Random Weekend Picture 8

My husband and I went to Inokashira Park in Kichijoji (Tokyo) to see the cherry blossoms on April 6 and took quite a few pictures. One of the shots is of a  young man grilling balls of dango. Dango are similar to mochi (pounded rice cake) and are usually made with rice flour. We didn't buy these because my husband doesn't eat this type of thing and I wasn't hungry, but there were a lot of folks walking around eating them. The idea of freshly grilled dango was very attractive to me, however.

Though I have reviewed some candy based on dango flavors, I have never actually sampled real dango. It's something I hope to get to eventually. I'm just waiting for the right situation where I'm in the mood and the flavors on offer are too enticing to pass up.

Tirol Grilled Kinako Mochi Premium

One thing I've noticed now that I've come around to a little over a year of snack blogging is that seasonal goodies that I reviewed last year are coming back around to the shops again. Most of them are in slightly different packages, but are the same products. Among the products I'm seeing reappear are kinako mochi multi-packs (strings of 10 small candies sold together) and the premium kinako mochi which I liked so much when I reviewed it last November. The kinako mochi flavors have been around as part of variety packs throughout the summer, but the premium version and 10-packs disappeared for about 6 months.


In addition to this old favorite coming back, Tirol has released a "yaki (grilled) kinako mochi" version. I love grilled kinako mochi, and will be doing a Variety Friday post about making your own real kinako mochi at some point (though my "yaki" part was a disaster) and wondered how they were going to achieve this.

The chocolate coating is a bit browner on the "yaki" version than on the regular kinako mochi candy and it has little crunchy bits in the center above the "gummi" mochi center. The bits look like chocolate cookie bits, but they're grilled rice puffs. They're crunchy and really reminded me of coffee. They not only did not add anything to this candy, but they detracted from it's attractive peanut butter-like kinako chocolate flavor. Everything that was right about this before, the flavor of the chocolate coating, the relatively tender mochi center, is still there, but the bitter little puffs spoil it.

This is a small morsel of chocolate (about 2.54 cm/1 in. square) and only has 53 calories. It costs only 40 yen (44 cents). I don't feel this was a waste in any way of my money or of the calories, but I definitely wouldn't buy this again with the regular version out there. I'm sure that there will be people who like this by itself, but I just can't get past the addition of bitter crunchy bits to something that isn't better for having them there.

This was also reviewed at Pocky Watch.