Kit Kat: Cheesecake Flavour

I came across another convenience store Kit Kat flavour at 7-Eleven, and this time it was cheesecake!
It was sweet like white chocolate is, and had just a hint of cheese. I'd say it was more of a chocolate mixed with a rare cheesecake which is milder in cheesiness.

More Kit Kats in Japan

In my previous post about Kit Kats in Japan I mentioned that the interesting flavours are hard to find without having to buy a large package, but I've found a couple more loose Kit Kats sold in the convenience store lately.

The first is a lemon flavour. It is sweet and lemony with a accents of slight sourness and salt. The tanginess and the salt to bring out the sweetness make it actually quite nice. 

The second find was a hojicha, or a roasted green tea flavour. I found this one goes exceptionally well with the characteristic wafer of a Kit Kat. The package says this is an "adult's chocolate", meaning it is not as sweet as the regular ones, and this is perfect to bring out the toastiness of hojicha. 

Japanese Snacks Made From Sandwich Bread Crust!

Have you ever noticed how sandwiches in Japan often have their crusts cut off? Ever thought that it was a waste of food? Well here’s one use for them. Rusk is a popular snack food that many bakeries and confectioneries sell. It’s basically bread that has been toasted with lots of butter and sugar.

Lunch Pack is a popular sandwich made by the Yamazaki company and is sold in any grocery or convenience store. The two slices of bread are fused together with some sort of filling and the crusts are always cut off. The company obviously didn’t want those crusts to go to waste; they found a perfectly good use for them in their rusk snacks! Crusts are great to use for rusk because you really get that toasty flavour. The one pictured here is french toast flavour, but it also comes in chocolate, peanut, matcha and honey. 

French toast flavour

Sandwich bread crust rusk

Tirol Chocolate Flavour #17: Sacre Lemon

17. Sacre Lemon (2020)

There's a crushed ice dessert in Japan that you can find almost anywhere called Sacre Lemon. Although the first ingredient on the list is sugar, the next ingredients are lemon and lemon juice. It is a cool and refreshing cup of lemony goodness especially in the hot summer months. One of the signature features of this lemon slush is the frozen lemon slice on top, sweet and sour to wake up those taste buds and get your appetite going. Tirol chocolate has collaborated with the makers of Sacre Lemon to recreate the flavours in chocolate form.

Flavours: white chocolate, lemon

Upon opening the package the strong smell of lemon just wafted up to my nose! Inside there was a layer of a white powder that as it melted in my mouth created and interesting cool texture, as if I were eating something cold, what a strange feeling! There were also pieces of hard lemon candy making it overall a little bit crunchy just like ice. A great reproduction of the long-selling dessert in a chocolate-y bite!

Potato Chips for the Summer?

The Japanese are proud of their 4 seasons and are big on their limited edition seasonal products. Calbee has a line of potato chips that are geared towards the present season. For this summer their flavour is ume-boshi, a pickled plum. Normally salty and sour, it is an accompaniment to a bowl of steamed white rice.

Not only is this chip's flavour related to summer, the potatoes used are too. The Japanese really like to pay attention to small details! On the back of the bag they explain that in summer, they use potatoes from Kyushu because their harvest time is around May and June. This way they can use the freshest ones. Perhaps this is one reason why they also used Kyushu ume-boshi for the flavouring, aside from the fact that they are high quality and are on the more expensive side when it comes to pickled plums. The company also chose to cut the chips into ruffle shapes deliberately because they believe the crispiness of them matches perfectly with the light flavouring. The ume-boshi flavour was actually not that strong, but still retained the overall feel of ume-boshi, so I think they've achieved their goal of a summer chip!

Roll Cake: A Popular Longtime Seller in Japan

There are many Western-style sweets that are popular in Japan, such as shu-cream (cream puffs, or French chou a la creme), baumkuchen (a German cake) and roll cake (which I think is modeled after the Swiss roll cake). Walk into any convenience store and you'll be sure to find these pastries which have not gone out of style and are still popular as ever. 

