KitKat "Starter Kit" (promotional information)

Nestle Japan started a KitKat cafe some time ago at which you can get your chocolate and wafer fix. They're looking to expand the menu with a little help from their friends. It would actually be more accurate to say they're hoping to do it with help from their customers who run restaurants or cafes. The whole baked KitKat business is one that they're investing more in as time goes by and they want to see recipes featured on menus and are willing to reward people with a starter kit if they fulfill certain criteria. Among those are providing links to their establishment's web site and posting the recipe on Facebook for Nestle to inspect. They'll send qualifying businesses a KitKat toaster oven and some KitKats to work with (as shown in the picture above).

This is a very interesting promotional choice. My guess is that this is to spread the possibilities one can explore with the idea of baked candy... well, besides setting your kitchen on fire or charring sugar until it sets your smoke alarm off. ;-)

KitKat Baked Purin (Pudding) mini

I've spoken before about how there must be a think tank of sorts inside Nestle Japan in which they're sitting around trying to figure out what new gimmicks they can use to try and separate their product from the horde of consumer-grade confectionery. The person who decided that they should create a way for something that usually melts to be baked probably got a gold star, and possibly some fairly quizzical looks and disapproving frowns from those who doubted his ingenuity.

Speaking of said ingenuity, I'm not sure what had to be done to these to make them bake-able without making them turn into a puddle of white chocolate goo. The ingredients list includes chocolate, wheat flour (for the wafer, no doubt), vegetable oil, lactose, sugar caramel powder, whole milk powder, cocoa powder, yeast, cacao mass, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, artificial flavor, baking soda, and "yeast food". The final item appears to be "mineral yeast" which is used to alter the way dough works (not as sticky, softer), so I don't know if it is the magic ingredient. My lack of food chemistry knowledge means that I can't pinpoint what keeps them from becoming ooey messes, but someone did some alchemical homework.

At any rate, I'm on the late side to this party because it took awhile for this to reach my shores. I found this at Nijiya market in San Jose. Given the high novelty factor, and my husband's shared interest in trying these, I forked over the $5.99 without a second thought. How often do I get a chance to set my toaster oven on fire in the name of blogging?

The instructions on the back tell you to line the toaster oven tray with foil. It explicitly says that you should not use aluminium cups or foil pans. Apparently, the difference between sheets of aluminum foil and folded containers ostensibly made with the same stuff is another chemistry lesson I need to learn. At any rate, I wasn't going to argue with the people who made the product... at least not until I actually tried the product and had a reason to do so.

Once you have lined your tray with foil and lined up your KitKats - the illustration shows four bars being made at once, but I only wanted to make two so I may be violating the recipe in some fashion - you're supposed to bake them for about two minutes at 1000 W. In Japan, my toaster oven had wattage listed on the instructions. My oven here has temperatures (in both Celsius and Fahrenheit) and food types.

So, I did some research and got myself thoroughly confused about what the temperature should be. Answers ranged from complex formulas that I tried to use, but gave me ludicrous results like I should be using 1000 degrees F. to "watts measure something different and can't be converted to temperature settings".  I decided to take the middle road and use 350 degrees because I'd rather it cooked too slowly then exploded in a burst of sugary molten madness. That temperature seemed to be a good one.

I had been warned to keep an eye on it by readers who commented on the product announcement and it is a warning I will repeat. This will go from uncooked to nicely browned in the blink of an eye. I didn't burn it, but I'm thinking it will burn fast. Do not walk away from it unless you want to risk it being ruined.

The plain, uncooked bar tastes like very sweet white chocolate and has the nuanced flavor of Japanese "purin" (pudding). It's the barest hint of caramel flavor. Since the bag touts the inclusion of .5% caramel powder, this is no surprise. When I gave it a sniff just after opening the package, caramel was the only thing I could detect aside from the white chocolate itself.

I think this is actually sweeter than other KitKats I've had recently, but that could be because many of my most recent tastings have been the "adult" versions which have tamped down sweetness levels. As an uncooked bar, it's probably a mediocre experience for someone who isn't an enormous fan of white chocolate and a bad one for someone who hates it or very sweet candy.

The sad-looking baked version.

The real question is whether or not it gains something in the baking and the answer is that it does. I sampled this slightly warm and my husband tried it cool. I wanted to try it both ways to see how the texture changed. In both states, baking it takes on a caramelized sugar flavor which reminded both of us of the sauce used in flan. It's not nearly as intense, but the bar is definitely better in its baked state.

This is what happens if you try to pick it up while warm.

In terms of whether you should eat the baked version warm or cold, I definitely say wait for it to cool. If you try to remove it from the sheet warm, it will separate and fall apart. The warm chocolate is an interesting sensation, but you loose the lacey edges which carry much of the intensified caramel flavor (and it sticks to the sheet).

A cooled half - much easier to handle and you don't lose any part of it.

The cooled version not only keeps all of the caramel edges intact, but comes off the sheet cleanly and is easier to handle. Clearly, this was never intended to be eaten warm off the sheet and, if you don't want to risk a burned tongue (I didn't get burned, but it is a risk) or a disintegrating bar, then be patient... not that I was impatient.

