Choc Goji Milk Chocolate Wolfberries

Hi everyone!

I came back from a trip to Singapore recently and I found something a little out of the ordinary while visiting a supermarket in Vivo city!

Chocolate coated Goji berries!

 It's advertised as one of those 'healthy snacks' you can have without the guilt or remorse of having a helping of chocolate and tastes good too. However I find goji berries and chocolate to be a rather odd combination, but I had to give them a try. There was a dark chocolate version available too at the same price.

It's fairly costly at about 4SGD a pack (that's about RM10 give or take) but it claims to give you tons of vitamin C and antioxidants so that counts for something right..?

I don't have images of the candies themselves (because I was dumb and forgot to take them), but they roughly look like chocolate coated sunflower seeds. The outer coating of chocolate is fairly thick and the goji berry inside is quite squishy and juicy.

Spire sez: I can't entirely say I liked them that much, because the goji berries had a rather strong flavour that was a bit sour and herbal-like. The chocolate didn't help mask it that much but I found them pleasant enough to eat maybe once in awhile. Not a taste for me but it's still a fairly exotic choice if you like health stuff. 

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Nonexistant

Popin' Cookin Ramen Set

Hey there, it's another Sunday!

Today we're taking a look at another one of Kracie's Popin' Cookin' items; the Ramen Set.

I cannot remember how much this kit was priced at but it's likely around the RM 14 mark as that's what the non-boxed sets tend to cost. It's no longer being produced, but you can still find it in some places if you're lucky. Kracie refreshes their product availability from time to time so in that sense you could say that everything is of a limited run per se.

This set basically lets you replicate one of the more staple dishes out in the east; namely Gyoza and Ramen. It may show an anthropomorphic pig on the front of the packaging but this product contains no meat. Just sayin'.

Tossing out the contents, we had one bag of instant soup, a bag of sprinkles, a log of moldable candy-stuff, a  bag of noodle mix, a plastic bag for making the noodles and finally a plastic fork.

In this kit the plastic packaging also doubles as a bowl and a plate for your noodles and gyoza, as well as having the usual cut-away water measuring cup and a mixing compartment.

Starting with the soup, you just had to measure in water to the line (approximately 3 scoops if memory serves me right) and dump in the mix. It smelled a lot like instant noodle soup, which was a nice change from all the extremely sweet candy kits we were more used to. A quick taste confirmed our suspicions, it did taste exactly like ramen soup! albeit a little saltier than normal.

Next up was the noodles. Since we hadn't yet learned the virtues of mixing squeezable materials in the bag yet, we simply did as the kit told us to. The resulting bright yellow mix was very thick and sticky. Using only the plastic fork given it was a challenge to get the entire thing into the little bag required to make the noodles. 

When in the bag, you have to nip off a tiny corner of it and squeeze it into the soup. I suspect there's something in there that makes it solidify, because the noodles did just that. Its up to you if you want to make a single string of noodle or nip it off after a certain length, really no real difference but the appearance of 

ramen was quite authentic.

 Now for the gyoza, or potstickers as they're called in some places.Basically you take out the log of candystuff and knead it out till its pliable.From there you're required to either roll or squash it till it gets to a general round shape. 

Sprinkle in some of the sprinkles (they kinda look like spring onion now that I think about it) and fold fold fold! There's about enough material to make about 3 gyozas in this manner.

As you can see, mine didn't go too well because uh, maybe I'm not Asian enough to innately know how to magic up gyozas without being taught how.

Silvy on the other hand, did it like a natural! Look at how pretty it is.

When done you can place the three into the compartment next to the ramen 'bowl' and chow down!

Here's some closeups.

The noodles and soup actually tasted like real noodles and soup which was quite surprising for us. The soup was flavoured like instant noodle soup (aka soysauce-ish flavoured) while the noodles did taste quite real too. If there was ever an adult sized version of this thing, I'd buy it!

I didn't really like the gyoza though. The sudden sweet contrast just didn't do it for me. The sprinkles were crunchy and sweet, while the candy itself was soft and sweet but yeah, I liked the ramen way more.

Spire sez: The gyoza was just meh for me, but boy did I love the ramen! Actually folding up the gyoza was a little tough (maybe just for me because, big ungainly hands) but overall it's a pretty easy kit by itself. Now if they the same technology for regular sized instant noodles...

Silvy says: The ramen was positively delish!! It was a truly savoury, if not miniature, dish.  The gyoza was pretty good, but only if you're into sweet gyoza I suppose. It had somewhat put me off cause after the savoury ramen, I would have loved to have a savoury gyoza too!

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Easy

Fun: Yes!

Silvy's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Easy Peasy

Fun:  5/5

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