Crispy Mint M&Ms

Hi again!

Since it's now Summertime lets talk about another summer treat I got from Japan when I last visited. 

Mint treats are quite a hit during the summer time, with lots of different candies and treats featuring mint and their other cooling derivative flavours. I can't entirely remember the price but it's somewhere between 100-200 yen.

Of course you can find these year around in some countries, but I've yet to find this combination around here and that makes me sad. Because I love any and all things mint. But I have been seeing more M&M flavours pop up around these parts so maybe we will actually get some mint flavoured ones eventually ;)

The M&Ms themselves look like your bog standard crispy M&Ms, significantly larger than the regular chocolate ones and comes in shades of white, dark and light green. These unfortunately cracked because we're experiencing a heat wave and my candy took a bit of damage =\

They're nice and crunchy (but not like a malteaser, those are much tougher) but with a strong cool mint flavour from the moment it hits your tongue. The crisp is very slightly salty, the middle of it is green.

The chocolate however is not unlike what you get in a regular M&M, though they taste less sweet. The cooling effect is restricted to mainly the shell alone so it doesn't permeate the entire candy.

Spire sez: It's a cool candy (pun intended) which I wouldn't mind getting again (imagine it as an ice cream topping!) but I've yet to see it a 2^nd time.

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Damn that's tasty!

Meiji 'Feel Mint' Kinoko no Yama Mushroom Cookie

Hello again!

As Summer draws near (for those of you who have seasons, I have horrible amounts of sun all year around :P) lets take a look at some cooling goodies as the temperature goes up.

Kinoko no Yama is a sort of cookie (I don't know what to call it, it's quite literally half chocolate candy and half biscuit D:)  with a chocolate mushroom 'cap' and comes in a variety of flavours with the most popular ones being chocolate, strawberry creme and banana. 

They've also got a DIY kit to make your own mushroom treats but I couldn't locate one before heading off from Tokyo. The box has an inverse design where it can be displayed in either horizontally or vertically depending on which face of the box is showing.

This is a special 'Feel Mint' edition of the candy for the Summer season, where you will find a lot of mint themed candies and chocolates on the shelves in Japan. I think it was somewhere around 200 yen at Lawsons. Not too expensive :)

I've heard reports of the chocolate melting together into a congealed mess when the temperature gets too hot but luckily it didn't happen to me despite hauling it all the way back in my luggage. Once opened you'll find maybe twenty-odd little cookies inside the bag.

The cookies themselves are pretty adorable, looking like little stylized bell mushrooms.

On to the tasting!

The mint was delicious, not overpowering but creamy too, pretty much the same way the Feel Mint chocolate candies taste like and the chocolate stems further complimented the taste. They taste fantastic when chilled too, and would look absolutely adorable adorning the top of an ice cream sundae.

Spire sez: Overall I really enjoyed them! I wish there were more cookies in the box. I'm definitely trying out more flavours when I can get my hands on them! :D

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 5/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Damn that's tasty!

Tokyo Banana Caramel

Hello again!

We unexpectedly got to try another flavour of Tokyo Banana when a friend brought back some from Japan ^_^ bless her for remembering we have a sweets blog!

The packaging pretty much looks the same,with the exception that it has a splash of brown and it sports a slightly different label with the word Caramel on it.

Lookin' good!

It does look a tad darker brown than the original flavour of Tokyo Banana, and it also smells significantly sweeter out of the bag. It's also supposed to have some caramel filling on top of being overall sweeter, but in terms of looks, I'm a bit surprised that it doesn't have the distinctive patches or stripes that I mentioned in a previous review, but it apparently does taste the same.

The filling is still that distinct custardy-textured banana, but with a small layer of caramel surrounding it. It's kinda hard to see but trust me you'll taste it. As far as the flavour goes you still get sweet without being crazy sweet, and the sponge cake is divinely fluffy despite being slightly flatter than it's paler brethren.

However it IS sweeter than the original Tokyo Banana flavour so if you're not into sweet stuff it might be a bit of a turn off.

Spire sez: Honestly I like this just as much as the original! It's just a bit sweeter with a hint of caramel goodness. Man, I really need to make it a point to get more flavours if I visit Tokyo again.

Silvy says: Great if you utterly adore caramel. It was good, but I don't think I'd take any more; mostly because me and caramel aren't a good mix haha

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 5/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Damn that's tasty

Silvy's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 4/5

DIY level: As high as imagination goes ;P

Fun: Just pop it open and nom!