At the price I paid ($5.99 for a bag of 13 minis), these are 46 cents per bar. This actually is  not an outrageous price per piece. It's not exactly cheap, but it's not incredibly expensive. In Tokyo, you'd probably pay closer to $3.50-$4.00 (350-400 yen), but it's not really fair to compare import prices to domestic ones. You will always pay between 50-100% more for rare or imported items. These are currently being offered on eBay for $8.54 by someone (including shipping).

A better bet if you want to try these and have no access to an Asian market that carries them is Candysan. They have them for the bargain price of 345 yen at present, but the shipping is 480 yen. However, if you make a larger order, you get a better per item deal on shipping as it scales more slowly (or not at all) after the first item. They also carry other somewhat exotic items which may be worth trying like purple sweet potato KitKats and "big little" orange KitKats. Of course, they have other interesting items as well. At present, I'd say that Candsan offers the best prices on Japanese snacks by mail order in terms of a place that allows you to choose what you receive (as opposed to the services that send you monthly or bi-weekly surprise packages).

In terms of whether or not you should try this, I'd say that it is for people who have curiosity or desire novelty in their food rather than as a "must have" treat. It's a different sort of experience. It's fun and it tastes pretty good as well, but it's not fine quality stuff. I think it'd be a great thing to do with your friends if they're the sort that enjoy unique things and are open-minded. I imagine kids would go crazy for it as a general concept. I have to imagine that since I don't have kids. ;-) At any rate, I'm happy that I tried it, but I'm not sure that I'd go for it again. Once is a good experience, and it's enough.

KitKat Salty Caramel Big Little Bites (product information)

Image from Nestle Japan

Somewhere in the scattered contents of my memory, which as of late is being filled up with information about psychotropic drugs, how to diagnose mental health disorders, and grammar and punctuation points, I recall some sort of salted caramel KitKat offering from Nestle Japan. A search on Google yielded confirmation of this fact, from this very blog. You know you've posted too much when you don't even remember your own content.

So, Nestle Japan has decided to offer the equivalent of their former big bar release chopped up in tinier bits and enrobed in a little more chocolate. The original was good, and I'm sure these are, too, but we see a lack of imagination in play again from Nestle Japan. Still, better the mundane devil that sells than the creative angel that doesn't.

Condensed Milk Strawberry KitKat (product announcement)

Image from Nestle Japan. 

Yesterday, Nestle Japan released a "new" big bar flavor, condensed milk strawberry KitKat.  It was placed on convenience store shelves yesterday, and takes its rightful place among the dozens of strawberry KitKat bar releases which inspire this blogger to yawn in ingratitude. I wouldn't buy this if I saw it, because I'm already sure that it tastes like overly sweet powdered milk with some fairly decent, but unimpressive strawberry flavor. If I'm proven wrong, feel free to say so in comments. I can take it.

I should mention that condensed milk and strawberries are a very popular combo in Japan. When the berries come in season, bins or baskets of toothpaste-tube style condensed milk are usually not far from the tony (read: expensive) homes of the juicy red beauties. The packaging is designed to let you squeeze some disgusting goo on the precious fruit as you eat it. In the U.S., condensed milk is sold in cans because we don't tend to think of it as something we slather on unsuspecting fruit, but rather as something we roll into sugar-laden, hyper-fatty baked goods.

Nestle Adult Sweetness Matcha KitKat campaign and Gran Wafer

As I've mentioned before, Nestle Japan has changed its marketing. The days of a revolving door or weird flavors seem to be over. Indeed, they are now focusing a lot of attention on expanding their market toward less sweet and relatively approachable flavors. The core product line is split between regular milk chocolate KitKats in various types of packaing, regional KitKats, and the adult sweetness line. 

The adult sweetness line is offered in white, semisweet, and green tea flavors. They're all good, but, surprisingly, I like the green tea one best. I say that because I'm not a huge green tea fan. However, the texture and mixture of bitter and sweet flavors make it a pretty extraordinary mixture of the elements. 

Nestle Japan is pretty savvy in how they're shifting the product line and marketing. The birth rate in Japan was 1.3 for 2012. That means the number of kids out there looking to try new candy is going down while the number of adults is much higher. They're going where the money is, and catering to conservative tastes (less sweet, more common and known flavors). 

They've done their marketing and 70% of women between the ages of 20-30 are pleased with the matcha adult sweetness KitKat. Their PR talks about how the changes in Japanese society are creating a situation in which women are expected to work late just as men are and they want to position their candy as a way of relieving stress. To that end, they've made a few commercials showing a very thin Japanese business woman being given candy to help her get through the trials and tribulations of her day. 

Blogger won't let me embed a video from YouTube Japan, but I'll link to each one here. The one for a green tea KitKat shows the hapless heroine apologizing in English as foreign guests exit. Everything is just fine though after her coworker hands her a box with a green tea KitKat and she munches on it. The second one, for the bittersweet version, shows her exiting a meaning after apparently having done some sort of poor job and being consoled by the same coworker with candy again. Yes, professional failure can always be fixed with candy. 

