Starbucks Banana Chocolate Cream Frappucino (product information)

Bananas are one of the most accessible types of fruit in Japan. They're cheap and you can buy them nearly anywhere including conveninece stores. Of course, they tend to not be very tasty or sweet compared to some of the bananas you can get in other places (at least the Tokyo ones). I'm guessing this Starbucks concoction is going to be quite a bit sweeter and tastier than the standard imported banana (which I believe come from the Philippines). You really can't go wrong with chocolate and cream, though I'm guessing this won't live up to its potential if the banana is fake.

If you find yourself ordering one of these (I wouldn't try this as I love bananas, but not things flavored with banana), let me know what you think. 

Korovka Butter and Cream Cookies

Cream is in blue and butter is in yellow, as suits the color of butter.

Back when I first started learning to use computers, I felt completely overwhelmed by the volume of things that I did not know how to accomplish. It may seem inconceivable to people who could use a PC before they could make potty somewhere other than their pants, but I didn't even know how to change the sound. In fact, I recall taking my new black and white Powerbook 145b to work and having a Star Trek screen saver installed that kept making sounds. I went into a pure panic when I couldn't work out how to stop the noises that might alert my Japanese coworkers to the fact that I had my own computer there and that it was playing the equivalent of little sci-fi cartoons when it as idle.

Being confronted with a new language or writing system is a very similar experience. The first sense you get is of being overwhelmed and like you have no footing from which to start working things out. When I first went to Japan, this was the space I lived in and it was daunting. The truth is that it's still daunting given how many kanji (Chinese characters) there are, but I muddled through. Now, I can manage dealing with researching and writing about Japanese snack foods. I'm far from perfect, and some critics might even say far from even "adequate" at it, but I feel like I can stumble around and figure most things out.

Dealing with food that is of a completely different origin puts me back at square one. If I review a Korean snack, I have a sense of flailing around in foreign waters without a life preserver. I know zero about Korean and the same is so about Russian. I don't even know if this is Russian for certain. It may be some other Eastern European language which looks similar, but is totally different. At any rate, I'm trying to swim here, but don't be surprised if I end up failing to even doggy paddle my way through this review. It may end up being the equivalent of "mmm, cookies" and little else given my illiteracy in the language of this product.

I found these cookies at a cool shop that is called "Crossroads Specialty Foods" in Palo Alto, CA. I was walking around the area near the dealership that was servicing our car, which was having its fluids drained, replaced, or topped off in celebration of its first birthday, when I saw their sign along the street. The sign is kind of weird and not like what it appears to be on the Yelp page that I linked to. It used to have "World Market" written in the middle in big letters and that was simply painted over so there's a big blank in the middle. Also, from outward appearances, it just looks strange because it doesn't have the feel of a market, but rather of a supply store. I approached with caution because I didn't want to walk in and be asked if I wanted help buying 100 lbs. of basmati rice or a drum of olive oil.

That's "cream" on the left and "butter" on the right, but then you could tell by looking, right?

At any rate, after a careful peek through the door revealed shelves full of cookies and candy, I walked in and was greeted to an excellent selection of European and Middle Eastern food and snacks. The selection included a ton of British chocolate as well as Russian cookies and sweets and things like halvah and marzipan. The prices ranged from cheap to reasonable. Since I'm not especially reasonable and quite cheap, I picked up these Russian cookies for a mere 89 cents per 6.3 oz./180 g. packet.

I was intrigued by the fact that the cookies looked absolutely identical, but supposedly were different flavors. Also, I wondered what "cream" flavor was supposed to taste like and if the "butter" flavor would actually taste more buttery. To test this out, I had my husband do a blind taste test to see if he could tell and he could. This was pretty impressive since he doesn't have as keen a sense of taste as I do.

There is a very distinct difference between these cookies, but they are both very good. The butter one has a very discernible butter flavor. In fact, I think it's a fake flavoring since "margarine" is listed as an ingredient, but butter is not. The "cream" version has a cleaner taste, but has a nice plain butter cookie flavor to it overall. Both are "good", but I preferred the cream one.

