Fujiya Milky Mont Blanc Chocolate

I have reached an important conclusion about the Fujiya brand's versions of chocolate. Well, it's not important in a global sense. It certainly isn't going to impact climate change, cure cancer, or end starvation. It's also not important in a local sense. It won't end the California drought or lower the local taxes. No, it's only important in helping my readers relate to the status of this particular brand in Japan relative to the status of a similar brand in the U.S. Saying it like that sort of undermines the sense of my conclusion having any importance at all, even in my estimation. Oh, well.

At any rate, despite the less than earth-shattering nature of my revelation, I will finally offer it. Are you ready? Fujiya is the Hershey's of Japan. By that I mean that they make sub-standard chocolate products which are popular mainly because their taste is familiar, their packaging and logo can be related to, and their mascot a long-standing icon in the culture. Their products aren't great, but people know them so they like them.

This is not exactly a criticism of Fujiya. I like Hershey's kisses despite their chalky texture and sour milk/yogurt-like flavor profile and less than endearing chocolate notes. You can enjoy something and recognize that it's not the greatest quality version of that item on the market. Bad pizza is a case in point. I love bad pizza because it is familiar to me as someone whose mother would purchase an enormous quantity of bread-like squares with some form of ketchup and vegetable-based cheese-like product on it. It was a fast food meal from our freezer that provided a welcome alternative to the disgusting sloppy mess of canned vegetables, stacks of day-old white bread, and meat stuffs cooked into a grey, tough mass that my mother used her very special culinary skills to create. Yes, I like things because they were introduced to me in my childhood when I had a very different frame of reference.

The chocolates look cute with the adorable little embossed faces.

You may guess from that introduction that this box of twelve "Milky" mont blanc (a chestnut-paste-based dessert pictured on the lower right of the product's box) candies let me down. Indeed, it did. There is a particular flavoring in all of the Milky chocolates which I am not a fan of. I don't know what it is, but it is like the sour milk flavor in Hershey's chocolates. You either like it or you don't, and I don't.

The bigger sin than this weird taste is that the chestnut/mont blanc component, which was the part of this candy which compelled me to buy it at Nijiya market for about $2.20 (224 yen), is quite weak. It tastes a little like caramel at first, but it dissipates too quickly to really detect any greater depth of flavor. Mostly, you're just getting the very soft, fatty weird chocolate exterior. I should note that this is not because it is fake chocolate, or at least I think it's not. Fujiya uses cocoa butter and cacao mass. It also uses vegetable oil and "artificial flavor", which may account for the strange taste that I dislike. This is not horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll turn to this when I'm out of other candy or want a tiny portion (each square is 20 calories) and only have big amounts on hand.

I have to try to remember that I don't care much for Fujiya's products. I buy them so infrequently that I forget and make mistakes like buying this. That being said, the chestnut part would probably have sucked me into buying it even if I remembered Fujiya's freaky chocolate recipe. Besides, if I keep eating it, I may get used to it and actually learn to like it. It worked with Hershey's, after all. 

Mr. Ito Marron (Chestnut) Tart Cookies

A few days after Christmas, I wanted to make the rounds of the three major Japanese markets in my area (Marukai, Nijiya, and Mitsuwa) to see if any of them had their New Year's preparation on. I was very disappointed to see that they had very little in the way of traditional New Year's decorations and the only food options were extremely expensive "o-sechi ryori" deals in which you'd have to pre-order your repast for the holidays. The only exception was over-priced balls of shelf stable kagami mochi and a woman selling roasted chestnuts outside of Mitsuwa several yards from a man roasting those chestnuts.

As my husband and I walked near Mitsuwa, he said he smelled something which he strongly associated with living in Tokyo. It was a burning smell that we both recalled being similar to that which came around tea shops that roasted their own leaves. In this case, we were smelling the roasting of the chestnuts. It resembled burnt coffee.

I've written before that roasting is a bit of a unifying flavor force. One of the reasons that kinako (toasted soy flour) tastes a bit like peanut butter is that both the soybeans and peanuts are roasted. I've learned that things made with chestnut often take on an almost coffee-like flavor because of their roasting as well. When I gave one of these cookies a pre-tasting sniff, the first thing I thought of was coffee with strong caramel notes.

My nose did not lie to me. These have both coffee- and caramel-like notes to them, though there is also some chestnut flavor. The outer tart is crumbly and like a butter cookie. It provides some of the flavor, though in fairly muted margarine and flour flavors. It's not especially sweet, though not really bland. It brings more of a textural contrast and a balancing of the sweeter, softer, and just short of gooey filling. In fact, the filling's sweetness and texture are pretty perfectly complemented by the cookie base. The only thing I could say is "wrong" with it is that it would be nice if the ratios were slightly different. There could be a little less cookie.

That's in no way an indictment. I liked this quite a bit. This cost about $3.00 at Marukai market and I felt it was slightly expensive for 8 small cookies (each is about the diameter of an Oreo). My husband actually had to talk me into spluring on them and I'm glad he did. Though I probably wouldn't dash out and stockpile them, I was happy to buy them and look forward to eating the rest. They aren't exactly a chestnut lover's dream, but they're fine cookies nonetheless and a good shake-up to the holiday parade of gingerbread, pumpkin, and sugar cookies that I experience at this time of year.

