Morinaga Henshin Chews

Hey all! We're back with another installment of Sugarnoms! We wish we could update more often, but both Silvy and I have been very busy! New jobs and such tend to make you extra occupied. 

Anyway, this time we have two rather interesting candy chews. Morinaga has a lot of different candies under their belt, but when I saw these Henshin candies (henshin meaning transformation) I had to give them a go.  

Basically, they come in two 'flavour' sets. One being Banana Strawberry and the other being Banana Orange. The front and back of the packaging shows the kind of flavours you get when you mix any particular two flavours, with a mystery 'popular drink' flavour if you mix in a 3rd flavour. They sort of encourage you to get both at the same time, if not to experiment. Thankfully they aren't expensive, the price going at roughly RM 3 and up a piece depending where you get 'em.

As you can see, banana and orange becomes ramune (soda) flavour, while strawberry and banana becomes melon flavour. Throw in an extra flavour from another pack and it becomes that special 'popular drink' flavour.

 Here's what they look like outta the packaging. They're slightly sticky but they were nice and thick. I tried each individual flavour before getting down to the mixing.

The orange tasted nice, slightly tangy but not overbearing. This was my favourite of the lot.

Banana was pretty neutral, tasting only a hint of the fruit itself.

The strawberry was surprisingly muted tasting, despite blasting my face with strawberry scent when I opened the packaging, but it didn't taste artificial so it was actually quite pleasant.

Now on to the mixed flavours.

The melon flavour more or less tasted like melon, though it still tasted rather muted but it was nice and mellow.

The ramune flavour on the other hand, only smelled like its namesake but didn't taste like it. It was still alright but I feel it fell rather short.

The 'popular drink' flavour, if you didn't guess yet that it was cola flavour. Sadly the mix tasted like a real weird cola, but thankfully the flavours that made it up weren't quite discernible after mixing.

It was really fun to twizzle though.

Spire sez: Its sticky, thick and slightly sweet. Tends to get really stuck in teeth. Personally I find it quite nice in small quantities, and if you chill it a bit, you can chop up the lot into segments for drawn out enjoyment. It's easily eaten out of the packaging too, so it gets plus points for being mess-free. 

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun:  3/5

KitKat Dark Chocolate

Spire here with a short but very sweet bit of sugar to share!

Now, a KitKat is an absolutely normal thing to come across in your average grocery store. Well, with the exception of those weird flavoured KitKats Japan is constantly churning out (really, Sakura flavour? if I wanted flowers I'd go and eat them myself)

So to my surprise I came across these dark chocolate KitKats in Jaya Grocer. They're not cheap at all, pricing close to RM8 a bar, and they melt really easy.

I had to refrigerate mine as soon as I got home, else it would have gone out of shape. At any rate, the packaging is quite tough (none of that weird paper stuff going on here) so  you CAN feel the quality that you are paying for. Here's the back, if you'd like to see the minute details. It ONLY has 10.3g of sugar in it :D

Sorry, but we can't provide a picture of the bar inside it. It didn't last long enough for a picture!

Taste wise, it was a very rich, deliciously dark chocolatey KitKat. It wasn't so sweet, and it wasn't all that bitter either, but rather that delectable middle ground between them. It tasted great cold as well as warm (though a teensy bit messier) I'd strongly recommend it if you have a bit of extra cash you want to splurge on some tasty dark chocolate, but not enough to go and grab a premium chocolate bar. 

There's a slightly cheaper 70% dark chocolate version as well, but it didn't survive the journey home. Oh well *sniff*

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 2/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Delicious

Popin' Cookin' Doughnuts Part 2!

Now finally being able to get around to the next bit, we have Popin' Cookin; Doughnuts Part 2!

[Part 1 can be found here]

Also, for those checking, the price was RM 15.90 from Shojikiya. Most of this stuff can be found there and/or bought from Isetan KLCC as well, in the candy section.

Picking up where Silvy let off, while the doughy stuff was 'setting' I set about to handle the icings. You get three sachets of icing, in the flavours of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.

As expected, it was the usual goopy stuff. Just add a little water using the supplied cut-off plastic measuring-cup-triangle-thing and dump it in. The strawberry was very strong smelling, as expected, and also as expected, the vanilla and strawberry icings didn't have any redeeming qualities.

 They just plain tasted weird. Creamy, but weird.

 The chocolate icing on the other hand (not pictured) came out a lot more liquid after mixing, and it was surprisingly tasty! Which pretty made it the saving grace of this kit.

After the doughnuts had set, we opened up the two other sachets that had the obligatory sprinkles and little cookie crumbs so we could get started.

Decorating got a bit silly, as you only get the mixing spoon and a small icing bag to distribute the icing. The whole while we had to actually control ourselves from eating up the chocolate icing because, dammit, it was freaking tasty. THE TASTIEST thing I've ever had that came out of a sachet.

Well here we are, the finish product. There's one less in the picture because we gave one to the nice gentleman that let us sit at his store well after closing time to let us finish this up. The icing is a funny thing. It tends to liquidize slightly after applying them onto the little spongy doughnut candies and then drip.

 Suffice to say, they didn't taste too bad. Of course, they didn't have the texture of real dougnuts, but it was a pretty fun kit. And we wish there was more chocolate stuff. Really, we do.

Also, a newer version of this kit has since hit the market under the same brand, so keep an eye out for different packaging.

Spire sez: This is a very nice kit, and if it weren't for the weird tasting vanilla and strawberry icing, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. The doughnuts themselves are a bit fiddly to get out of the molds because they tend to fall apart a bit, but overall I give it a thumbs up.

Silvy says: This kit was surprisingly fun and entertaining for me. The doughnut molds were rather fiddly (the 'dough' kept breaking up) but once they've popped out, it's pretty much smooth sailing all the way. Vanilla and strawberry icing tasted horrible, but the chocolate was divine! Give this a try when you can, you'll love it :D

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Moderate

Fun: 5/5

Silvy's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Moderate

Fun: 5/5

Flourescence Lolly

Spire here!

And after a long, long absence, we're back! Mostly the fact we weren't posting much was 'cause of the holidays (but mostly me being a lazyass in updating images etc etc, well its been a hectic 3 months)

So yes, I found this sucker of an anomaly while I was running around one of the local arcades, there was this sweets stand next to it and it had a small heap of these things:
Flourescence "sparkling' lollipops for RM2. They came in a small range of colours, namely yellow, red, green (this was what I got), blue and I think purple. Either way, each lolly is basically a tiny glowstick embedded with a sugary head that was the same colour as the glowstick.
Well, almost. The things didn't say the flavour so I just assumed that red would be strawberry, blue would be raspberry and the like. The lollipop itself isn't very remarkable, heck the glowstick portion tends to come out of the packaging already broken (aka no glow left) or the liquid inside separated a bit like the one up top.

What surprised me the most here, is that when I liberated it from the packaging, that it had no smell. I had to practically stick it in my nose to get any whiff of flavour, and even then it was extremely ambiguous.

So I decided to just crack glowstick and see how impressive it looked.
Ugh. The glow was so weak I could barely see it. That picture up there was taken in literal pitch black darkness. Kinda expected it because well, you can't even buy a normal party glowstick for that price.

Spire sez: Sweet jezus, it tasted disgusting. It had a very mild hint of apple flavour but the sugar taste was overpowering, and it didn't even taste like normal sugar! the taste was like someone decided to mix in motor oil and something sour into the mix. They may look cool in the dark or at a rave or something, but I'm never buying one for the sole purpose of eating. EVER. If you have someone hand you one of these, run for your lives!

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 0/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Nonexistant.

Fun: 2/5