With all types of plain cookies like these, it's as much about the texture as the taste. These have a great flaky, slightly crumbly texture and they pair extremely well with coffee or tea. They're the type of cookie that is good to have around for guests or times when you just want a little crispy cookie around that's not too sweet.

I really liked these, but I do like butter cookies and fairly simple tasting things that aren't too sweet. Texture is paramount and what I mainly hope for in a cheap consumer-level cookie like this is that it not resemble a cracker. This is absolutely a proper cookie which has a European feel. Is it the end-all and be-all of cookies? It is not, but it's still a pretty nice cookie and I'd definitely buy it again, especially at the price they are currently available.

I checked online for sources of these cookies, and I couldn't find the exact ones online, but there's an interesting online place for Russian food that sells a variety of these as well as many other products.

Look Amaou Strawberry Cream Parfait Chocolate

One of the things which has become clear to me since returning to the U.S. is that the market here for snack foods is dramatically different than that in Japan. One of these days, I want to write a comprehensive post about it, but the American market appears to favor enormous slabs of rich cake covered in frosting and the Japanese one prefers delicate little pieces with bits of fruit and whipped cream. A lot of people will attach some sort of character judgement to this tidbit of information, but I know that people like what they are given because they are given it, not because of some inherent personality issue.

What I mean by that is that the Japanese favor their twee little cakes with their light, fatty enhancements and fruit because that's what they've grown up with. I happen to like those, too, but that is because I have a long-standing love affair with whipped cream. Those of you with filthy minds, and I salute you, can use your febrile imaginations to make that fact far more interesting than the actual reality.

At any rate, one thing that informs the types of sweets that are produced in Japan is the backbone of their flavor preferences. This "Look" offering attempts to imitate a strawberry parfait with vanilla whipped cream. To get this effect, they offer a "vanilla whipped cream" base made with "fresh cream" (whipping cream) with strawberry sauce on top and covered in chocolate.

If you pause and pay attention while you eat these types of chocolates, you can discover whether or not they have succeeded in something that consumer level chocolates frequently do poorly and that is, offer flavor depth. When this type of attempt at sophistication succeeds, you'll get hit with a variety of flavors impacting different parts of your taste buds. You'll get the round, woody sense of vanilla, the tartness of the berry, and the slightly bitter chocolate with sugar to balance it all out and fatty richness to add heft to the experience. That's a lot to expect of one tiny little bit of chocolate, and it's not quite up to the task.

That is in no way saying that this is a failure. It actually is a very good chocolate with the chocolate dominating and the strawberry coming up behind it and mixing in a nice tart, berry flavor. The main way in which it doesn't come across is in the vanilla notes. There is a creaminess to the texture, but the amount of vanilla cream is too small to bring in much of a flavor punch. This is probably better than the alternative, and that would be too much fake vanilla flavor.

This is a very good consumer-level chocolate and if you like chocolate with berry, I'd definitely say give this a try. I don't even like strawberry chocolate and I liked this. It's available in the U.S. at Nijiya, as well as other Japanese markets.

Incidentally, the name of this confused me because I had never heard of "amaou" before and my efforts to find a translation online were not very fruitful. I turned to Facebook and asked my Japanese friends. Surprisingly, only one of them knew what it meant and that was because she is a chef and is familiar with this idea when it comes to food. She said that "a" was for "akai" or "red", "ma" was for "marui" or "round", "o" is for "ookii" or "big" and "u" was for "umai" or "tasty" (though in English, "umai" often means "savory", it has a more flexible meaning in Japanese). So, this is supposed to be made with big, round, red, tasty berries. I'm sure it was. ;-)

D-Plus Hokkaido Cream Pastry Roll

Recently, I tried protein powder as a standalone product for the first time. I'm sure that I've consumed food which has had the equivalent of such supplements before, but this was my first experience with scooping it out and stirring it into a beverage in such a way that I could really taste it. Incidentally, I didn't buy it, but was given it free for review. I don't normally eat protein powder, but that's not the point I'm getting to anyway.