Though this is a pretty stupid set of commercials, which makes it little different from most commercials, the focus is a good one. Many Japanese women have sweets while they're working at the office. They don't eat copious amounts of them, but every female coworker I ever had in Japan kept snacks in her desk. Nestle figures that it might as well be a KitKat. 

Beyond catering to the needs of hapless female business people, they're encouraging housewives to enjoy a "gran wafer" with their coffee while their tots nap. The gran wafer (which appears to have lost a "d" somewhere along the way) is a KitKat with chocolate wafers with chocolate between them and no chocolate coating. It is, essentially, a sugar wafer. They're sold 9 to a box as minis, so, you can "have a break", but not a very big one. I guess moms with sewing machines need to sugar-up a bit less than office workers. 

KitKat Senses Hazelnut

There are a lot of facts out there of little or no importance to the public at large. They're the sorts of things that may end up as a Trivial Pursuit question or only be asked when someone is a niche blogger who notices small things which aren't really worth noticing. Though others were already aware of this, I finally figured out that KitKats are made by two different companies and this may account for the way in which American ones differ from those around the world. Hershey's makes the U.S. version and Nestle makes the rest. A good comparison and explanation can be read here.

I worked all of this out because I was pondering why America generally has only boring KitKat flavors (white, milk, and dark) and thought perhaps that I should research whether or not there are some varieties that I didn't yet encounter. That's when I discovered that Hershey's runs the show in the U.S. and they make it the most boring show ever. I guess the fact that KitKats are the best selling candy bars in the world makes them complacent. Frankly, I feel taken for granted, Hershey's, and I refuse to buy any of your boring KitKats even though I am back in America again.

I tried to figure out or research why these are named "Senses", and it seems it is nothing more than implying this will delight your senses. The commercials seem to emphasize the lower calorie nature (165), lightness, and the added "surprise" of the hazelnut cream. There is another variety, which may or may not be on the market, which includes caramel cream instead of hazelnut. I can't understand why anyone would think that was a good idea.

Clearly, this is not an American bar since it is hazelnut, which is really not the most exotic flavor out there, but it is very attractive to those of us who can't buy a jar of Nutella for fear that we'll eat half of it at once with nothing more than a spoon. I found this at "Zad Grocery", a place that I saw while my husband and I were driving around near his former childhood home and decided to stop at because it had Arabic writing on it. It was, unsurprisingly, a(n awesome) Middle-Eastern/Indian/African food shop and this bar held appeal because it had Arabic writing on it. However, it was made in Poland. So, I guess that this is an international bar. If you want to get one of these, I'm guessing you can find one easily in Canada or Europe in most shops. In the U.S., I've seen them at Cost Plus World Market and you can find outlets to buy them online.

This bar has 5 little segments so that you can break off small portions. My picture doesn't do a very good job of showing this, but there are wafers on the bottom and a light whipped hazelnut cream on top. It's all covered with the milkiest of milk chocolate. It's very European in taste and smell and closer to Cadbury chocolate than a Hershey's Kiss. The flavor is rich and the texture is very light, but the hazelnut is less a flavor addition which is distinct from the chocolate and more of a modifier of the overall chocolate experience. It is quite sweet, even though it is not American. Frankly, it made my teeth ache a bit when I ate a square, but I loved the taste.

This is a very good bar if you like hazelnut cream, milk chocolate and the crispiness of wafers. If you're familiar with the Kinder Bueno bar, this is like a slightly heavier version of one of those. The Bueno has more hazelnut cream and wraps the wafer completely around the creamy center. This stacks the wafers and puts the cream on top and has a thicker amount of milk chocolate. The Bueno's chocolate coating is a bit inferior to this (and tends to flake off the wafer). In a contest between these two similar bars, I think that ones mood would dictate the winner (sweeter and heavier or lighter and less sweet). I'd definitely have this again though, and it means I have one more chance to tell Hershey that I'll keep patronizing Nestle if they can't justify my KitKat love.

Nestle Crunch in Japan (product information)

When I was a kid and went trick-or-treating, I was always delighted to get a Nestle Crunch bar from the houses at which I was begging for candy. I was generally slightly less happy with a Hershey's Krackel. I don't think that was because it was inferior. I believe both bars are pretty mundane consumer milk chocolate (meaning too sweet, very milky, and with weak flavor depth), but I tended to get Krackel's from cheap asses who bought miniature bars. Of course, it was better getting a tiny Krackel than getting saddled with a dark chocolate bar from the same assortment that Hershey sold at that time.

I can't recall when Nestle Crunch started showing up in Tokyo shops on a regular basis, but I can say it wasn't around when I arrived there in 1989. I can also say that I never personally saw a full-size bar and only saw bags of minis for sale. The classic foil-wrapped full-size bar which is similar to a regular chocolate bar, but with the textural bliss of crispy rice puffs, seemed not to be offered to the Japanese market. 

I remember trying a regular Crunch bar once in Tokyo, probably within the last 5 years, and I was very disappointed. I don't know if the Japanese one was different, or if something which suited my childhood tastes failed the test of time, but it seemed very "blah". I tend to think that it was really that they were never that good, but kids have very different tastes than adults.