Bourbon Marron Blanchul

I've been reading a book about the nature of good and evil, and, no, I'm not going to talk about how food is "good" or "bad" based on its nutritional content because we all know that isn't going to have a happy ending on this blog. The book talks about a large number of studies conducted on babies in order to determine if we are born with our sense of morality or if we learn it. The jury will be forever out, but early results indicate we are not born as tabula rasa (blank slates), but come with some basic sensibilities or inclinations.

The reason I mention this book is that the studies are discussed in terms of how valid what they are measuring is based on how the study is designed. For example, to see if babies like "good" or "bad" things, an animation using colored shapes (red square, blue triangle, yellow circle) was used in which on shape either helped or hindered another while it traveled up a hill. The writer labors to let the reader know that the colors and shapes were varied in order to be certain that the babies didn't like a certain color or shape, but rather liked the shape that pushed the other up a hill and disliked the one that blocked it.

How you look at something matters as much, if not more, than what something actually is. Truth is not nearly as objective as people believe it is because there is always a perspective that may be as valid as what you see as an absolute fact. The people who designed the original experiments probably just thought shapes were enough to take away any bias on the part of babies while allowing for discriminating features, but then others came along and said they saw the baby's preferences differently. The experiments had to be refined to eliminate all possible interpretations other than the one which said babies like helping things more than harming things.

The interesting thing about studies like this and analyses is that how something is conceptualized is highly variable. In Japan, I often had this difficulty with students who tried to translate concepts from their language to ours. Some of my students called sembei a "cracker" and some called it a "cookie". Since sembei are both sweet and savory, hard and dense, and light and airy, it is difficult to say any particular translation is correct. The Japanese conceptualize sembei as these crispy things made of rice and don't need to break them down into sub-categories. However, Western folks don't tend to see "crackers" as something sweet and I wonder if it is impossible for someone to be given a frosted sembei and think it was some bizarre Japanese "cookie" rather than a "cracker".

The reason this thought came to mind was that I was looking for today's item on Bourbon's web site so that I could get more information about it. It turned out that locating it was quite a byzantine task. Is it a cookie? Is it chocolate? Is it candy? Each is a thin, delicately crispy plank with a large amount of chestnut chocolate filling between. The box calls it a "blanchul", which sounds French, but I couldn't find anything that explained what that might be. In fact, searches just turned up more varieties of "blanchul" that are sold by Bourbon.

At any rate, I don't know how Bourbon sees these, but I checked "biscuits", "chocolate", "small box biscuits", "chocolate snack", and "snacks" (long shot as this is usually a catch-all for salty things) and I could not locate the damn things. What is it that Bourbon sees these as? Well, it turns out that they see them as a limited edition release that came out at the end of August that no longer warrants addition on their web site... so much for perspectives on the truth and other lofty thoughts that don't belong in a snack blog anyway.

Getting to the business at hand, which does belong on a snack blog, these are excellent cookies. They are sweet, crispy, and have a taste which is reminiscent of caramel and coffee. The "coffee" aspect comes from the roasting of the chestnuts. The caramel probably has to do with warmed sugar and butter aspects. It doens't taste strongly of chestnut, but tastes quite good nonetheless. The box says that 10% is chestnut, which really isn't an enormous amount, but it all works nonetheless.

I loved these and felt that they were a perfect fusion of cookie and candy. They may be on the sweet side for some, but, to me, that just encourages portion control. Each cookie is only 22 calories and packs enough of a punch that you aren't going to want to gobble a bunch down at once. I don't know how much longer these will be on the market, though chestnut is an autumn/winter flavor so I'd wager they have another month or two. I found them at Nijiya for $2.19 (about 225 yen). In Japan, they're 130 yen ($1.34). They were well worth what I paid for them and I'd buy them again.

Shirakiku Dorayaki (with chestnuts)

During the last eight months of my time in Japan, I taught a sweet old lady who used to bring me gifts on a regular basis. She told me that her favorite sweet was dorayaki. This was a woman who, when I told her that I was leaving Japan, started to cry and continued to do so throughout most of the remainder of the lesson. I learned from that experience to tell my students about my departure at the end of the lesson.

Because this woman was so emotional about my leaving and so sweet to me, I always associate this particular Japanese treat with her. I was her favorite teacher - when I told her that I'm sure she'd find another very nice teacher when I was gone, but she said, "but, I love you!" - and this was her favorite snack. I have to say, given how hard my departure was for her, I feel a little guilty every time I see dorayaki. It's not a happy association, but it is a reminder that teachers are not just monkeys who entertain in English to the Japanese people who they associate with. That's just who we are to other foreigners who have no respect for us.

I realize that's a bit of a downer to start a post off with, but they can't all be about mascots with large crotch plates or delirious yet non-drug inspired stories about other mascots. No, no. Sometimes, this is serious business despite the sugar- and salt-drenched nature of my work here.

For those who don't recall from my other single review of dorayaki, these are pancake-like cakes with red bean paste in the middle. Mine promised to be studded with lavish and large bits of chestnut as well. All of this was available at the sale price of $2.99 (about 300 yen), which is about as cheap as dorayaki ever gets around here. Usually, these go for $5-6 a pack in my area.