The protein powder had a particular familiar taste which I could not put my finger on for quite some time. I looked at the ingredients, the first of which related to peas, which I rarely eat and have an irrational dislike of because my mother tried to force-feed them to me when I was a kid, and there was nothing there to clue me in on why it should taste like some sense memory lodged deep in the memory banks of my aging brain. After giving up on pinpointing it, the answer came unbidden into my mind. It tasted like a much more intense version of the aftertaste from cheap vitamin fortified cereal, likely a Cheerios knock-off that I had in my impoverished upbringing. 

In a strange way, this made sense since I imagine one way in which cereal, which is really pretty bad for you, is "fortified" with nutrients is with vitamin powders. This protein powder had a similar taste profile. The weird thing was that the familiarity of it actually made it seem "better". It wasn't that it tasted good, nor that I had any sort of fond memory of that cereal, but just the fact that it was familiar made me like it more. Nostalgia is a potent modifier of experience.

That is a phrase that comes to mind because this Hokkaido Cream pastry roll, purchased at Daiso Japan for a modest $1.50, is all about nostalgia for me. No one, save my husband, whined more about the "bready" relatively shelf stable pastries in Japan more than me. They were not sweet enough, had too little flavor and were always composed of relatively bland white bread. However, that presentation is something which I'll always associate with living there. This roll tasted like life in Tokyo.

That is not to say that it tasted "great", but it was actually better than expected. I sampled a D-Plus Anpan previously, and found it disappointing. This was somewhat better for two reasons. First of all, the bread was fluffier and softer than the anpan version. It was suprisingly fresh in terms of the texture. That could be the nature of this sweet or I could have gotten the anpan at the end of its shelf life and the cream bread at the beginning. It's hard to say for sure, but it was actually pretty decent as far as being soft.

The "cream" part was where it really hit home as a carby slice of Japan. I thought that I'd cut it open and find a small anemic pocket of cream in the middle surrounded by a huge amount of bread. That wasn't the way it worked. If you look at the picture above, you can see dots of yellow that look like tiny bits of butter. You can also see that the cream bread is layered is sections. The cream is distributed in marginal amounts between each segment. This may account for how moist and soft the bread is since even a smattering of fatty cream filling may keep the bread from drying out.

In terms of the taste, I honestly liked it. It is ever so slightly sweet and had the barest hint of custard taste. Coupled with the fairly good texture, this was a serviceable breakfast bread or snack (and at 270 calories, it was a reasonable portion). The truth is that I'd buy this again. However, I think that this is not something I'd recommend for my readers unless they have the same nostalgia for Japan that I do. Objectively speaking, this is no great shakes and you'd be better off buying a nice bun or roll from a supermarket bakery. This was good, but only for what it is and for those who have a sense memory they'd like to relive. I'm sure that's how these D-Plus pastries remain in stock at Japanese markets. They cater to the desire of people who want the "Japanese taste" while they're not in Japan. 

Glico Cream Collon

Back when I was in junior high school, we had a classmate whose first name was "Colin", but it wasn't pronounced the way it is in the U.K. ("call-un") but like the punctuation ("coal-in"). Even though we were responding to any mention of the word "come" with a titter due to raging hormones wrecking havoc on our young bodies, we didn't find his name funny. At that point in time, words that resembled anatomy which wasn't linked to sex didn't really make us laugh, though I guess these days "colon" may indeed be linked to sexual activity.

At any rate, "collon" is one of the darlings of the "Engrish" community and packages of it are pictured all over various web sites featuring Japanese objects which have funny names in English. Despite this, I haven't reviewed it because I've usually seen it only in big packages and wasn't willing to buy a relatively large amount for sampling. Dame fortune smiled upon me when I saw a tiny packet available at a 100 yen ($1.24) shop available in a bin of snacks that were 3 for 100 yen. So, this cost me a mere 33.33 yen (41 cents).

Sorry for the crappy picture. Getting light-colored food to take a decent picture is always a challenge for my crappy camera and poor photography skills.

