It’s time for the final review of our week of Japanese chocolates (‘Thank God!’, I hear you cry), and it’s only fair we end with one more KitKat. This time, a pretty little pink number.
Once again, we have a heavily scented, coloured white chocolate bar. This time with the wonderful aroma of fake strawberries. You know the kind of thing – cheap strawberry candies or those nasty mass produced supermarket milkshakes. That’s not to say it’s an unpleasant smell, just an unnatural one.
The smell – and the taste – is that of artificially flavoured strawberry candy or bubblegum. There’s none of that fresh citrusy tang of real strawberry anywhere, although I’m sure someone will come along to tell me it’s made with 100% pure strawberry juice. I can’t read the ingredients, so I can’t say for sure.
There’s nothing detectably ‘sparkling’ about it either. No fizz that I can pick up. And definitely no glitter. Perhaps the word ‘sparkling’ means something else in Japan… like ‘absolutely not sparkling at all’, perhaps.
There is a very slight hint of tartness that comes through at the end, but I put that down to a chemical aftertaste as it’s still nothing like a real strawberry. The overall feel of this bar is that of a crispy-fake-strawberry-flavoured milkshake. I’m sure there’ll be kids who would go for it, but it’s not my thing.
So that’s it for a week of Japanese strangeness. This isn’t my favourite bar of the week – that honour would have to go to the little chilli KitKat bites I tried first – but it’s not the worst either.
It is, however, the pinkest. And in Japan, that’s very often all that matters.
After a week of strange and wonderful flavours (and a huge amount of sugar) it seems fitting to close my Japan Week with something a little more sophisticated, and I am very lucky to have been given this rather lovely little box of handmade treats from Awaji Shima, an island in Hyogo province which (I am reliably informed) actually produces the oranges used to make these chocolates.
As you can see from the packaging, these are definitely a more upmarket product. No huge text sprawled over the wrapper, no funky illustrations, just a simple ballotin wrapped in textured ivory paper which conceals a gold box.
Inside we find pieces of candied orange peel dipped in proper, real, actual Belgian dark chocolate, which probably makes these rather expensive to buy. We’ve seen versions of this before on Chocablog, most notably the truly awful efforts of Kshocolât, so I knew I wasn’t in for any amazing new taste sensations, but on the other hand, the contents of this box were definitely the most grown up thing I’ve sampled all week, so I was quite excited.
Poking my nose into the box for that all-important first sniff, I was rewarded with a healthy blast of rich, dark cocoa aroma with a subtle undercurrent of citrus from the candied peel. Once bitten the chocolate has a tendency to want to part company with the peel, so I allowed it to melt on my tongue before I tackled the peel. It’s classic Belgian dark chocolate – slightly bittersweet with a good dark flavour. Small pieces of sugar from the peel mingled with the melting chocolate before I bit into the peel to find out what the overall flavours were like. Each piece has been cut in such a way that there’s enough soft fruit under the peel to give a great mouthfeel. The soft, zesty citrus of the orange mingles with the chocolate to proiduce a slightly tart combination. After the chocolate and soft underside of the peel had gone, I was left with a sliver of slightly chewier orange peel to play with. The flavours of these Japanese oranges are not as sweet as expected. Imagine the finishing notes of a proper dark English marmalade and you’re getting close. These are certainly nowhere near as sugary as I had expected, and I found the combination of flavours beautifully balanced, with the tart orange finishing things of in a most satisfactory manner.
These little slivers of citrus and chocolate prove that good quality chocolate can be found in Japan, and that as a nation they’re not all addicted to sugar. Of course it would be foolish to make that assumption anyway, but after a week of wacky KitKats and overly sweet milk chocolate it was lovely to discover that fine chocolate makers are at work in Japan. I look forward to sampling more products like this (although it’s hard to say when that might be).
The main reason I picked this particular variety of KitKat up from CyberCandy while ignoring such varieties as “Sweet Potato Flavor” was that it had a picture of the bar on the box, and it was quite definitely milk chocolate rather than white!
The box contains 8 short, fat, individually wrapped 8 gram fingers of KitKat that actually look more like thumbs than fingers.
So why are they called “Cookies +”?
Well it’s because inside each ordinary looking KitKat finger, you’ll find a layer of cookie on top of the usual wafer layer.
It’s worth noting that as well as this chocolate cookie variety, there’s also a plain cookie version. I opted to try this version partly because more chocolate is always the better option, and partly because the cookie picture on the box made it look distinctly like an Oreo, which seemed a little odd because as far as I’m aware the only Oreo-related product Nestlé have the rights to is ice cream.
I’m fairly sure that it isn’t actually Oreo (the pattern on the cookie is slightly different) and the packaging has just been designed to suggest that it might be. Of course, it’s no surprise that the cookie part tastes like Oreo too. Sneaky.
But whatever it is, I like it. The cookie provides a nice crunch to go with the wafer’s crispiness, and the whole thing is just a little bit more chocolatey than the average KitKat – and a lot more chocolatey than the average Japanese KitKat!
There’s no mad flavouring, weird aromas or funny colours in this KitKat, but it’s another one that I wouldn’t mind seeing making an appearance internationally. I like the format too – they’re more like individual chocolates than chocolate bars, which mean you can safely have a nibble without feeling too guilty about it. Not that I ever feel guilty myself…
It had to happen (mainly because I’ve been sitting on my own stash of KitKats for over a week). This is my first proper Japanese Kit Kat review (having shared duties with Dom on the Ito En Vegatable KitKat) and it presented a couple of challenges. First off was trying to work out what flavour it was. Ohagi are a Japanese dessert treat made with rice and red beans or sesame seeds, sweet and sticky, no doubt. Looking at the picture on the box, it would seem that the ohagi Nestlé have based this Kit Kat on contain a sweet filling are are covered in breadcrumbs or batter of some sort.
They’re packaged exactly the same as all other Kit Kats reviewed so far – two foil packs, each containing a two-stick KitKat.
I was quite pleased to discover that this was a milk chocolate covered Kiit Kat. Popping open the wrapper revealed chocolate fingers, and unleashed a quite powerful smell. Something else we’ve discovered is that Japanese KitKats have a habit of announcing themselves before you get to taste them.
Having a pack open next to me as I wrote up this review filled my room with the smell of chocolate, vanilla and a sweeter, sugary aroma which I presume was mimicking the ohagi middle. It’s really quite powerful, but not in a bad way. I can best describe it as a milky, vanilla-rich chocolatey smell with a biscuity undertone. Of course the chocolate was going to be sweet, but there’s a counterbalance there in the cream filling between the wafers.
It’s almost like a hazelnut cream with a rich vanilla element, and I have to say I rather enjoyed the combination of flavours. Of course, I have yet to taste authentic ohagi, so I can’t comment on the authenticity of the flavours Nestlé have used, but I can report that the chocolate tasted sweet and milky, and the filling was an intriguing mixture of nutty, biscuity flavours. After a week of mostly average confectionery this one stood out by a mile – so much so that I’m going to recommend it to any Japanese Kit Kat hunters out there. Ifg you’re on a mission to taste KitKats from Japan, this has to be on your list.