One of the reasons that I haven't reviewed dorayaki much in the past is that I have a lack of love for the type of cake on the exterior. It tends to be dry and sticky. It's supposed to be modeled on or similar to castella, which I am not a big fan of. This particular version does have the tacky exterior of castella, but it's not as dry inside. In fact, the cake portion was fluffier than usual and that made it much more enjoyable.

The filling though, was not quite as promised. I realize that this is a smallish picture for detail, but there is not an enormous collection of chestnut pieces in there. The illustration may show them in there like nuggets in a gold miner's pan, but they are pretty thoroughly integrated in the real deal. That doesn't mean this was bad. The red bean jam filling is actually quite tasty. It doesn't have as many large, un-mashed beans as these sometimes do, but it is slightly coarse in texture. I've had better anko, but this is absolutely not bad anko. The sweetness balance between the somewhat bland exterior and sweet interior is quite good. I also enjoyed the textural contrast between the cake and filling.

This is not the best dorayaki to ever come down the pike, but it was certainly very tasty and brought a nice sense of nostalgia as well as an enjoyable tea time. If you're a fan of red bean sweets and have never tried these, this is a good and relatively economical place to start. If you like this, then you can move up the scale to something handmade from a Japanese sweets shop (if you have access to one). I'd certainly have these again.

Karel Capek Marron Tea (product announcement)

Year-round, we can buy nearly any kind of nut roasted, salted, or dried in markets. You can even get them in convenience stores. For reasons I'm not sure of, chestnuts have never taken off in America the way they have in Asia. This may have something to do with the fact that they can't be gobbled down by the handful with beverage and are a bit moist and often vacuum packed. This doesn't explain why they haven't penetrated American cuisine as deeply as they have Japanese (and I know what you're all thinking after reading that because I know you all have minds that are nearly as filthy as mine).

Chestnuts are a very healthy, relatively low calorie nut. They're creamy and similar to sweet potatoes in texture. So, why aren't we eating more of them? Well, this article in Serious Eats speculates that they fell out of favor when trees started dying due to blight. That writer believes that they were forgotten and never made their way back into people's regular diets. Personally, I think that people are too lazy to do what it takes to make dishes with them (and they aren't great just by themselves as they can be slightly bitter) and too conservative in their eating habits by and large for them to be popular.

All of this is my lamenting that chestnut, or "marron" as they're called in Japan and France, and chestnut-flavored items are so rare here. When I saw this new tea by Karel Capek, I wished very much to be able to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, even if I still lived in Japan, it would require some effort as I'd have to go to Musashino to visit their store (not a small hike from where I used to live) or do mail order. Chances are, appealing as this tea sounds, I wouldn't have troubled myself to do either. I guess that also speaks to why chestnuts aren't more popular. If even someone who loves them as much as I do can't be bothered to make some efforts to get goods made with them, then they probably aren't going to sell especially well.

Adachi Sangyo Chestnut Monaka

Sorry, I managed to lose my pictures, but the manufacturer's is much nicer anyway.

If you search my archives, you will see that I have only reviewed a "monaka" sweet twice. Both times, I was reviewing ice cream because that was the proper context into which I personally believed monaka belonged. For those who don't know, and there's no reason why you should, monaka is often called a "wafer" and is similar in texture and flavor to the cake cones that your mom buys as inadequate receptacles for a scoop of ice cream. That is to say, they taste like nothing and have a spongy texture. I swear that the vast majority of cake cones sold in America these days are not for holding ice cream, but rather for baking novelty cupcakes.

My ambivalence toward monaka was lifted recently when I saw a package of 3 chestnut monaka treats on sale at Nijiya market for $2.49. Most of the bean/chestnut paste sweets there are massively over-priced and I have been hankering for chestnut for quite some time so this lured me into the monaka world.

The truth is that not all monaka are created equal. While I've had some which are the texture (and taste) of Styrofoam, the case on these was rather different. Yes, it is still essentially flavorless, but it is super flaky and almost wispy. It flaked like super fine pastry instead of made my misaligned teeth attempt to tear it asunder. I can't say I loved it, but I can say that it didn't in any way detract from my enjoyment of the filling inside, and the filling is really what this is all about.

Inside of the flower-shaped wafer is a generous amount of bean paste with bits of chestnut mixed in. It is rather surprisingly sweet for a Japanese traditional treat. By the end of one cake (which is all I can eat at one sitting), it was just on the edge of cloying without going over. Honestly, it made my teeth hurt even with coffee to drink between bites. The texture was oddly chewy in spots, which I imagine was something about the rather roughness of the puree.

Despite how sweet this was, I really liked it. I could have used more chestnut and less red bean flavoring, but I really enjoyed the delicate texture of the monaka coupled with the jam. The flavor was good with the chestnut, if not shining through, cutting out the intense "beaniness" which you sometimes experience with anko.

Note that the nutrition information I was given was a bit of a cheat. There are 3 cakes in the package, but the calorie information is given for 4 servings of 84 calories. Each is actually 112 calories. Since the ingredients list is headed by "sugar", neither the sweetness nor calories are a shock. Beans, which by weight are surely a huge part of this, is 4th on the list. That's a lot of sugar!