Currently, Nestle Japan only sells minis of their venerable Crunch bar. They're offering three flavors including a salty version. The salty version came out late last month and is clearly a response to the summer heat. As is logical, salt is a big part of getting through the sweaty months. In Japan, eating cucumbers encrusted with large salt crystals is common, as is salting your watermelon (note: I think these things don't only happen in Japan, just that's a part of seasonal custom there). Nestle recommends that you freeze these for maximum enjoyment. I think that people might want to do that just to keep them from melting in the current heat (which I hear second-hand has been pretty terrible).

Of course, as required by law, there is also a strawberry crunch <yawn>. I think that they are probably melting down the billions of unsold strawberry KitKats that I refused to sample when I was there to make these Crunch bars.

Each bag of minis costs 525 yen ($6.70) and the two flavored varieties have 20 bars in each and the plain has 22. I guess a few spare bars are supposed to make up for perceived boredom. If I were to happen across these. This is the sort of thing I would not have bought back in Tokyo because I hated the idea of buying a whole bag of minis when I wanted to try just one bar. Even if I could pick up one bar though, only the salty one would be of moderate interest. If anyone on the island has tried the salty version, please share your thoughts. 

Yawataya Mini KitKat

When I was given wasabi KitKats, I remember having a discussion about chocolate with one of my students in which I mentioned that putting chili in chocolate was fairly common in America. She was shocked, and grossed out, at the idea of this combination. Of course, she thought that including wasabi was also pretty weird, but accepted it as something reasonable as a regional variation for novelty value. This is one of those rare cases when a combination is actually a bit stranger in Japan than in the West. I've been reading about American releases of chili paired with chocolate on other blogs for years.

If you look at the top of this box, you can see that there is an old-timey picture in sepia (because that's how we can tell it's "old-timey"). This is because this flavor is supposed to represent what was popular in the Shinshu area during the Edo period. The origin of the hot pepper that is used is thought to be the Amazon basin rather than Japan. It's a transplanted flavor that is commonly called "togarashi" in Japan. Apparently, we have Columbus to thank for spreading it all over the globe, first to Europe and then to Asia. I doubt that makes up for all of the stuff the Spanish did to indigenous peoples nor does it make up for the fact that he is seen as discovering something which was hard to miss and probably was located by many explorers before him, but, hey, credit where it is due. He spread some hot peppers for us all to enjoy, especially the folks in Nagano (formerly the Shinshu area).

I picked this box of 5 mini KitKats up at the airport on my way out of Japan. I don't remember what I paid, but the retail price according to Nestle Japan's web site is 350 yen ($4.38). As is so often the case with these types of KitKat, it represents significantly bad value for the quantity, but one does not buy these for the volume, but rather the novelty. Each KitKat is two mini fingers (about the size of one and a third regular KitKat fingers) and has 67 calories.

When I opened the packet on these, I smelled a very pleasant bittersweet chocolate smell. I deeply inhaled the scent of the bar to try and detect any spiciness or hint of the chili pepper, but there was really no hint. My first bite yielded a mild, slightly sweet bittersweet chocolate flavor with the usual crispy wafer freshness of a KitKat. Only after this did I get a bit of heat on the tongue. Each subsequent bite was the same. It was a one-two punch with each flavor hitting quite distinctly.

This is a pretty nice tasting KitKat, largely because it is a slightly dark, bittersweet flavor which is not too sweet and pairs well with the wafer's crunch. However, the spicy portion seems almost superfluous. It does not detract from the chocolate, but it seems to add nothing. It's like eating a candy bar and then a little hot pepper alternatively. 

I think this works best as what it is, a novelty. If you're in the area (or at the airport) and want to take something back for your friends to try which won't make them gag, but will surprise them, this ought to fit nicely. The heat isn't so intense that someone will have a burning mouth. You'd have to be extremely sensitive to hot pepper to suffer for sampling this. Though I'll finish this box (slowly), I don't think there would really be any reason to buy this again. 

Nestle KitKats of the World Limited Edition Mini (product info.)

Image pilfered from the Nestle Japan web site. 

As my very first product information post, I'm pleased to show you something which Nestle Japan was boring me with just before I left Japan. I actually feel a little guilty putting it that way because proceeds from the sales of this release are for charity. Twenty yen (about 25 cents) from each bag of 13 mini KitKats sold will go to help rebuild the Sanriku railway which was badly damaged in the Tohoku earthquake last March. The theme of "world" relates to recognizing all of the messages of support that Japan got from all over the world in the aftermath of the disaster. Each bag retails for 500 yen (525 with tax/$6.46). Nestle Japan doesn't tell you how long it will be available, but it was released on March 5, so I imagine it won't be too hard to find in the coming months. 

The reason that I didn't buy this when it popped up in Japan is that it is essentially a bag of various milk chocolate KitKats. There are 5 each of the British and Australian versions of KitKats and 3 of the Japanese ones. Thirteen seems like an odd (and unlucky, if you are superstitious) number of bars to offer. It seems a bit chintzy not to just give 5 Japan bars and make it 15, but there it is.

