My last update was a little over 3 weeks ago, since I was only updating once every few months for the past 8 months, I think this would be considered an improvement, and as I promised last time, I will be returning to the glorious world of Japanese junk food!

I'll also be reviewing 2 snacks today, I figured in order to save space for the blog, it would be better to post 2 reviews at a time from now on, it would also compensate for the slower updates
So today I will be reviewing 2 snacks I bought from
Maruyu Japanese supermarket last week.
The first snack I will be reviewing about is this pack of 'Pie no Mi' snack manufactured by
Lotte, 'Pie no Mi' is a popular snack brand of puff pastry biscuits/cookies with various chocolate fillings inside, I love them they're really delectable

this is actually my second review on 'Pie no Mi' snacks, my first review for the brand was for
the strawberry cheesecake flavour back in March of 2012, this is the original milk chocolate flavour:
The puff pastry cookies were very crispy and flaky, like puff pastry should be, and there were some caramelised sugar granules on top of the cookies, which gave the cookies a nice complementing sweetness, the sweetness from the sugar was not too strong, but mild enough to complement the puff pastry cookies. The chocolate filling inside was also good, although it had solidified instead of being soft and smooth, but that didn't bother me much.
Overall these milk chocolate 'Pie no Mi' cookies were really yummy, definitely better than the strawberry cheesecake flavour I reviewed in the past, they are certainly worth coming back for more!
My rating (overall): 



Now let's move on to this pack of 'Creamy & Crispy Pie' pastry cookies manufactured by
Furuta, this was my first time trying anything from this particular company, so I didn't know what to expect, but the product seemed appetizing enough on the package and it was on sale at
Maruyu at the time:

as you can see they're not really "pies" (at least not in the conventional sense in the western world) they are actually cookies made of pastry, but in Japan however, pastry cookies like these are apparently called 'pies', I don't know why. But with my many years of observing Japanese culture & pop culture, I've come to realise that the Japanese sometimes use certain english words differently to how they're normally used in the western world, which results in the disparity of the meanings for certain words or names in Japan.
Anyway, so these cookies were also made of puff pastry, they actually resemble French butterfly pastries aka
Palmiers, they probably are anyway, the many layers of pastry shaping the cookies gave them some nice texture and soft crunch and crispiness, the cookies also had a subtle but pleasant amount of buttery taste. There were also caramelised sugar granules coating the outer edges of the cookies which helped to add some sweetness to the cookies and balance out the buttery taste.
The only complaint I have about these pastry cookies is that on the package it clearly markets the cookies as "creamy & crispy", they were certainly crispy, but not "creamy" at all.
Overall, despite the partially misleading label on the package, the pastry cookies themselves were very delectable too with nice textures and flavours, I would happily buy them again in the future
My rating (overall): 



Sorry for yet another very slow update, the last few weeks for me has been rather crazy with so many things going on that I haven't had the chance to update this blog.
Anyway it's been soooooo long since I last reviewed about these yummy 'Crunky'
chocolate snacks from
LOTTE, which is quite surprising considering it's one of those few brands I really fancy from the company, you'd think I would review about them more often. The truth is I hadn't tried any new flavors of it for a long time until recently with my latest order from
NapaJapan. I was excited when I saw this new matcha ice cream flavor and since I love matcha ice cream & any matcha flavored
sweets, of course I didn't hesitate to order it...however afterwards when I tried it, I was left a bit disappointed...
The box contained 12 individually wrapped smaller pieces of
chocolate so you can share the little treats with others.
What I love most about these Crunky
chocolate snacks are those little crispy malt puffs embedded throughout the choc, they give the choc some very nice texture, crunchiness and crispiness. This matcha ice cream flavor was no different in terms of the texture due to the malt puffs. The letdown with this particular flavor was the matcha ice cream flavored white
chocolate itself. Although you can't really see it in the photo itself because of the lighting & angle, but the
chocolates had a very nice tint of soft pastel green, but the flavor was very weak to the point that the matcha flavor was non-existent. Although it's true that the flavor of matcha is significantly reduced when made into ice cream, so I was not expecting the matcha flavor to be particularly strong anyway. However in all those matcha ice creams I've savored over the years, they all retained at least a little bit of matcha flavor, so I was expecting at the very least a hint of matcha flavor in those
chocolates, but there wasn't any, not even a little tiny hint of it. Either the matcha flavor was simply non-existent or it was just too weak and overpowered by the sweetness of the
chocolate. But the consistency of the chocolates was good, rich and smooth, just the flavor was very lacking.
Overall this was not a particularly good attempt by LOTTE in terms of execution due to the lacking of accurate flavor, but I will give points for the yummy crispy malt puffs & the smooth consistency of the chocolate.
This is no where near as good as any of the other Crunky flavors I've tried over the years, that's for sure.
My rating (overall): 