I expected these to be like a sweet version of a Combo, those pretzels that are stuffed with flavored pastes of various types. That is, I thought they might be hard on the outside with a fairly solid filling. It turns out that they are actually quite delicate. The outer shell is flakey and like thin layers of wafer cone. The filling is very soft and fluffy and not in the least bit dense. They are quite sweet with a potent vanilla flavoring. I can see how these are much more likely to be designed for kids rather than adults given the sweetness level.

These are delicious with a very satisfying textural combination, but the sweetness is really intense. This is actually not a bad thing since a mere 7 little pieces of them (15.5 g./.5 oz. bag) have 89 calories. For a one bite treat, 12 calories per isn't insubstantial, especially when they practically melt in your mouth. The fact that they are so sweet makes it easier to eat a small amount and feel it's enough. Frankly, by the second one, I was thinking I was closing in on cloying, and was good to stop.

Collon are what my husband calls "very wrong" which is to say they are a bit too right. They are super sweet, fatty, and a serious indulgence. I'd definitely recommend giving them a try as long as super, super sweet things don't turn you off.

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.

Cisco's Vanilla Cream Dacquoise Cookies

My husband spied these cookies while we perusing Family Mart convenience store ("konbini") before heading up to the counter to pay our utility bills. He picked up the last remaining bag and said they looked good, but then put them back. I had a look at the ingredients list, which started with sugar, then quickly went to eggs, shortening, almonds, and "sugar water" then flour and thought these looked like something of interest. Any time eggs or nuts are high on the list, I'm happy as that means they're generally a variation on some sort of European treat. I'm even happier if the eggs end up being part of a meringue base.

The package cost 105 yen ($1.25) for a mere three cookies. Each cookie is about 5 cm long and 4 cm wide (2" x 1.6"), so they're far from cheap despite being "konbini" fare. There was also a coffee variety and it had just one bag remaining. I don't know if this was a good sign or not, but we decided to go for the vanilla. They are made by Cisco's, a division of food producer Nissin. Previously, I had sampled and indifferently reviewed Cisco's sweet potato cookies. Each cookie is 49 calories.

I had never heard of dacquoise before buying these cookies so I didn't know what to expect aside from what we could see in the picture on the front of the bag which is misleading. The cookies are a sponge with a lightly crisp film on top filled with fatty whipped cream. They smell like vanilla and "sweetness". The cookies are tender inside and slightly spongey. The cream is soft, very, very sweet and has good vanilla flavor. It reminded me of the filling in some snack cake I may have eaten many, many years ago back home, but I can't remember which it might be.

This is a very nice little treat, but it is incredibly sweet. If you're sensitive to really sugary treats, you'll want to give this a miss, but it does make a lovely pairing with coffee and if you just eat one cookie at a time, it shouldn't be too overbearing. I truly enjoyed this and it has already been decided that we'll buy them again (likely sampling the coffee variety).

bon o bon Chocolate and Vanilla Cream Bonbons

All 100-yen shops are not created equal in Japan. Some of them mainly carry food and are like tiny, cheap supermarkets selling food in small portions. Some carry novelties, housewares, and other things that you're not supposed to put in your mouth (let alone swallow). One chain which has a blue sign with the words "100 yen" written on it in white carries both snacks and a large number of housewares. That was the shop where I found these varieties of bonbons. It's a bit further afield than my usual haunts, but it had things I don't often see so it was work the trek.

These are distributed by snack manufacturer Yaokin, which I know well from it's salted snack foods designed for the Japanese kid market. At the time that I researched the company for other reviews, I downloaded a catalog in .pdf format which included a plethora of snacks that I had never seen before and these bonbons were amongst those previously undiscovered treats. These chocolates were produced in Argentina, and are sold under the brand name Arcor. They are sold in the South American market, and are a bigger deal there than they are in Japan. There is a cute animated commercial for them on YouTube.


So, it ended up being the case that these are not Japanese, but they are marketed in Japan so that makes them fair game for me. Each is about 4 cm (1.6 in.) in diameter, and there are 6 of them in each bag (for 99 yen or about $1.10). There is no nutritional information on the bag, but I'd guess they're 80-100 calories each. The ingredients include sugar, peanuts, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and cocoa mass.