I'm sure there are subtle taste variations between every version of a milk chocolate KitKat world-wide, but the notion of sampling such minor differences didn't wow me into buying a bag. Minis never represent the best value for KitKats anyway, so I have to be heavily enticed by the flavor to buy them when they're not on a steep discount sale. That being said, if you want to be charitable, there are worse ways to get your generosity on. 

Image also pilfered from Nestle Japan. 

As a related aside, Nestle Japan has announced that it has changed the basic KitKat for the first time in 37 years by making the wafers crispier. It was common in Japan to see the words "saku saku uppu! (crispier)" on man, so it seems that the Japanese market loves nothing more than brittler forms of its favorite snack treats. I'm sure that researchers in various food labs all over Japan are furrowing their brows in concentration trying to wring a few more molecules of moisture out of their processed treats. 

Citrus Golden Blend KitKat

I have whined before that I would not fork over 840 yen ($10.23) for boxes of region-specific KitKats. There is something about standing in an airport knowing that this is the last time I'll be there and have a chance to turn my nose up at these somewhat expensive candy bars that makes me put my nose back down and plunk down my yen. There are lots of regional KitKats around, and many had been for sale just down the street from where I used to work in Shinjuku. With the knowledge that I can no longer go down the street to buy such things in the forefront of my mind, I bought this and another box of regional KitKats for review.

These KitKats represent the regions of Chugoku and Shikoku, both of which grow citrus fruit and I'm guessing that is pretty much where any regional connection is born and passes gracefully away. I say they "represent" because clearly they aren't only sold there if you can buy them at Narita International Airport. The fruit blend is sudachi, mikan (a Japanese tangerine), and lemon. I have seen sudachi before, but thought it was a lime. It's supposed to be zestier than lemons and limes, and I'm pretty sure that I've had it in various Japanese dishes.

The bar smells like a mixture of lemon, orange, and white chocolate. The first burst of flavor is definitely a pretty nice juicy orange task followed by a very mellow lemon. I only ate one small bar (as that would be one serving size), and thought it was pretty good. With any white chocolate candy, I'm mainly hoping that the sweetness doesn't overwhelm and it isn't too cloying. Getting depth of flavor rather than some one-note overbearing taste, is a bonus, and I'm pleased to say that this has that going for it as well.

There are 12 mini bars in one box and each is 69 calories. Breaking down the price, each bar is 70 yen (85 cents), which is not a ridiculous price, but still more expensive than buying regular 4-finger boxes of specialty or regular KitKats. However, this is a pretty tasty variation and worth at least one sampling, especially if you are a fan of citrus white chocolate candy. It may not be the requisite "weird Japanese KitKat" flavor, but at least it's good.

Vanilla KitKat Big Bar

There's a song by Barenaked Ladies which my husband has listened to many times in which about a million lyrics are disgorged in about 3 seconds that has a line which says something about vanilla being the finest of the flavors. As a kid, I would have vehemently disagreed with this, but, as an adult, I'm definitely much closer to agreeing with. I realize that one of the reasons "vanilla" was not good when I was a kid was that most of what was marketed at that time as "vanilla" was simply "absence of chocolate". An ice cream cone from the local "Tastee Freeze" was pretty much milk flavored with some artificial flavoring tossed in. It wasn't even an approximation of vanilla, but rather some sort of flavor that was supposed to enhance the consumption of a cone of white soft serve.

I think that since the days of my ancient childhood (I am all of 47, after all), consumers have gotten more sophisticated about vanilla. The price of vanilla beans would indicate there is some reason to believe that is so. They wouldn't be so expensive if demand were not fairly high. Nestle Japan decided that they were going to go "for real" in this vanilla KitKat bar and the package boasts the inclusion of real vanilla beans and 13% "vanilla paste". I was not sure at all what "vanilla paste" was, but a little research said that it is vanilla beans mixed with a thick sweet syrup made with sugar and a thickener. It's supposed to be good for making ice cream and is used in gourmet cooking. I may be a tad cynical, but I'm guessing this KitKat isn't using the highest quality vanilla bean paste in every bar.

I should note that this purchase was something my husband desired more than me. He's a great fan of white chocolate and I'm decidedly "so-so" on it as I generally find it too sweet. For that reason, I'm going to go with his rating on this bar instead of mine. I will share my impressions, however, since I can't really speak for his taste buds. I can only say that he said, "I really liked it!" I can also say that he ate all but the bite I took for review purposes by himself.

Regarding my feelings, it was, as expected, too sweet. There were nice little black flecks of vanilla beans in the white chocolate and the inner filling was brown (not white) so there wasn't an overload of white chocolate. The wafers were, as always, crispy and satisfying and the extra number of them in a Big Bar were welcome. However, there was a funky flavor to the white chocolate which overpowered any sense of the vanilla beans authenticity. I thought it tasted like chemicals, but it may simply be something about white chocolate that rubbed me the wrong way.