I hadn't ordered from
J-List.com in almost 2 years, so back in January I decided to place another order with them and I received the package sometime last month.
This is one of the yummy goodies I ordered from them, I really like these 'Pie no Mi'
snacks from
Lotte, these decent bite-sized yummy hexagonal-shaped puff pastry cookies with various cream fillings. This is the Strawberry cheesecake flavor:

I knew even before I ordered these that I was overall going to be satisfied with these regardless because 'Pie no Mi' is one of the few snack brands from
Lotte that has me wanting more of, but, I try not to be too bias in my reviews
As you can see in the photos, the cookies are made of puffy pastry cut into bite-sized hexagonal shapes, as you can imagine with puff pastries, their texture is very soft, crispy and flaky with lovely flavor to them. There were also some sugar granules baked into the top layer of each pastry cookie, which brought out some sweetness to the puff pastry shells. There's really nothing you can fault with the pastry shells of these cookies, they really were perfect.
The cream filling on the other hand, has a few minor disappointments...you can tell straight away by the first taste that the strawberry flavor is artificial, and my taste buds could not detect any trace of cheesecake flavor in the cream filling, so I was very much just tasting regular artificial strawberry flavored cream. I am not sure whether if it's just my taste buds failed to detect the cheesecake flavor, or the cheesecake flavor was non-existent to begin with, and that it's just simple artificial strawberry. If it is the latter, then I have to say, the people at Lotte really have misled us the consumers with the way they've marketed this flavor for 'Pie no Mi', they could have just marketed this as a simple strawberry flavor, and leave the "cheesecake" bit out.
However, despite these little flaws with the strawberry "cheesecake" flavor filling, I will not hold it against Lotte in using artificial flavoring considering most snack & confectionery manufacturers in the world these days use artificial flavoring most of the time anyway, it has sort of become a staple in snack & confection making in the business, so what can you do?
Overall, these were absolutely delectable, the cream filling was decent and nothing special because of the artificial and possibly misleading flavoring, but the soft and flaky puff pastry shells most certainly made up for the average cream filling, together the puff pastry shells and cream filling really complemented each other well.
Needless to say, these 'Pie no Mi' cookies make great
snacks to munch on anytime anywhere, so why not grab a pack? If you haven't tried these 'Pie no Mi' cookies before, I highly recommend you do so.
Although, if you live outside Japan, then these 'Pie no Mi'
snacks are probably more difficult to find in shops & grocery stores compared to more widely known
snacks like
Pocky and
Pretz, since 'Pie no Mi' is not as widely available outside Japan. So you would probably need to follow in my footsteps and order them online from online shops that sell Japanese
snacks &
sweets, such as
J-List.
My rating (overall): 


It's been many months since I last blogged about a product from
Lotte, as I hadn't bought any from the company for a long while.
With that said, last Friday while shopping for
snacks with a friend who lives in Northbridge in northern Sydney, we stopped by at popular
Tokyomart (one of the very few AUTHENTIC Japanese groceries in Australia). It was my second trip ever to Tokyomart (you can read about my first ever visit to the grocery
here). Needless to say, every time I step into this wonderful Japanese grocery, the feeling is so exhilarating I turn into a excited little kid in a candy store! I've envied my friend ever since she moved to Northbridge in October last year, who lives just a 5 minutes walk away from Tokyomart.
Anyway, so while we were in Tokyomart, I practically went on a shopping spree (like I always do when I'm in Tokyomart), stacking up on as many food and
snacks I can possibly afford out of my pocket at the time ($60+ as a matter of fact)! About 97% of my heavy overloaded shopping basket consisted of some of my favorite Japanese
snacks &
sweets. And since it had been an unusually long time I last bought Lotte products, of course, I grabbed a few Lotte
sweets too while I was there.
I have to admit, there's only very few brands from
Lotte I particularly like, and those are 'Crunky', 'Koala no March' and 'Pie no Mi', so whenever it comes to Lotte products, I usually make a beeline towards those brands only. However, because 'Pie no Mi' cookie
snacks are hard to find outside Japan, and unfortunately Tokyomart don't stock up on these either, sadly I couldn't grab any 'Pie no Mi' cookies. But that's not to say it makes things any easier for me when it comes to choosing what to buy, and that certainly was the case last week. Because I was buying so much food and
snacks, I had spent about 10 minutes debating back and forth about which Lotte
sweets to buy, as I was only planning on getting a few Lotte
snacks that day. But I knew it had to be either 'Crunky' or 'Koala no March'. Eventually I settled for a strawberry flavor 'Crunky' and a cheesecake flavor 'Koala no March'.
this is the Strawberry 'Crunky':

lovely rich creamy strawberry flavor
chocolate with REAL freeze-dry strawberry bits and crispy malt puffs embedded all throughout, do I even need to explain how good this was?
My rating (overall): 