I first bought the chocolate cream variety and my husband and I gave them a taste. They're a little like a cheaper, bigger version of a Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolate. They smell like cocoa, with a hint of peanut. Each is a nice blob of soft, creamy filling with a thin wafer shell dipped in chocolate. The chocolate flavor is rather weak, and you can tell it's either designed for a market which is dissimilar from that in Japan (where chocolate is bittersweet) or it's just cheap chocolate. That doesn't make it bad at all. It just makes it a better choice for those who like milk chocolate than those who like dark or strong cocoa flavors. The chocolate is creamy, but has some grain to it.

The peanut element is much more present than I anticipated. In fact, it borders on a chocolate peanut butter candy which makes it fantastic in the eyes of us foreign folks who are missing our Reese's peanut butter cups. Mind you, this is no peanut butter cup, but at least the peanut and chocolate combination can be tasted. For the record, peanut butter and chocolate combinations are extremely rare in Japan. Most Japanese people respond to the idea with the equivalent of "ewww".


The vanilla cream flavor bonbon is very similar to the chocolate one, but the flavor is a little "cleaner". I wanted to try the vanilla variety mainly to see if the peanut butter shined through more intensely when the filling wasn't full of cocoa goodness. It turned out that it wasn't any stronger, but it still was good. It was sweet, creamy, and had mild but detectable hints of peanut. There wasn't much of a true "vanilla" flavor, but it was still good.

I really liked these, though they clearly are not a premium candy and lack the refined quality that Japan-made chocolates have. They have a lot going for them in terms of the textural elements and the peanut and chocolate flavor combination. The center is rich and fatty, but rather light. The wafer makes a nice contrast with the soft center.

I can not only say that I would buy these again, but that I went out and bought three more bags of them after the first one was gone. For 100 yen each, these are really great. The only down side is that you might want to eat the whole bag and regret it.

Lotte Maple Custard Cake

Based on the choices I make for review, one might assume that Japan has little or no equivalent to Hostess cakes or Little Debbie. While it is certainly the case that there aren't nearly as many preserved cake options in Japan as there are in the U.S., there are often boxes of individually wrapped cakes with cream centers and various styles of icing on offer.

The reason I rarely review them (with a few exceptions including the Morinaga Kyorochan milk cake and Borden condensed milk cakes) is that I don't want to buy a box of six of them and find out I don't like them. Most of them cost around 270 yen ($2.97) and the cakes are small and fatty. Since I review so much junk, I decided awhile ago not to buy any of those big boxes of cakes and that I'd only review them if I could get them as individual portions. Enter this orphaned Lotte Maple Custard cake which I found at AM/PM for 60 yen (66 cents).


The cake smells like maple and has a distinctive cake smell which you encounter with all Japanese cakes of this type. The cake itself tastes like margarine and has a slightly oily texture and leaves a film on your fingers. I'll note that any type of cake like this which is not covered with icing or coating is like this in Japan. It's oddly dry and oily at the same time.

The filling is nicely sweet and has both a maple and caramel flavor. There isn't much of the custard filling and it can't really be tasted as much more than a sweet fatty feeling on the tongue. The maple notes are much more powerful than any custard notes.

This is not a bad cake really. I split it with my husband so that I wouldn't be eating all 116 calories by myself. Both of us thought it was pretty good, but also that we wouldn't buy it again because the cake itself just wasn't doing much for us. Note that this cake is a limited edition for winter. If you're interested in it despite my less than glowing endorsement, you'll have to get it before the cherry blossoms start blooming.

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.

Double Cream Brown Sugar Sembei

I've been questing to find a combination of a salty-sweet sembei marriage that pleases my picky palate. I knew it was out there somewhere, and brown sugar and cream (two-thirds of what makes caramel what it is) seemed like a good place to look for my edible salty-sweet fiance.


This particular bag of sembei didn't make the trip from the store very well. Several of my packets were smashed and the crackers broken. I'm not sure if that is how the shop got them, or if that is what I did to them when I crammed them into my backpack with 8 bottles of Diet Coke. At any rate, this bag has 24 large crackers packaged in 2-cracker packs for about 170 yen (about $1.70). Each two-pack is 62 calories and that doesn't seem too bad for something streaked with what appears to be sugary frosting.