Today I will talk about the roll cake. You may be used to seeing a thin sponge cake rolled with a spiraling layer of cream. However, in Japan, they really like their cream and the roll cake has become an outer layer of sponge cake with a filling of plenty of whipped cream or custard. You'll find all kinds of variations depending on the season and what's trendy. For example, there has been a chai roll cake, a baumkuchen roll cake, a creme brulee roll cake, a matcha roll cake and so on. 

This roll cake, from Family Mart, is a result of a collaboration with Kihachi, a famous upscale restaurant. With pieces of mango and kiwi, a dollop of mango puree and custard, this one seems a bit fresher and lighter then a plain roll cake. 

Cup Noodles: Shark's Fin Soup Ramen

For those of you against shark's fin soup, don't worry, there isn't actually any shark's fin in here, so although it sounds expensive, it is actually just the same price as a regular Cup Noodle!
This soup has a Chinese food flavour to it, so the soup itself is a bit thicker, comparable to sweet and sour soup (I've never actually had shark's fin soup before so I can't compare to that). The chicken and pork combination soup gave it plenty of umami, and the threads of fake shark's fin not only soaked up the umami but added an extra interesting texture. The accompanying oyster oil honestly didn't add much to the overall flavour as it was a mild extra.

Oyster flavoured oil

See the strands of fake shark's fin?

Yogurt Flavours in Japan

Japan has many unique flavours of snack items such as potato chips, popcorn and ice cream, but it doesn't stop there. I am a yogurt lover and sometimes I come across new or seasonal flavours that I just have to try. For example, recently I tried sakura momo flavour which is cherry blossom peach, by the Danone makers. When spring comes along you'll see sakura flavoured items everywhere. It's a mild taste but somehow it's an addictive one, especially when it's seen only in this season. It's difficult to explain how sakura tastes but I wouldn't say it's floral. This is because often times the sakura leaves are used for flavour.

Sakura and peach yogurt

Upon opening the yogurt I got the immediate aroma of sakura which is what I often find of sakura products, the aroma is pretty strong. I was expecting the peach flavour to overpower the sakura, but actually there is a good balance. It looks like they use ground up sakura leaves here to flavour the yogurt, and only peach juice to achieve this balance. I think that if they used chunks of peach it would be too much peach flavour so it seems they have thought it out well. Overall a yogurt I would wait for spring to purchase again!

Pieces of sakura leaves in the yogurt

Here are some other interesting ones;

Early Grey Tea

Cocoa and Berry

Mike Popcorn: Kikyou Shingen Mochi Flavour

Shingen Mochi is a very Japanese style dessert. It is a very soft type of mochi that is shaped like a blob when taken out of its package. It is usually eaten with kinako (soy bean powder) and kuromitsu (dark sugar syrup). Kikyou is the name of a long time and well-known manufacturer of Shingen Mochi and they have teamed up with Mike Popcorn to make a shingen mochi flavoured popcorn.

It’s just as I expected, popcorn with a kinako powder flavour and a slight caramel-like sweetness!

Mike Popcorn: Red Bean Toast Flavour

Mike Popcorn is probably best known for their soy sauce butter flavour. However, like most Japanese snack brands, there are limited edition or seasonal flavours that come out every so often. One that caught my eye was the ogura toast flavour, probably because I live in the city who prides themselves on the red bean paste on toast culture (Nagoya). Ogura toast is usually sweet red bean paste spread atop of a well-buttered piece of white bread toast. Sometimes whipped cream is added or placed ontop of the red bean in place of butter, but Mike Popcorn uses the conventional butter and red bean combo.

The flavour of the red bean is quite prominent, slightly sweet and has a good adzuki  (red bean) aftertaste. Although it smelled like buttered popcorn, I didn't really get the sense of the butter flavour. I actually thought at one point that it almost tasted like the Corn Pops cereal!