KitKat Blueberry Cheesecake

Of all the loot I brought back from Japan, this one was probably the most oddly shaped thing I had to cram in my suitcase. I've always heard of 'strange KitKat flavours' being available in Japan so I decided to hunt about Narita airport a bit before my flight for anything of interest. This one certainly caught my eye. From what I found out is each prefecture in Japan has it's own unique flavour, ranging from the more benign Strawberry and Blueberry Cheesecake flavours as well as the ever popular Green Tea (Macha) flavour to scarier ones like Soy Sauce (Shoyu) and Wasabi.

For the whole box I think it was priced at 820 yen (about RM 25, ouch!). I may not be remembering exactly but these are generally sold around the 800 yen price bracket. The box which was shaped like a towering Mount Fuji held 9 pieces inside,  in a ball of clear plastic. 

The individual pieces themselves are heavily stylised with Mount Fuji and an image of it's indicated flavour in the front as well as a cute nameplate at the back which you can write on if it's meant as a gift. 

Sorry for the drop in picture quality. My camera died halfway and I had to resort to using my phone's horrible camera.

Out of the wrapper, it's pretty apparent that these special KitKats are a lot smaller than their bog standard chocolate brothers.

Regardless, they still look like KitKat and features their logo emblazoned on the top. It's not very visible because I think the Malaysian heat melted them a little in transit.

As far as flavour is concerned, it's white chocolate and exceptionally creamy, a little cheesy-milky with a hint of sweet blueberry as you chomp into the wafer. Its not too sweet but it's fairly rich so I couldn't handle too many at a go. Maybe that's why they're packaged so teeny?

Spire sez: I'm not a huge fan of large quantities of white chocolate but it's a nice change if you're tired of regular ol' KitKat or are just feeling adventurous. Most of the people I gave this to absolutely loved the flavour!

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Nonexistant

Fun: Nonexistant

Kracie Naru Naru Gumi Candy Kit (Soda)

Hey everyone, we're back after another (very busy) hiatus :D

Just a note, I went to Isetan KLCC recently and they've stocked up with an entire shelf full of new candy kits (price range RM 7-RM19) so here's your chance to bag yourself some!

What we have here is a very simple yet popular candy kit that allows you to make your own gummy 'grapes' in a rather unique way. I got this for RM9.90. I think it was a promo price because I've seen it being sold for RM12 elsewere before. I got it at one of those Japan snack faires. There's a grape flavour too, which I imagine would have been sweeter than the soda one.

Inside the bag you have the makings of a grape 'stem' made of plastic as well as three bags of sugary substance, namely a bag of fizzy sprinkles, a bag of the gummy powder and one more bag of powder you mix into a liquid to dip the 'stem' into.

 

How this works is you assemble the stem after cutting them out of the lattice (that tree shaped thing) and repeatedly dip it into the liquid, into the powder and then back into the liquid to build up the 'grapes' as you go along. It pretty much looks like this once assembled. It fits in a wee bit loose so make sure you snap it all in as tight as you can.

If you're not entirely sure how it fits together, there's some very easy to understand instructions on the back of the packet.

The kit is pretty straightforward. After you piece the stem together just pour in packet number 1 into compartment 1 and fill it up to the water line. This pack had a very strong ramune smell when I opened it up. Stir it till it dissolves and you're good to go to package 2!

Package 2 simply goes into the next compartment. It kinda looked like soap powder out of the bag, but it distinctively smelled of ramune too.

Just stick the stem in compartment one, rotate once and you're ready to start!

You just keep going back and forth between the powder and the liquid and watch as 'grapes' start to form on the stem. Our advice to get the most out of your powder is to even it out once grooves start to form so you get more even coverage.

 You'll eventually end up with this (or bigger!)

The last package has a bunch of fizzy sour lemon sprinkles in it that happilly fizz away when they hit the grapes. Personally I don't like the sprinkles all that much but they're quite nice to look at.

As far as taste goes, I was a bit surprised it didn't taste AS strong as I expected. The grapes have a gooey gummy texture of sorts and they aren't too sweet. If you made them too large they do have a tendency of randomly dropping off but generally speaking there's enough material in the packets to make almost two full stems worth of 'grapes'.