So, for me, this would be an "unhappy sumo" rating as I wouldn't have finished the bar. For my husband, it'd definitely be happy as he ate most of it in one sitting. If you want one, they're at most convenience stores for about 120 yen ($1.44) for now. Fans of really sweet bars should love it. Those like me, perhaps not so much.

Tokyo Sky Tree Orange KitKat

First things first, I did not go to the Tokyo Sky Tree. I'm not especially interested in large quasi-phallic structures or radio towers. However, one can get Sky Tree souvenirs in a lot of adjacent locations including Ryogoku, home of sumo and the Japanese National Stadium (kokugikan) and Asakusa, home of a million tacky souvenirs for tourists. I picked this up in neither of those places. There's a particular branch of New Days convenience stores in Shinjuku which carries a lot of regional sweets for some reason and this was perched on a top shelf, towering above all others.

The truth is that I didn't choose to buy this. It was 525 yen ($6.76) and I knew that was going to be a premium price. It's very often the case in Japan that you purchase something in a large box and find that the contents in no way reflect the box size. I'm not talking about "contents may have settled", but simply packaging inside of packaging which is smaller. In the case of this box, one might expect a neat row of a  multitude of minis, but it's just three boxes of regular KitKats. Since the average price of a regular KitKat is 100-120 yen, that means I'd pay about 360 yen for the same quantity if it didn't come in a Sky Tree box. 

The odd thing about this is that the box says across the top that this is the "#1 flavor" and is very popular. While I can see how orange chocolate would be quite popular, I have to wonder why there are constant iterations of strawberry KitKats if orange is the "#1". You'd think they'd spin out more orange versions. I question your authenticity, Nestle Japan, and the veracity of your claims. And while I'm at it, I may also question your parentage, pedigree, and the stuff you've written on your résumé. I'm also dubious of your claims of virginity, but that's not something I'm prepared to investigate more closely.

This smells like fake orange flavoring, though not in a bad way. It's not like baby aspirin orange, but more like orange Tootsie Roll Orange. The bars are milk chocolate based and the orange flavoring tends to hit second after the chocolate. It comes across at first as a burst of an orange juice flavor, but quickly tapers away into the aforementioned fake orange flavor. Since this is a KitKat, it's got all of the same fresh, crispy wafer goodness you can expect from any reasonably good KitKat.

This was nice enough, but it isn't what I'd call incredibly "more-ish". I wouldn't have purchased three of these for sure, but I also not have regretted having one on hand for sampling. As a novelty, or for someone who really loves orange chocolates even when they're not the most realistic in flavoring, this is pretty good. I enjoyed it enough to eat what I've got (slowly), but I wouldn't buy it again.

Pumpkin Cheesecake KitKat

Quite some time ago, I got an e-mail from a reader who wasn't keen on my coverage of extremely strange Japanese snacks who said that he wasn't really interested in that sort of weirdness, but rather in things like the unusual Pepsi and KitKat flavors. I can understand that as many people may prefer to hear about novelty a few standard deviations from the norm rather than gag-fodder that they'd never eat. Unfortunately, if I focused only on those types of variants on popular and accessible snacks, I'd be making only 6 posts a year. 

One of the problems with not living here is that you get a distorted view of how often odd variations on popular food products come out, because other non-Japanese snack blogs only talk about such things. The truth is that that KitKat parade is populated mainly by strawberry, green tea, and various types of chocolate (fudge, semisweet, bittersweet, dark) than by edamame, ginger ale, and other extreme odd flavors. The triumvirate of the aforementioned flavors, especially strawberry, are the boring band members marching along and the really interesting stuff is like Santa Claus at the end of the Thanksgiving Day parade. You watch a bunch of people blowing into brass instruments and beating drums with a yawn and all you really care about is the fat guy in the red suit.

Fake mom and daughter are going to "fight" (with fists, apparently) to make sure fake daughter passes a test so she can get into a good school. 

At any rate, it has been a long, dry season on the Japanese KitKat front. At present, Nestle Japan is gearing up their PR campaign to sell to parents and kids for the studying season. The offerings they are focusing upon are adult sweetness KitKats (mild, dark chocolate), green tea matcha, and the umpteenth variant on strawberry (strawberry tart). They're also offering bags of white and plain KitKat minis in different packaging. Yes, I'm tired of watching the majorettes shaking their batons, too.

This pumpkin cheesecake KitKat was released some time ago, but I resisted buying it because I didn't want to buy a big bag of minis knowing I may not care for them. Don Quixote, the store, not the hapless avenger who attacked windmills, persuaded me to try a bag when they offered it for a mere 138 yen ($1.80) for a bag of 9 mini bars. Each mini bar is about the size of 1.5 regular KitKat fingers and has 68 calories. These were designed for Halloween, but were still available in abundance and at full price in shops in my area throughout the new year. In fact, most of them had larger bags for about $6.50 and that was a big reason why I didn't opt to try them until now. Each bar is individually packaged and there's a white space on the back that one can write a message on. I'm not sure what that message would be; perhaps you could say, "here is one bar from a bag of 9 that I could not consume on my own." 