The crackers are the "soft" or puffy type of sembei rather than the brittle thin type. They clearly are made by folding over the dough and are a little hollow in the center. They smell of brown sugary goodness and are nice and crispy. When you bite into them, they tend to let loose with a lot of little hard crumbs though so I recommend eating them from the packet and allowing the flotsam to fall back in the bag.

The taste is at first a bit of a "burnt" brown sugar flavor which is reminiscent of molasses followed by a clearly discernible, but not overpowering hit of salt. The combination seems to be in perfect balance. I can't really taste the cream, and to be honest it isn't high up on the ingredients list so I have my doubts about the volume of actual cream in them, but I don't think these need more of anything. They are great as they are.

I loved these and think they'd make an excellent substitute for a cookie if you were in the mood for something sweet. After I finished the bag, I wished I had bought another to have around. While I was able to control my eating for the most part, it was extremely easy to eat 6 crackers in one sitting when I was hungry and throwing caution to the wind. By all means, give these a try.

Crimio Hard Candy (strawberry)

"Engrish" is a constant fascination for foreigners both in Japan and abroad. We amuse ourselves with the twisted versions of our words that the Japanese incorporate into their advertising and product names. While we're perusing engrish.com and entertaining ourselves, the Japanese are snickering at our mangled pronunciation of words like "karaoke" (or as they say in the U.S. "carry-okee").

I'll admit that it was the engrish on this package that persuaded me to buy this candy. I couldn't help but think of things like how this must be the candy you buy for convicts. Perhaps you can slip one to your law-breaking lover in the conjugal visit trailer to freshen his breath before your liaison. Actually, "Crimio" is meant to stand for "creamy-o" as in fresh cream mixed with strawberries. (The "i" sound in Japan is like "e" in English. )


The candies resemble a peppermint, but smell sweetly of strawberry. I'm not a great fan of strawberry, but a whiff of these made me keen to sample them. They smell great. The outside is smooth and just a little sticky. The flavor is a really impressive mix of the tartness and sweetness of real strawberries with a milky undertone. The information on the box states that these contain 3% real strawberry. It's also interesting to note that these are colored naturally with purple carrot and purple potato.

These are very good. If you like strawberry, you're almost certainly going to love these. If you dislike it, you'll probably still like them. The only down side is that these aren't sugar free. While they're only 17 calories per candy and you're unlikely to put away all 8 candies at once (not that you might not be tempted to), I'm guessing that isn't going to help your teeth much. Still, as an occasional treat, these are super and I strongly recommend picking them up if you have a chance.

Lawson Value Line Swiss Cake Roll (Chestnut)

Lawson's runs a chain of convenience stores all over Japan. The curious thing about Lawson's is that the brand originated in Ohio, but it has grown to be the second largest convenience store chain in Japan. Lawson's presently has three different types of stores. One is your average somewhat expensive shop full of junk food and lunch fodder (bento, rice balls, etc.). Another is called "Natural Lawson's" and supposedly carries somewhat healthier fare including fruit and vegetables and health food products. The last one is a 100 yen store.

The 100 yen shops carry a "Value Line." These are products which are large for their low price tag. I should note that none of these Lawson shops are located in my neighborhood, but I found this Swiss cake roll at a different 100 yen store. I guess that Lawson's markets their products to other shops or my local 100 yen place, called QQ, could be owned by Lawson's.


The Value Line Swiss cake roll has been around for awhile in vanilla, strawberry and mocha flavor, but a few new varieties have been introduced with the change in season. Since I can't resist chestnut (called "marron" here), I decided to give this cake a try.

If you give the cake a sniff, it smells sweet, cakey, and ever so slightly like chestnuts. The cake itself is a nice, soft yellow sponge. It's not especially moist, but it's also not especially dry. It's a bit sweet, but doesn't carry much flavor on its own. I wouldn't be surprised if this was by design to allow the cream's flavor to dominate. The cream is very light and smooth. It has the texture of whipped cream and is sweet and has a somewhat subtle chestnut flavor. The cream also has a hint of coffee flavor and malt, but I believe that comes from caramel coloring and flavoring. The ratio of cream to cake is just about perfect.

