Glico Baton D'or

"Baton d'or" means "golden stick" in French. Naming any product in French instantly improves its cache. Instead of being a repackaged Pocky stick, with it's snappy name and Japanese pop cultural tones, it's a sophisticated pastry. The package designs make me think about diet foods with their attempts to emulate a slender, curvy feminine figure, but that is not what is on the minds of the folks at Glico. The thing that makes this stick "golden" is butter, lots and lots of butter. With that fact, it seems unlikely that this will do much to trim the waistline.

This brand has actually been around since around the middle of last year, but is being beefed up with new flavors and stripped of its chocolate coating. The pedestrian flavors (milk, white, strawberry, green tea, coffee) above are being supplanted at a grand release at Hankyu department store with butter sugar, cinnamon sugar, maple sugar, strawberry sugar, and green tea sugar. Though it may seem that sugar is the big deal with these high class pretzel sticks, the real selling point is that they are dipped in clarified butter after they're baked (and then dipped in sugar). If I were still in Japan, I would totally want to buy one of these, especially the cinnamon one since cinnamon snacks are relatively rare there, but Hankyu department store is in Osaka and that's a long way to go for a designer pretzel. It would take a magic stick made of real gold to get me to fork over the price of a Shinkansen ticket (over $100).

These will be available from June 12, 2013. I'm guessing that distribution will expand beyond Osaka eventually, but that information isn't clearly provided at this time.

Tokyo Sumida River Bean Cake

One of the things you get from being outside of a culture and looking in is a perspective on how things seem to be. You get an overview which is not possible when looking from the inside out. Of course, there is also that other perspective, the one people have from being outside and never being inside or only have been so for a short time. That's the one that you get quite often about Japan and Japanese food. People think that perusing the imports at the local store or checking out the catalog at J-Box or other importers gives them a pretty good idea of how Japanese people must snack. The truth is that I think they prefer snacks like the topic of this post (bean cakes) and rice crackers (sembei) to most of the types of things foreign folks fixate on. I think they care far less about the latest weird Pepsi or KitKat than about a wad of bean jam encased in bread or cake and find our fascination with such things peculiar. They know those things don't taste good and are little more than novelties, mere blips in the flavor continuum meant to gather attention with a flash and die away. 

Of course, my blog indicates that the interest level of foreigners in these types of snacks is pretty low. In a Venn diagram of Japanese snacks, there is not so much overlap between what piques Japanese interest in food and what gets my blog hits from those who have the patience to read my prattle. Trust me though when I say that you'll make any Japanese person happier with something from this type of snack than a box of chocolates unless they recognize the name as having a high price tag. Even then, they may not necessarily enjoy eating it as much, but they will definitely appreciate that you spent a wad of bills just to get something with the word "Godiva" emblazoned on it. As an aside, I've had the best luck giving Japanese people See's candy. They tend to like it a bit better because it's not as sweet as other American chocolates. My husband has been known to buy nearly 30 boxes of various sizes to give as gifts to students during visits back home. He had a lot of students, and they often gave him gifts and that was his way of returning the favor. 

Getting back to the subject at hand, my husband and I first encountered these bean cakes at a traditional sweets shop in Kichijoji, home of one of the more popular areas for cherry blossom viewing (Inokashira Park) and a very popular place for middle-aged shoppers. If you go to the Wikipedia page, keep in mind that the picture there is misleading. I didn't even see it look like that during Christmas when lights are often put up. At any rate, we bought this based on being given a sample by the shop attendants so we knew what we were getting. The interior is a slightly powdery, yet still moist, clump of very finely strained white beans sweetened with sugar and margarine. It doesn't have a strong taste, but mainly lends texture as it nearly melts on the tongue and offers sweetness. The outside is a slightly chewy, but also slightly crispy shell which is dusted with cinnamon. The combination of textures and flavors is sublime. 