The company that makes these is Adachi Sangyo, and I was frankly surprised that they have a web site as many of smallish makers of traditional sweets in boring packaging never put up a web site. They make a small range of snacks which are all very much "Japanese". The focus is on monaka, daifuku, dorayaki, and jelly (gelatin) treats. If I were in Japan still, I'd keep my eyes peeled for their chestnut daifuku because it looks pretty awesome. Unfortunately, even if I were still there, I'd be unlikely to locate them as this is one of those businesses that has limited distribution. One thing I definitely learned is that being in the thick of things in Japan is no guarantee of finding a particular Japanese release. Some things are easier to find here than they were there, quite frankly.

Though I really liked these, and I'd buy them again for the same $2.49 (214 yen), I'm not sure others with different tastes would share my enjoyment of them. Monaka is, in my opinion, a bit of an acquired taste texturally, even good monaka. Bean jam is even more so, and this is pretty sweet stuff. Nonetheless, I'd buy it again.

Tochinomi Daifuku (chestnut and red bean)

People have been telling me about various "Japan Towns" since I returned to the U.S. I'm not sure what I expected when I heard about such areas, but it really was not what I experienced. I guess that I expect "Japan Town" to feel like, well, Japan. That doesn't mean I expect that Japanese people will be milling about, staring at their phones like zombies and gawking at the white girl with piles of red-blonde hair. The truth is that, I am not sure what was missing, but I think that the atmosphere created by the crowds, cramped spaces, the frenetic activity of employees trying to look like they're performing their tasks perfectly, the constant cleaning and tidying, and the conversations in Japanese.

I've been to two "Japan Towns" since coming back home. The first was in San Jose, and I had the misfortune to go there on a Monday when, apparently, it is mainly shut down. This was a big disappointment because one of the reasons I went there was to visit their traditional sweets shop, Shuei-do. I'm not sure, but they appear to have vanished from the Japan Town web site and may have gone out of business. All I know is that the Japan Town in San Jose was so tiny that I haven't been motivated to go back on another day.

The other Japan Town that I went to recently was in San Francisco, and it has more to offer, but is still largely just a shopping arcade plus a few other shops located near the Peace Pagoda. It is definitely more interesting than the San Jose equivalent, but not as much as I'd hoped. I think I simply expect too much. As an oasis of "Japan-ness" in the U.S., it's actually pretty good. There are a lot of Japanese restaurants, several Japanese stores including a bigger, nicer Daiso than the one I frequent, a gaming arcade, and some sweets and grocery stores. However, it's all pretty streamlined. You don't get much of a real ethnic feel from it. There aren't little grubby mom and pop shops for the most part (as I hear you may experience in China Town). Of course, the Japanese aren't exactly known for doing "grubby". 

The best part for me was Benkyodo, a place selling hand-made Japanese sweets, and Nippon-ya. Nippon-ya is where I procured today's snack for review. The latter offers boxed sweets which are pretty much the same as those sold in train stations, the airport, and souvenir shops around Tokyo. It is the sort of thing I thought I'd never encounter after leaving Japan. I was a kid in a Japanese candy store when I say stacks of gift-wrapped boxes of sweets topped by the usual plastic display of samples with cutaways to show you what was inside.

There were so many options and I wanted to buy them all, but I can't really justify doing so when I am the only one who is likely to consume the contents. The prices were in the $9-$10 range for boxes with 16-24 pieces. This is incredibly reasonable and in line with the average prices in Japan. Most of the time, these cost about 1000 yen ($11.21) per box in Japan, often more than that. Someone on Yelp said that they felt these were "expensive", and they may appear to be so by U.S. standards, but I was more than happy to fork over $9.25 for a box of 20 small daifuku.

I agonized about what flavor to buy since there were many that looked appealing, but ultimately went for chestnut since it is one of my seasonal favorite. I figure the fruit flavors are likely to stick around until spring or summer, and this will vanish with the cold weather. The display promised chestnut bits in red bean paste with a hint of caramel. As you can see from the cutaway above, there aren't any chestnut bits to speak of in the one that is shown here. This was the third one I ate, and I haven't found any pieces in any of them. 

The flavor balance is definitely heavy on the mochi and red bean side and there is absolutely a hint of caramel. The chestnut flavor is very subtle, and you actually have to be looking for it. Overall, the flavor profile is not intense, but tends to settle in slowly. These are sweet enough without going overboard. I only wish there was a stronger chestnut component. The ingredients list starts with "sugar", followed by rice, and red bean and only then does it get to chestnut followed by emulsifiers and caramel. You can see what it's not so big with the chestnut. 

The main reason for selecting daifuku in my opinion is the interplay of textures, not so much the strength of the flavors. The soft chewy pillow of mochi contrasts with the smooth paste inside. This is light on the filling, but the mochi is fresh and soft. It's definitely very much on par with relatively shelf stable mochi in Tokyo. When I say "relatively shelf stable", I mean that there's an expiration date in a few months, not next year. This one expires on March 2, 2013. 