Getting to the bars themselves, one of the reasons I was not necessarily keen on these is that "cheesecake" translated into actual flavor in the Japanese KitKat world usually means "tastes like sour powdered milk" and "pumpkin" (kabocha) is usually "strong vegetable flavor that feels rather out of place with all of that sugar'. My past experience left me anything but encouraged. 

The scent when you take a whiff of the bar is familiar yet hard to pin down. I think it may merely be that my olfactory senses are tuned to the scent of such kabocha-based treats after so much experience with them. They smell good, but unusual at the same time. The flavor is a balance between Japanese pumpkin and a custard flavor. I'm pleased to say that none of the yogurt/sour milk flavors in other "cheesecake" KitKats is present in this. One of the ingredients is "natural cheese", but the pungent elements are either masked or so subdued as not to register. This is quite sweet, but not in a cloying way, at least not if you stick to eating only one mini. My guess is that it might accumulate and become overbearing if you eat more than one at a sitting. 

With a surprising well-rounded combination of tastes, this was quite pleasing, albeit still rather sweet. Like most KitKats, the chocolate coating is slightly on the softer side with fresh, crispy wafers inside. The textural balance of a real KitKat is almost always superior to any knock-offs. It's the one thing Nestle always scores on. My feeling about these is that they are a pleasant digression, but definitely not part of a steady sweets rotation. I would buy them again, but likely only once a year. Chances are that they'll be back, however, because Nestle often rotates the same flavors in seasonally. Though this is no flavor "Santa Claus", it's definitely a bit more interesting than a mere member of the marching band.

KitKat Air In White

My husband recently went home to visit his family and take care of some business in the U.S. Being your faithful snack blogger, I remained in Japan all alone so that I might purchase junk food and write about it. Okay, you know that is a big, fat lie. I stayed here because the fuel surcharges are so expensive that we couldn't afford two tickets to paradise. The point is that he brought me back 6 boxes of meringue cookies from Trader Joe's. For reasons I can't explain because they go beyond the love of crispy, marshmallowy cookie goodness, I am crazy for meringue. I know a lot of people find them chalky, too sweet or lacking in flavor, but I adore them.

If you've ever made meringue cookies (and I haven't since it requires running the oven at low temps for a long time and I'm so impatient), you know that it is made by beating air and sugar into egg whites then baking them. It struck me that eating something which incorporates air is really paying money for nothing, yet I will still most likely gobble down all of my Trader Joe's vanilla meringue cookies in record time. It does beg the question of why something should be more desirable with air when it is perfectly fine without it. Of course, I speak of the KitKat, not meringue, which absolutely requires air to be anything more than just egg. The answer to why there's air in these KitKats is obvious to me: Nestle Japan is out of any other ideas.

This is a box of mini KitKats weighing in at about 40 calories per and each is about half the length of a single finger, but a little wider. There are 7 in the box (lucky 7? too cheap for 8?) and they cost 150 yen ($1.98) at convenience stores. That makes them on the expensive side, but pretty much normal for this type of special release.

These smell rather different than usual KitKats, but it is hard to pin down why. Since there is both white and darker chocolate, you get two different tastes and better depth of flavor. The base is bittersweet and the top is buttery white chocolate. The wafers only lend texture and crunch, and less than usual because of the need to make a higher "air" portion on the top caused a few wafers to be sacrificed. Sometimes airy chocolate has a bit of a crispy feel to it, but it really doesn't seem to be doing much here besides lowering the total calories.

I liked this a lot because the chocolate flavors came together well. A little more crispy wafer would have been good, but I'm not complaining. I ate two of these at one time and it didn't seem incredibly sweet in the build-up. For any consumer-level chocolate, and one with a white chocolate component, that's pretty impressive.

Though this isn't the most bizarre or exciting KitKat Nestle Japan has come up with, it's still pretty tasty and is the first one that I think competes favorably with the original bar. In fact, I'd say it beats it in terms of the chocolate, but falls just a bit short on the wafers. The air aspects absolutely does nothing for it. However, I'd definitely buy this again.

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.

Strawberry Hazelnut Petit KitKat

I swear not to buy another strawberry KitKat, but then here I am. I bought the bitter strawberry one, and now this one. In my defense, I was at work and wanted something small and sweet for a pick-me-up and the petit KitKats fit the bill. Also, this has hazelnuts, and I am a card carrying fan of Nutella and all things which mix filberts with any sort of chocolate. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty lame defense to me, too. I admit it, it's hard to resist a new KitKat flavor, even a lame one.

I found this at Family mart for 158 yen ($1.99). It's absurdly expensive for such as small portion. There are only 6 in the box and each is about the size of 1/3 of a single KitKat finger. Given the size, it's no surprise that each individually wrapped serving is only 25 calories. This compares favorably to similar consumer chocolates like  Hershey'sKiss (which is also 25 per). There was also a "cookies and cream" variety on offer at the same time, but I passed on it for the time being as it was even more boring than this one. If it had been "cookies and hazelnut", you'd be getting two reviews instead of one.