These reminded us a bit of one of our other heavy favorites in the Japanese bean cake arena, Koganei Imo. The difference is that the cinnamon flavor is more pronounced in these and the interior is a little drier because these are shelf stable and mass produced. They are also greatly more accessible as they are sold at a variety of shops and you can only get Koganei Imo from one generational shop that hand prepares them in Ningyocho. There's a list of the shops that carry these bean cakes here, though if you can't read Japanese at all, you'll have to apply Google's translation to read the names. The shop chain that carries these is called "Chidoriya" and they have shops in department stores and various Japanese-style "malls". 

Before leaving Japan, my husband and I wanted to buy a big box of these to take with us. We returned to Kichijoji two days before leaving only to find that that branch of Chidoriya had disappeared. We decided to track some down in Kita-Senju and picked up a dozen to take back. The expiration date on the box was short, but the truth is that we still have them and are still eating them. They don't seem to lose all that much even though we've had them for about two months now. As you might guess, with something we enjoy this much, we're rationing them and trying to make them last by refrigerating them.

If you go to Japan for a tourist stint or live there, I would strongly recommend tracking these down. At the very least, you can get a sample taste before you buy to see if you like them as much as we do. And if you go and carry some back to the states, bring a box for me, too. I'm pretty sure ours won't hold out a whole lot longer. ;-)

Mister Donut Cinnamon Chocolate Madeleine Donut

Most people face their moments of cowardice in times of crisis. Do you run into a burning building and save the cat, or do you let kitteh find his own way out? Do you decide to give a speech at your former high school or call in sick because the idea of talking in front of a bunch of bored little snots make you go weak in the knees? The confirmation of my cowardice comes in a far less challenging arena, Mister Donut. Faced with the prospect of boldly sampling a spinach or other vegetable-based donut from the madeleine series, I wussed out and chose a "safe" flavor which was almost certain not to offend my Western tongue. Yes, when the going got tough, I ran in the other direction toward the warm, loving embrace of cinnamon and chocolate. I dwell in a bottomless pit of shame, but at least I have a nifty bit of cake down there with me to help me forget my character flaws.

I knew from my experience with the orange version of this line of "donuts", that this was going to actually be cake. The cinnamon chocolate version isn't quite as moist or decadent as the orange madeleine one that I reviewed previously. It has a good strong cinnamon flavor with a hint of chocolate, which is a little surprising since strong cinnamon historically hasn't been my experience with snacks in Japan (save the Meiji cinnamon chocolates). The first bite reminded me a bit of cinnamon French toast, but the truth is that this is incredibly intense and flavorful. The sweetness balance was just about right.

I liked this, but even for a cinnamon lover like me, it was a bit on the strong side. The cake's texture is agreeable enough, but I had an odd sense of it being oily moist rather than moisture from eggs, sugar, or pureed fruit or vegetables. Oddly, the "safe" choice may not necessarily have been the tastiest one, though this is still pretty good. If I get brave enough before they stop carrying madeleine donuts, I promise I'll go for something on the riskier end of the scale. However, if I were you, I wouldn't count on my rescuing your kitty.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Meiji Tasty Cinnamon Chocolate

I've been away from the U.S. for so long that I can't remember if products are named with adjectives like "tasty", "delicious", or "arousal-inducing." I may be amused that this has the word "tasty" in the product name when it's not really funny at all. When someone has to tell me it tastes good rather than allowing me to assume it is so, it makes me think they doth protest too much... but I can't remember if it's just a Japanese marketing thing or if all manufacturers name their products in this manner. Perhaps my readers who haven't lived abroad for a little over two decades can enlighten me.

I found this box of cinnamon chocolate for 138 yen ($1.67) at a Lawson convenience store while out for an early morning walk with my husband. We were resisting the bakeries full of fresh pastries, Mr. Donut with its, well, donuts, and all of the other morning enticements. The only thing we gave in and bought was this pack of 6 sticks (36 grams total, 35 calories per stick) of cinnamon chocolate.