Cheesecake 'Koala no March':

crunchy biscuits with sweet cheesecake flavor filling, yum!
Although I felt the cheesecake flavor was a little too subtle for my liking, I would've preferred the cheesecake flavor in the filling to be a lot more dominant, after all, the fillings are suppose to be the star in Koala no March snacks. But with the rather mild cheesecake flavor, the filling was a bit of a disappointment for me.
In terms of flavor accuracy in the filling and the balance of flavors, the
Caramel Au Lait and
Cappuccino Koala no March are still superior.
But these "cheesecake" flavored ones were still tasty nonetheless, after all, it's Koala no March!
My rating (overall): 


'My Cube' is a chewing gum brand from
Lotte, I don't think it's a new brand from the company, as I recall there was a cube version released as part of Lotte's '+X' chewing gum range (which seem to have ceased production) back in 2008 I think. 'My Cube' appears to be just a newer "revamped" version of the older +X Cube chewing gum.
Anyway, this was my first experience with this particular chewing gum brand, I like Lotte's 'Xylitol' chewing gum, so I decided to give this one a try.
So for my first My Cube experience, I decided to go for the Cola flavor:

the gums came in a little flip open case that you can re-seal to sustain the freshness. The instant I opened up the packet I was welcomed by the pleasant smell of cola, each piece of soft chewing gum was encased in a cube shaped shell. Each had a generous amount of cola flavor as you bite and chew into them, refreshing your mouth with the smell of cola. But other than that, there's really nothing special about this particular gum.
I've tried other gums over the years which I've savored and enjoyed a lot more, so this is certainly not a "must-try" gum in my opinion.
My rating (overall): 

here's another popular biscuit stick snack brand that I'm sure some of you have at least heard of; 'Toppo' from
Lotte. It's similar to
Glico's famous 'Pocky' sticks, only Toppo is the inverted version, instead of having
chocolate coating the biscuit sticks, Toppo sticks have choc filling inside each stick. Here's the matcha mousse flavor:

melt-in-your-mouth sweet matcha mousse
chocolate filling the COMPLETE length of each biscuit stick, yum! And the biscuit sticks themselves were crunchy & crispy.
Although Pocky will always remain my #1 snack, These Toppo
snacks are really yummy to munch on too, and they're available in some exciting flavors too, so why not pick up or order a pack? This matcha mousse flavor is so far, one of my fave Toppo flavors.
My rating (overall): 


you can order Toppo
snacks, as well as Pocky & other great Japanese snacks at NapaJapan:
http://www.napajapan.com/Default.asp
'Xylitol' is a popular chewing gum brand from
Lotte, Xylitol (a natural sweetener) is used as a healthier substitute for any "bad" sweeteners in its chewing gums, hence the name of the brand. This is the original fresh mint flavor:

you immediately experience a burst of strong fresh mint flavor that not only freshens your breath instantly, but helps keep your teeth strong.
I do have 1 complaint, the mint flavor almost completely dissolved within a matter of some minutes, it would've been better if the fresh mint flavor was longer lasting.
My rating (overall): 


I love these 'Koala no March'
snacks, and there's a new winter special edition flavor available now; Caramel Au Lait, basically caramel latte!

creamy caramel latte
chocolate filling with crunchy biscuit casing, and of course, the cute pictures of the koala mascot printed on each biscuit. I think this has just become one of my fave 'Koala no March' flavors!
Also, when you eat these straight from the packet, the biscuits have cooled & the choc filling has hardened. To beat the chilly winter, you can also heat these biscuits up, just whack these in the microwave for about 30 seconds, the biscuits will warm up & the choc filling will melt. I noticed that these are just as yummy when heated up!
My rating (overall): 



Very similar to the
purple sweet potato Crunky, only the confection is entirely in white
chocolate:

individually packaged pieces of lovely melt-in-your-mouth sweet white
chocolate with the Crunky staple of crispy malt puffs embedded in each piece. What more can I say?
My rating (overall): 



here's another great flavor from
LOTTE's popular 'Crunky'
chocolate brand; Purple sweet potato. Roasted sweet potatos has long been a popular lite snack in Japan for many centuries, and it is still quite popular today, and with increasing popularity of the purple sweet potatos. I personally was never too fond of eating roasted sweet potatos on their own, but hey, when I saw this new flavor Crunky from LOTTE, sweet potatos with
chocolate, what a wonderful combination! So I was really excited about this and didn't hesitate to order it at
NapaJapan!
and what can I say, I was not disappointed at all! Each of these little individually packaged
chocolates were bursting with lovely roasted sweet potato flavor, the balance of the tastes of the sweet potatos and
chocolate was just perfect! Neither one overpowered the other, both flavors balanced each other just right. I also like the appealing pastel purple color of the
chocolate and of course I loved the crispy tiny malt puffs embedded in the
chocolate; a staple in LOTTE's Crunky
chocolates.
I also really like the packaging, not only is it attractive, but it's also very convenient, with small individually packaged pieces of chocs so you can share them with friends & family...or, just keep them for yourself

and the box is re-sealable.
Will definitely be ordering more of this in the future!
My rating (overall): 