I like these, but I can't say that I adore them. I have no regrets about buying them and will enjoy eating them slowly but surely. They absolutely remind me of some of the Japanese sweets I purchased in Japan in that not every one was exactly what I wanted it to be, but they all tended to be decent enough. The main failing in these is not enough filling and not enough chestnut. They're good, but they could have, in my estimation, "should have", been better.

Chestnut Pucca

Despite my initial reservations about the show, I found that I learned to love the T.V. series "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". In Japan, incidentally, Fox used to promote it as "Buffy, the cross lover." Fortunately, they gave that promotional slogan as it made sound like she was doing something impure with a crucifix rather than running around stabbing vampires with bits of sharpened wood. 

A lot of fans of that T.V. series felt that the secondary character of "Willow", played by Alyson Hannigan, was more attractive, more interesting, and generally a more appealing part of the show. She wasn't the name character and more people were familiar with Buffy, but she had a quality that those who were paying attention appreciated. I personally had no favoritism, but this situation, in which a more widely-known character is actually of lesser quality than a secondary character, reminded me of the standing of Pucca in the Japanese snack world.

The "Buffy" of Japanese pretzel snacks is "Pocky", but Pucca is a much better presentation of a similar concept. Pocky dips the stick in flavored coatings, Pucca has a crispy pretzel shell full of flavored cream. In my opinion, Pucca carries a much better, earthy rye flour pretzel flavoring and the concentration of the filling inside provides for a stronger burst of flavor. The shell is very crispy and delicate and provides a better contrast (and crunch) than a Pocky stick. 

The only question about this presentation of Pucca for me was whether it was going to do right by me in terms of the chestnut filling. Mainly, was it going to convey the essence of chestnut and be properly, but not overbearingly, sweet. I'm pleased to say that it hits the nail right on the head in terms of conveying a creamy chestnut flavored enhanced with vanilla. The filling is a lot like the cream in an Oreo, though it's a bit more solid. 

You can find Pucca all over the place, and this version will probably be around until the weather turns warm again. It's usually 100 or so yen per box ($1.21) and each box is 46 grams (1.6 oz.). The entire box has 241 calories. While this isn't my absolute favorite Pucca (that honor stays with the original chocolate version), it is a very tasty variation. If it were just a little salty or a little less sweet, it'd be getting a "very happy" rating. As it is, it's still good, but just avoids being great. 

Gateau du Mont-Blanc KitKat

Lately, KitKat offerings have been uninspired yawn-fests. With the exception of the  Tohoku special Zunda KitKat, it's been a steady parade of dark chocolate, white chocolate, and strawberry offerings with the occasional re-issue of a seasonal flavor. If Japanese KitKats were a television show, it'd be a sitcom in which each week the story is basically the same but the characters crack the same types of hackneyed jokes or a boring re-run. The show would be amusing enough on occasion that it'd manage to stay on the air, but generally keep viewers out of a sense of familiarity rather than the show's true entertainment value.

When I saw this box of Mont Blanc KitKats in a Natural Lawson convenience store, I felt like I was seeing the most enticing "preview" that I'd seen in a long time. Though this is not the most creative flavor idea for Japan (there are plenty of mont blanc treats here), it is still novel enough to get this lover of chestnut sweets excited. I forked over my 168 yen ($2.20) and prepared for what I hoped would be a novel experience.

A sniff revealed coffee and caramel notes. This is fairly typical for chestnut sweets because the roasting of nuts often causes a similar aroma to that of roasted coffee beans. The  caramel scent, unfortunately, comes from the artificial flavoring that is used. These have an intense sweetness and the finish is definitely of chestnut, but the first hit really is more like fake caramel. The chestnut element is gotten from powder rather than actual chestnuts.

This is an okay, albeit very sweet KitKat. I wish the depth of flavor were better. This might have been achieved by dialing back the super sweet aspects, but this is a candy bar and a white-chocolate-based one at that. Real mont blanc cakes are sweet as well, but not as overpowering as this. They also have a richness that they get from the fatty filling which is utterly absent in this bar. Though I will finish the box, I wouldn't buy this again.

Bourbon Marron Blanche

The temperatures may still be hitting the high 90's on a daily basis,  but as far as Japan is concerned, autumn has arrived. You can tell this by the fact that fashion victims are already donning their fur-lined Ugg boots and wearing sweaters and jackets designed to keep bones from catching a chill (as opposed to the thin ones worn to protect delicate pale skin from evil tanning rays). I know because the sweets varieties are starting to change. The rows of "ice lemon" are being replaced by sweet potato and chestnut.  Apparently, we need to focus on roasting tubers and nuts despite the fact that every day is a slog through an overheated bog.

All of that whining about the weather aside, with the equinox coming up (Sept. 23), the weather may actually be turning from "cook on high" to "slow simmer" soon. And, of course, I'm very happy to have the fall line of treats on the shelves. I'd probably trade them all for about a month less of sweltering heat, but that's not an offer that has been made to me so I'll settle for trying this marron (chestnut) cake.

I found this at Inageya supermarket for 198 yen ($2.59) for 6 tiny little cakes.  Each is only about 5 cm x 4 cm (about 2" x 1.5") and packs a pretty decent calorie punch for that size at 103 calories per cake. The cakes are a multi-layered affair with a "fluffy" yellow cake base with a "fluffy" chocolate cake on top of it. The chocolate layer has bits of chestnut and another layer of yellow cake with a drizzle of chestnut "chocolate".