My husband sampled this first and remarked that he wasn't quite sure what to make of it because cinnamon and chocolate weren't a natural pairing in his experience, but Mexican hot chocolate preparations often put these two flavors together. Additionally, I've got a recipe for Amish brownies which combines cocoa, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon. It's not an alien combination, but these two-tone bars offer a far more potent aspect of cinnamon than either of the aforementioned concoctions.

The chocolate is a dark chocolate with a heavy "bottom" flavor that hits you at the back of the tongue. The cinnamon, though infused into white chocolate, isn't incredibly sweet, but is quite potent. In fact, it remands me a lot of Dentyne chewing gum. Together, these do indeed make for a strange pairing. Imagine eating a dark chocolate Hershey's kiss while chewing cinnamon gum (or while brushing your teeth) and you'll have an approximation of what this is like.

I think Meiji dropped the ball on this by making the cinnamon too overbearing. I love cinnamon, and I even prefer super strong cinnamon but it's important that it have a chance to shine through with the proper background flavor, and this Meiji chocolate is all wrong for this purpose. I'm not sure if I'll bother to finish this box, small as it is, and I definitely wouldn't buy it again. However, this isn't bad enough to qualify for an "unhappy" rating, and my husband said he'll eat the rest even if I don't.

Imuraya Cinnamon Rusk

I didn't think I would be taking part in the whole rusk fad that is still raging out of control in Japan, but cinnamon treats of any kind are relatively rare here. For those who don't know what a rusk is, it's essentially a dried out piece of bread like zwieback or melba toast. The fad in Japan has leaned largely toward dessicated bits of French toast slices coated in copious amounts of sugar. I was given one and found it relatively vile. It was like a sugar-coated crouton slice.

The thing that compelled me about this rusk was not only that it was cinnamon, but also that it is made with Portuguese cake, castella, instead of bread. I've had castella in Japan before and it's not my favorite because it's sticky and relatively bland. The texture is a bit strange for cake as well as it has a unique crumb that I personally do not care for, but I can see how it may be appealing to people of different tastes.

This is my first time to review something by Imuraya, a company which produces a wide variety of more traditional Japanese foods including jellies, youkan (blocks of sweetened bean paste), and, unsurprisingly, castella. A lot of what they sell is the sort of stuff which newcomers or those with little experience with Japanese food might shy away from.

Since rusk is dried out, the usual textural components of castella almost certainly weren't going to apply so I gamely picked up this bag at Inageya supermarket for about 130 yen. There are eight 7-gram pieces in the bag. Each is about the size of three jumbo croutons stuck end to end and individually wrapped. There are 30 calories per rusk.

When you open the packet, it smells like cinnamon and coconut though that is not one of the ingredients. My guess is that some preservative or flavoring that is giving off a coconut-like scent. The first ingredient is eggs followed by sugar then flour, sugar water, and cinnamon. The texture is very even and crispy. It is perfectly dried out and easy to bite into. It isn't as hard as a bread-based rusk.

The cinnamon flavor is admirably strong and this is sweeter than usual for castella. It is a lot like eating a very finely made, sweet crouton and has hints of sweet sopapillas or the type of cinnamon and sugar coated fried flour tortilla bits that you get from places like Taco Bell. Of course, these aren't nearly as bad for you or as decadent. Mainly, it's the sweetness, cinnamon, and crunch that they have in common.

The back of the bag recommends you eat these with jam or by dipping them in milk. They are already so sweet that I don't think that jam would be a good idea. I tried dipping them in milk and coffee but they sucked liquids up like a sponge and practically disintegrated. The texture is too fine for dipping. They don't turn to mush, but rather practically turn to nothing so that was not a good way to enhance the experience. 

For a rusk, these are pretty good, but ultimately nothing spectacular. I will slowly and enjoyably finish the bag, but I can't see buying these again. It's not that they are bad at all. They are pretty nice. They're just not really all that exciting or impressive.