) for 70 grams (2.46 oz.), but I guess that the good growers of cocoa in Mexico need to be paid a fair wage. Both the front and the back of the box mention that the bar is made with 100% Mexican cocoa beans. The back also tells a little story about how a Mexican man (his face is pictured on the box so you can feel closer to him) named "Barutro-san" (El-Barto?) grows cocoa in the Tabasco region of Mexico. The box doesn't say this, but apparently Tabasco grows 80% of the cocoa beans produced by Mexico.

I find it quaint and very Japanese when I see the portraits of nondescript growers on food packaging. They do this for Japanese farmers as well. Many a time, my tomato packages have been graced by the faces of the men who have no doubt been in charge of the men who worked the fields for those tomatoes.


When I turned the box over and saw the calorie count of 395 calories for this one bar, I was a little shocked as it seemed on the high side. To put that in perspective, I'll tell you that a Hershey bar is 4.8 calories per gram and this bar is 5.6 calories per gram. When I realized that this was a dark chocolate bar, I understood the situation a bit better as tons of sugar is added to off-set the bitterness and more cocoa butter is added to make it smooth. There is also probably more cocoa butter in Japanese chocolate in general, though I can't verify this for a fact. The ingredients list is: Mexican cocoa, sugar, cocoa butter, full-fat powdered milk, milk solids (not sure about this one), flavoring.

The information regarding how dark the chocolate is is given in quite small print and written only on the back. It says that it's 62% cocoa. In almost equally small print (but highlighted in yellow), it also says that there are 1280 mg of polyphenols in the entire bar, but you'd never be able to eat it all in one sitting! Well, I couldn't eat it all at once.

One other interesting thing about the box information is that there is an explanation of "fat bloom" on it. If you don't know what that is, it's when you get a grey or white substance on chocolate from temperature changes. It's perfectly safe, but does tend to make chocolate look less appetizing. I'm guessing that, given the high fat content of the bar and the hot summer, they want consumers not to complain or return the chocolate if bloom is on it. There is a specific recommendation not to store it at temperatures higher than 28 degrees C. (82.4 degrees F.) to help avoid this unpleasant situation.

The first thing I always do with new food is give it a sniff and this chocolate smells exactly like a Ghana bar, perhaps with a somewhat stronger chocolate hint. Despite being a dark bar, it's not like opening a box of cocoa scent-wise. You have to inhale pretty deeply to get any scent at all. Unlike some Western chocolates which you can smell the minute they leave the wrapper, most Japanese chocolates don't have much of a chocolate aura wafting off of them.

The bar has 8 individual blocks and is glossy. I think the smell I associate with Ghana is whatever Lotte does to their bars to make them all similarly shiny and smooth. When you bite into it, the bar has a lot of snap and breaks off very cleanly. It becomes soft on your tongue if you let it rest a short while in your mouth and you can really sense all of the fat in it. It's only a little bitter, though it does leave a bitter aftertaste. Oddly, it seems to hit you in three stages - bitter, sweet, bitter again. The balance of sweetness to intense chocolate/bitterness is actually very good. I'm not a fan of dark chocolate, so I can't say I love this bar. However, I can say that I don't hate it and I often cannot say that of other types of dark chocolate.

I'd say this is a good "gateway" bar for a milk chocolate lover who wants to wean themselves off of the bad stuff and transition to darker chocolate. It's pretty easy to eat dark chocolate and enjoyable, though it's also easy to control yourself and not eat too much at once. If it weren't so expensive, hard to find and very likely short-lived as all Japanese specialty chocolates are, I'd recommend it as a good bar to have around just to have a square or two a day for the health benefits of eating dark chocolate.