The construction is sophisticated and one would hope would add a depth of flavor from the various layers. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work particularly well in this regard. Rather than each component bringing in different flavors on the tongue, it all seems to come together as a melange of mild chestnut flavor (from the coating on top), weak chocolate, and general sweetness. The chestnut pieces are too tiny and scarce to really get much play on the taste buds and enhance the flavor and the yellow cake seems to be pretty much flavorless. There are some interesting textural inter-plays with the soft cake, chestnut pieces, and slightly crispy drizzle on top, but this is undermined by the fact that the cake is clearly prepared for a long shelf life and has that moist but dry feeling that such cakes often have.

This isn't a bad bit of cake at all, but it's just not particularly great either. If I could have bought a small pack with two or three of these, I wouldn't have regretted it, but I'm not sure that 6 of them isn't more than I require given the relatively low quality of the taste experience. I wish the cake were actually "fluffy" or had more flavor, that there was a creamy filling of some sort, that it was a bit less sweet, or the chestnut flavor were just more robust. I'll finish this box, but it's going to take awhile and it's going to be more about a texture craving (for cake) than about being over the moon about the flavor.

Lotte Toppo Marron Cake Sticks

 Toppo is Lotte's answer to Glico's Pocky. To avoid looking like a complete copycat, they turned them inside out and created a pretzel straw filled with a sweet cream of one flavor or another instead of dipping the pretzel in chocolate. I've been meaning to review something from the Toppo line for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it. This chestnut cream cake variety which was placed in my fukubukuro from Okashi no Machioka and pushed up the time-line on my getting to these inverted Pocky sticks.

The Toppo boxes are pretty heavy (42 grams/1.5 oz.) and full of substantial sticks so they usually cost between 150-180 yen each ($1.83-$2.19) depending on where you're getting them. This variety has two foil packs with 7 sticks in each. Each stick is 33 calories so eating one pack will set you back 231 calories. If you don't pay attention to the nutrition information (or can't understand it) and eat the whole thing, you can consume a whopping 462 calories.

The heft comes mainly from the not insubstantial amount of flavored cream in the center of the pretzel tube. I think it'd be interesting to try and drink a hot drink through these, but I imagine that the pretzel exterior would degrade before the filling would warm and melt enough to suck it out. If I were a more adventurous sort, I might try microwaving them to make the filling molten then give my mouth third degree burns by sucking it out. I'm not quite that stupid, but I probably will be after a few more years of snack reviewing.

The sticks smell a bit like malt and caramel. Since one of the ingredients is malt powder, this is not surprise. I have considerable experience with various chestnut cream sweets including the real deal (Mont Blanc) and these are nothing like them. They mainly taste a bit like coffee and caramel. I think that the coffee aspect is an attempt to emulate the roasting of chestnuts as a means of copying the flavor. The caramel is probably some sort of alchemy between whey, cream powder, and chocolate. There's also added caramel flavoring.

It's not really important to me that these actually taste like chestnut cream cake, despite the fact that there are pictures of that type of cake on the front and back of the box. The important point is that it taste good. This is a more complicated question. I like the mix of pretzel with sweet fillings, as I've mentioned before when reviewing the awesome Pucca. These I didn't go for so much. Part of the problem is that the pretzel shell doesn't seem to have as much flavor as Pucca because it's not made with more flavorful rye flour (as Pucca is). Also, the flavor profile of the creamy filling is very shallow. It's sweet, but the coffe/caramel/chestnut notes are conveyed mostly through scent and not actual taste.

These are absolutely not bad at all, and I will finish the box. I just like to get more flavor and not simply have texture and sweetness. If I hadn't gotten this with my "lucky bag", I may well have purchased it for sampling anyway, but I would have been disappointed. I'm not through with Toppo as I want to try the original version (which has been favorably reviewed at Pocky Watch), but I wouldn't buy these again.

Fujicco Chestnut Pudding

Pudding or "purin" as it is called in Japan, is sold pretty much everywhere here, and I tend to pretty much ignore it. It's not that it's bad, but rather that the flavors tend to be pedestrian (vanilla, chocolate, and coffee) and also I'm not the biggest fan of pudding. There's also the fact that most of these little cups of thickened goo are full of fat and carry a high calorie punch for their size.

This caught my eye at the local Peacock supermarket for 108 yen ($1.33) because 75 grams (2.6 oz or about 3/4 cup) is only 91 calories and it is "kuri" or chestnut-flavored. Granted, chestnut is a common flavor in autumn and winter in Japan, but I never noticed it in pudding before. That's probably because I wasn't paying attention rather than because it wasn't on offer before. I was probably distracted by all of the chocolate in the next aisle.

This is made by a company called "Fujicco" and it was my first experience with a product of theirs. The company makes a vast array of foods for markets including "Caspia" yogurt (greek yogurt), health and diet foods, nata de coco, and vacuum-sealed bags of things which look like they have been regurgitated by a bizarre sea creature. The last item is my way of summarizing "food that is used in Japanese cooking which I don't consume."