Spire sez: It was relatively fun though I probably wouldn't eat it again on pretext of not really enjoying the texture and flavour all that much.Overall this kit's end result wasn't too impressive and it can turn into a giant mess but it'll keep the kiddles entertained while you untangle the confusion about how grapes really are made :P

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 3/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Easy

Fun: 4/5

Popin' Cookin' Bento Candy Kit

Hey everyone! I hope your week has been awesome because we have another  post!

This kit is one of the more popular ones, having had a lot of reviews and videos done of it over time. It's still available on the market (yay!) but the kit has had a refresher (aka a change in packaging and contents) but it hasn't had a drastic change, with the exception of it having an additional bag of sprinkles and it no longer features the chicken nuggets. This one I bought for RM16.90 at Shojikiya, and it's still priced about the same for the new kit.

The inner packaging when opened out, had a surface for you to put your ready made bento on; with an illustration of a lunch box you could arrange it all on. The sides had the usual size guides and instructions on how to make the rice balls and how to operate the noodle mix bag. If you're going to use this as a plate or display, we do stress that you should at least give it a rinse first.

Inside, there's the usual plastic mold with all the bento 'food' shapes and mixing compartments. You get a little plastic fork as well and the dreaded plastic bag, on top of the six bags of mix that will create the goodies within.

Just pour the appropriate powders into each compartment and add the necessary amount of water as indicated by the instructions, then stir it with the fork. The liquid has quite the tendency to overflow so if you're a stickler for perfection I suppose you could mix it elsewhere and pour it into the mold instead. The octopus sausage mold made the most spectacular mess when we were getting it done because the tentacles were rather shallow.

While waiting for it all to solidify, we started on the other components.

The rice as expected was quite nice and fluffy when we mixed it up. It's important to follow the instructions when it comes to the water for this one; even the slightest extra will cause it to be goopy and very un-ricelike but too little will make it fail to congeal.

That done, we used the instructions on the inner packaging to make our panda riceballs and onigiri! After shaping it all, we pressed the larger riceball into the black powder molds to create a cute panda face, pressing the triangle in to make an onigiri and rolling the other two smaller balls to make the panda's 'ears'.

The powder was a little sour but had a bit of fizz to it. We ended up licking our fingers a lot! It stuck to the rice very well but there's was a lot leftover too. After that I just mixed up the chicken nuggets powder. It started off a bit gooey like the rice mix but congealed together in the end. 

Once done, we molded the chicken nuggets. They're a little more dense than the rice mix but they sure looked good. Separate the mix into two nuggets and press it each side with the fork to give it the 'katsu' look and you're good!

Next up was the pasta. Not to be defeated by the 'noodle goo' once again, we poured it right into the bag and mixed it there. Just make sure that there aren't any lumps and you're done.That said, simply nip off a corner of the bag and squeeze out the mix to make the 'spaghetti'. You can control how thick you want your pasta too, but thicker is better in this case.

By then the broccoli, egg roll and sausage had solidified nicely. They were all a little jiggly (it's jelly after all!) but weren't hard to remove from their molds. We then folded up the egg roll and it glued itself together easily before placing it all onto the plate.

I neglected to dry the plate before taking photos, so it's a little wet because the gummies had a little bit of dripping liquid when we took them out. I suppose if you left them in longer, they'd be a lot more dry unlike what you see here.

On to the tasting!

The spaghetti had a yogurty-starchy taste. It wasn't bad but at the same time not entirely flavourful either.

The egg roll tasted like grape. A bit strange coming from something yellow in colour but its likely it's white grape (muscat) flavour.

The rice tasted very plain but the slightly fizzy and sourish powder gave it a bit of a tingly kick. Otherwise the rice was just really fluffy and starchy.

I liked the chicken nugget thing a lot! I can't entirely remember what it tasted like but it was kinda yogurty I suppose.

The broccoli also tasted like grape(muscat) and the octopus sausage like strawberry. It's meant to be one of those really sweet kits so nothing here is actually savoury.

Spire sez: Well overall I'd say the kit was quite fun but I wasn't too big a fan of the flavours.. I felt they weren't strong enough and their choices of flavours were a bit out there (but a standard for Japanese candies) perhaps I am more biased towards the Happy Kitchen sets that actually put in more solid ingredients but I suppose that's just me.

If you like making a big mess and like eating the sweet aftermath, I say this kit is one of the 'must try' DIY items.

You could also probably wash out the mold and keep it for future projects using Jello I wager.

Spire's Ratings

Flavor: 4/5

Price: 3/5

DIY level: Easy

Fun: 3/5

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