When I tried this at first, it was on the heels of sampling some jalepeno chicken thing my husband bought at KFC. No, I don't like KFC, but I took a few bites to try it (loved the spicy heat, hated the greasy chicken). Unfortunately, I think that affected my ability to detect the subtle flavor of the hazelnut. Spice-fried taste buds don't have good sensitivity. The second sampling revealed just the tiniest bit of hazelnut. It mainly served to cut through some of the cloying sweetness of the strawberry flavor.

Other than the vaguest hint of hazelnut, this is your standard white-chocolate-based strawberry KitKat. It's too sweet, the strawberry isn't very realistic, though at least it's not "perfumey" as these things can sometimes be. I wouldn't buy this again, but I'm happy to finish the box because the sweetness can't build up to a strong level when you're eating so little at once. This isn't bad, but really isn't all that impressive either.

KitKat Zunda

The earliest charity items for victims of the Great Tohoku Earthquake were T-shirts. Other items are sluggishly following at their heels and these KitKats are Nestle Japan's entry. The sale of each bar will add 10 yen (12 cents) to the Japanese Red Cross's coffers. It's a pretty nice gesture, and I'm sure that if these sell well, a tidy sum could be donated.

These bars are unusual in their distribution because they are a non-standard flavor of KitKat, but on sale at supermarkets. Usually the "specialty" KitKats are mainly available for a limited time in convenience stores, but there was a huge display of them at my local Inageya supermarket. The odd thing was that they are 128 yen ($1.56) at the market, but only 108 yen ($1.32) at Family Mart convenience stores (click the picture above to load a large version which shows the respective displays with their price differences). I'm guessing that someone at Family Mart decided to go with the standard KitKat price rather than some sort of suggested retail price, but that is pure speculation. I'm rather at a loss to explain it, but clearly you're better off buying these from them.

Zunda is mashed green soy beans (or raw edamame) and this particular cuisine is a specialty of the northern Tohoku area. It makes sense that they'd choose something associated with the region the sales of the bar are meant to help. It's also an interesting choice for a KitKat. In fact, it's probably one of the more curious options that have come along in a long time.

In terms of flavor, this is a white-chocolate-based bar and very sweet. Since the flavor is "green" soybeans, it's no shock that the first bite carries a grassy flavor that gives you that telltale sense that you're munching on something with chlorophyll. The soy bean aspect is very mild and by the end of one finger, you pretty much are eating a sweet white chocolate KitKat with a mild soy and grassy aftertaste. Even my husband, who is not a fan of soy or edamame, didn't find this unpalatable because the taste of the main element was relatively mild.

This is an okay KitKat, and the flavor choice is a pretty enticing one. I wish I could say it was the bee's knees and that everyone should run out and stock up on a load of these before they go away. However, this just isn't that incredible. It's moderately interesting, but rather sweet and mild. If you can pick one up in Japan, I'd say do it to satisfy curiosity, but I wouldn't buy it more expensively from an importer. If you want to help the victims of the tsunami and quake, donate directly to the Japanese Red Cross because it'll probably mean more than 10 yen from the sale of this bar anyway.

KitKat Salted Caramel (Big Bar)

I'm no foodie, or gourmand, but I do check out the food porn sites for recipes on a regular basis and I've seen people offering up elegant pictures of blocks of caramel with big salt crystals lying on top of them. I don't know if salty caramel is one of those things people who think they're too good for a Sugar Daddy eat, or if it is now as mundane as a KitKat.

Salty sweets, of course, are old hat by now. In fact, I think I've tried some variations on this concept before (salty vanilla, for instance). I was actually looking forward to trying this particular player in the endless parade of Japanese KitKats. Even though I don't like caramel much, I do like salty sweet combinations when they work.

I found this at 7-11 for 120 yen ($1.40). It's 44 grams  (1.55 oz.) and the entire bar is 238 calories. I don't know when it was introduced, but I couldn't find it on Nestle Japan's webs site for KitKats at the time this review was written (August 6). I've found that the 7-11 shops in my area seem to get new KitKats before they show up on the manufacturer's site sometimes. This was also the case with the cola and lemon squash KitKat.

This bar smells like strong, fake caramel. That's not such a shock. One has to expect such things. The thing that I was most interested in was how prominent the salt as going to be and how strongly chemical the caramel came across as. As for the former, this is a very salty bar.  The salt definitely hits you pretty hard, especially on the first bite. On the second bite, it mellows a bit because it's usual for ones tongue to acclimate to salt quickly and taste it less strongly. The caramel is also definitely there and the fake nature of it was muted by the salt and the pleasant combination with the sweet milk chocolate coating.

I really enjoyed the salty sweet aspect of this and was pleased that the salt wasn't hiding in a dark corner where it could barely be detected. That being said, I could easily see where someone else might find the salty aspects to be overbearing. In fact, it was so salty that it sort of burned my mouth a bit, but I still liked this. It helps that it's a "big bar" and is full of fresh, crispy wafers. I enjoy the higher wafer to chocolate ratio so that gave this a leg-up right there. If you're open-minded about the salt and sweet combination, I'd recommend giving this a try, but be prepared for some potent saltiness.