Oishii food delights

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):

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):

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):

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):

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 yourselfand the box is re-sealable.
Will definitely be ordering more of this in the future!

My rating (overall):