The texture is surprisingly decent considering that it breaks up like a gelatinous blob rather than as a smooth creamy pudding. The smell is really quite nice with a roasted chestnut aroma that also brings coffee to mind. It is the roasting that brings about this comparison, not the actual presence of coffee.

The flavor is incredibly good. Chestnut is a flavor that is easy to screw up because too much is gag-inducing and too little leaves you shrugging. To me, this had the perfect balance of chestnut flavor and sweetness with a hint of something that reminded me of the brandy so often used in mont blanc desserts. I truly enjoyed this, and that surprised me.

As a great fan of Mont Blanc, I really loved this. It was like eating just the top off of a pastry except with a bit more intensity and sweetness and a lot less fat. I will definitely have it again, and would recommend it to anyone who is a great fan of chestnut paste or chestnut pastries.

Bourbon Petit Marron Tart

I'd like to imagine what the first meeting must have been like in Bourbon's product creation department when someone suggested created their line of "petit" cakes.

Lackey 1: "Gee, Kenji," the boss wants us to come up with a new line of products and I have no idea what to do."
Lackey 2: (sucking air noisily through his teeth in sympathy for the quandary they are in) "The safest thing to do is take an existing product and make it either bigger or smaller."
Lackey 1: "Let's toss a coin. Numbers it's small and flowers it's big." Small it is!"
Boss: "What is your idea?"
Lackeys 1 and 2: "We'll sell cake in pieces so small that even a hungry dormouse would be left wanting more!"
Boss: (sucking air noisily through his teeth in order to avoid expressing disappointment in the extreme lack of creativity being displayed, but also having nothing better to offer) "OK".

Let's face it, as marketing ideas go, selling things in itty bitty sizes is hardly a marketing revolution. I'm not sure that the notion of cutting cake up into teeny tiny little triangles and selling 8 of them for 100 yen (about $1.20) would have gone over in any country other than Japan. Sure, you can get away with tiny cookies or crackers, but cake that is the size of the tip of your thumb seems like an unnecessary choice. Still, there have been many iterations on these cakes released by Bourbon, so they must know what their market likes. And the market appears to like Lilliputian portions.

Each little bite of cake is soft and feels moist in your mouth, but also carries a sense of dryness due to the way in which it is preserved. The flavor is of very nice, somewhat sweet pound cake with a little bit of chestnut flavoring. The bottom of the "tart" is just as soft as the top, but adds a little burst of chocolate to the experience. The chestnut fragments, in addition to adding flavor, add a slightly crispy and chewy texture.

Each 5-gram piece is only 23 calories, so if you can stop yourself at one or two, this is great portion control. Personally, I can eat just one or two, but I would be just as happy to have had one whole cake of the size of all 8 pieces that I could cut up myself. The packaging with little separate tray compartments is a bit of a waste and it's hard to slide it back into the bag after you take one or two out. Regardless,  I really loved the flavor and texture of these cakes. If you like pound cake, I strongly suggest giving these a try.

Lawson VL Marron Latte

There are always a lot of appealing looking coffee beverages on offer in Japanese convenience stores. Unfortunately, they're all also usually full of sugar. While I'm fine to eat a little sugar, I have a problem with drinking it since liquids spend a lot less time on the tongue that solids. Nonetheless, the idea of a marron (chestnut) latte drew me in and I decided that it was worth 158 calories to give this cold coffee drink a try.

This 300 ml. (10 oz.) cup cost 100 yen ($1.20) at a Lawson 100 shop. the ingredients include brandy, coffee, dextrin, sugar water, and sugar. The ingredients list didn't include "kuri" or "marron" (words for "chestnut") that I could find. I'm guessing that the chestnut part came under the catch-all umbrella of "flavoring". It did smell like both chestnut and coffee, but the chestnut had the same olfactory presence of the types of syrups that get squirted into your coffee at upscale coffee houses.

I tried to peel back the top to get a picture of the coffee, but the plastic inner seal thwarted me. Trust me when I say, it  just looks like regular coffee and nothing special.

This had a unique flavor blend. The strongest element at first was the sweet chestnut flavor followed the the brandy and then the coffee. The three flavors come together very well to create a unique beverage. All of them are strong, but not overbearing. This tasted nice, but really is a bit like liquid candy because it is so very sweet.

I liked this quite a bit, and felt that the way in which all of the elements were balanced "worked". That being said, this isn't for coffee fans so much as for people who want an aspect of Mont Blanc, a dessert which has a heaping pile of chestnut paste that includes sugar and brandy, flavoring mixed in with coffee. If that sounds appealing, by all means, give this a try. If you're big into coffee that tastes greatly like coffee, this probably won't work for you.

Crunky Chestnut

I'm a sucker for anything chestnut, but I haven't been keen on white-chocolate-based Crunky bars since trying the caramel latte bar. It's not that there was anything so wrong about that bar, but I haven't been wowed by the Crunky variants. Like plain KitKats, the regular milk chocolate version of Crunky seems to always be superior to the imaginative flavor offerings.

For those who are unfamiliar with Crunky, it's Japan's version of a Nestlé's Crunch bar, which is available in Japan, but in limited markets. The main difference between Crunky and Nestlé's bar is that the former is made with crispy rice and the latter with malt puffs. That makes the crispy bits in a Crunky carry more of a cereal flavor in addition to adding texture. In Nestlé's bar, the crispy rice bits don't do much for the flavor profile.