For 100 yen, this is a very nice Swiss cake roll. It isn't as good as a designer cake from a high quality patisserie, but it does beat more expensive cakes I've had from markets and bakeries. Generally speaking, the Japanese don't do cakes very well compared to some other Western born treats. One of the reasons for this is that they don't like their treats as sweet on the whole and sugar adds moisture so reducing the sugar results in cakes that tend to be on the dry side. However, this combination works well. You wouldn't be embarrassed to serve this to guests in a pinch and it certainly would make for an economical dessert if you're hankering for a bit of cake.

The only problem with this cheap treat is that it's quite high in calories. The package says there are 382 calories in 100 grams and the entire cake weighs a little over 200 grams. I believe 5 servings would be fairly reasonable, but that's still a relatively small portion and weighs in at 152 calories. I'm guessing most people could put away 1/3 of the whole cake without batting an eye if they were looking to go a bit overboard.

I've tried the vanilla variety of this cake before and it's good as well. I try not to have it very often, but it is hard to resist when it's so cheap and easy to find. The only hesitation I have about recommending it is related to the nutritional issues and not the taste.

Kyro-chan Cake (Milk)

Back when I was a kid in Pennsylvania, one of my aunts used to make "whoopie pies". For those who are uninitiated in the delights of the whoopie pie, it is generally regarded as a Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) concoction and is very tasty, particularly to children. The filling is particularly yummy.

I haven't seen or eaten a whoopie pie in decades, but one immediately came to mind when I saw this box of Kyroro-chan (キョロチャん) Cakes (milk flavor). Kyoro-chan, by the way, is famous in Japan as a mascot for a candy called "choco balls". Choco-balls are tiny little fried peanuts covered in glossy milk chocolate and Kyroro-chan is designed after the shape of a peanut with a weird beak attached to it, hence the shape of the ugly bird on the box.

Not content to only attach his visage to small boxes of chocolate-covered peanuts, Kyoro-chan has been branching out and now his image is pasted on various sorts of candies of a similar size and shape to the original choco-ball. The only difference is that the body design changes to match the product. The reason he's looks like the unfortunate offspring of some odd coupling with a toucan and a holstein on this box is that the cakes are "milk" flavored and milk comes from cows.

With images of whoopie pies dancing in my head, I decided to take the plunge and buy this box of cakes. However, I know from experience that any product you buy in Japan that resembles an old home favorite is never going to live up to expectations. Hope springs eternal, however.

Click for a detailed image showing texture.

Six cakes come individually-wrapped in a cow-spotted package. This type of wasteful but very convenient packaging is very common in Japan. I can't remember what I paid for the box but it was around $2-$2.50 (200-260 yen). The cakes are very small, about 1.5 times the diameter of an Oreo cookie. They are exceptionally soft and have a good cream filling to cake ratio, though the filling is not nearly as generous near the edges as the box illustration makes it appear.

The filling is actually pretty good. It's very light without being airy though it has little taste of its own. It could definitely use a spot of vanilla, but it came close to approximating a whoopie pie's filling. One of the reasons for this is that the third ingredient for these cakes is "shortening" and whoopie pie filling has a lot of vegetable shortening in it. Unfortunately, that makes these cakes immensely fatty. One tiny cake is 140 calories.

What they aren't is incredibly sweet (sugar is the fifth ingredient, though I believe "sweet water/sugar water" is the second one). This is a good thing in some ways, but it also makes for a relatively flat taste experience. Cocoa is so far down on the list of ingredients at number 8 that you know that there isn't much chocolate in there. The cake portion has very little flavor and provides little contrast to the filling either as a deeper flavor or as a different texture. So, the super soft cookie plus soft filling with no deep flavors make it pretty disappointing.

I certainly wouldn't buy these again. It's not that they're bad, but just that they are really loaded with fat and high in calories for the portion size so that the pleasure to nutritional "badness" ratio makes them not worthwhile.