This particular Crunky smells a bit like coffee and caramel, but in a very subdued way. One of the ingredients for this is caramel, so that part isn't surprising. I think that chestnut often carries a bit of a muted coffee-like flavor. One of the other ingredients if tamarind, a fruit that is used to make jams, drinks, and frozen confections in some Asian countries. It's also a natural laxative, though I'm hoping that has nothing to do with this bar.

The sweetness of this is not too overbearing, and the chestnut flavor seems light and earthy. It has the sense of tasting like real chestnuts at about 50% their actual intensity. Since chestnuts aren't powerfully strong anyway, it's just a bit more muted than I would prefer. I would have preferred a richer taste and I think a little salt might have developed the flavor profile a bit better.

One of the things I like about Crunky is that it gives you a lot of great texture without too much sweetness. That being said, I have to ask myself if I would buy one of these bars again. As decent an experience as this was, I'm not sure that it's an experience worth repeating, particularly if you're calorie conscious (and I am). The entire 48-gram (1.7 oz.) bar is 269 calories. There are 24 little blocks and each has 22 calories. For such a small amount of pleasure (about half the volume of a Hershey's kiss which weighs in at 25 calories), I'm not sure it's worth a repeat beyond the novelty of a first experience.

Dars Crea Marron & Caramel

Dars is holding a promotional campaign which says "1 chocolate for 1 smile." This is related to an NGO meant to help people in Africa using funds from chocolate sales. There's a desktop picture of a pretty big globe made out of chocolates that you can download if you like. It doesn't help people in Africa, but I guess the whole idea is the globe promotes the concept Morinaga is using to push the Dars brand. There's a screen saver on the same page (near the bottom) if you are so impressed by a world made of small chocolate squares that you'd like to see it every time your computer goes to sleep.


This is the second of the two "Crea" varieties currently available in my area. The other was hazelnut and was fantastic. You can buy these either in boxes of individually-wrapped pieces or in boxes with a tray full of unwrapped pieces. By happenstance, I bought the box this time around, but the candy is exactly the same shape and size and you get 12 pieces. The boxes simply waste more wrapping and allow you to perhaps share more easily or eat them more slowly.

Before I talk about this, I will note that I hesitated to try this one even though I adore chestnut (and Dars) because I was worried that the caramel component might be too strong. Like all Dars, the chocolate and filling are super smooth. This smells somewhat of all components, but not too strongly of any of them. The flavor comes in three waves. First, the chocolate, then the hazelnut chestnut, and finally sweet caramel. The balance is pretty good, though I wish the hazelnut chestnut component was stronger. The caramel flavor, which is the easiest part to screw up, was natural and subdued.

I' definitely recommend sampling this. Open up a piece and bite it in half then allow it to melt on your tongue. It's a sublime experience, but then Dars always is. You can't go wrong with rich, fatty chocolates.

Kracie Muichaimashita Chestnuts

There are two ways to look at natural food like raisins or dried cranberries. You can consider that they are merely meant to be components of some more complex dish or you can see them as snacks unto themselves. In the case of the aforementioned items, they clearly fall into the category of being both. In the case of today's product for review, my sense of whether or not this was meant to be a snack is rather muddled.

On the side which indicates "snack", I look at the fact that this is sold in quite a small foil pack (35 grams/1.2 oz.). There's also the fact that the chestnuts are next to preserved foil-packed chunks of sweet potato that I have bought and eaten as a snack on occasion before. I think these things should be in snack happy shape simply because of their size and presentation.

That being said, I think that both the sweet potato and chestnuts are meant to be used as a garnish on rice or as a component in a more complex dish. The web site for this product features various recipes, some of which portray this as a garnish and others that show it as an integrated component. That being said, I think I can treat these as a snack just like I did the sweet potatoes and would regard other types of nuts. You can decide for yourself if this is misplaced or not. I like chestnuts, and I wanted to give these a chance as a healthy snack. They only have 66 calories and have 1.4 grams of protein.


I got these for 100 yen ($1.11) at a local convenience store. I'm guessing they are so cheap not only because the portion is small, but also because they are from China. The web site says that they are organic and are baked and roasted using "infrared" techniques. I'm not sure what that means. I had never heard of this type of cooking before, but apparently it's all about reaching high temperatures quickly. It's supposed to be good for dense foods, but carries a risk of burning or charring. Since chestnuts are cooked in their shells, this is probably a safe, quick method for dealing with them.

The chestnuts themselves seem pretty bland and not too dissimilar from raw chestnuts, though the texture is much more palatable. When I lived in Pennsylvania, I used to pry open and eat raw chestnuts when I was a kid so it's a familiar flavor to me. Whatever the cooking method used for these, it didn't seem to impart much added flavor to the chestnuts. Their texture is fine, slightly firm, but crumbly. They are dry in the same way that a sweet potato is dry. The flavor is subtle and earthy, and screams for enhancement with sugar and vanilla or brandy.

These were fine, but completely a flat experience. They didn't work at all as a snack, but I think they'd be good if crushed, mashed, or chopped and added to oatmeal, rice pudding, etc. They just aren't going to work as a snack by themselves.