10.11.03

Jelly Cake (Brown)

Posted in 1.0 Wasabi Pea Rating, Sweet at 5:08 pm by Boo

BrownGlop.jpg

Jelly Cake Brown? Well, yeah. See, Jelly Cakes (which is about the only English on the package) seem to come in brown, green or tan. They probably come in “Green Tea” or “Soy” or “Almond” or something like that but I can’t read Japanese so I’m going to have to give you Tan, Brown and Green as varieties. We picked up a package of Brown and Green.

If first impressions are everything, these critters got off on they very wrong foot. For starters, they’re gooey yet firm. If you took finger Jell-o, injected it with steroids and let it sit around a month until it got thick(er) and a bit oozy slimy like, then you would begin to have the texture of a “Jelly Cake”. It was not a promising start when it slid out of the package and flopped onto the cutting board. Still, we decided to give it a chance anyway.

I think I cut the first cake up into 14 to 16 pieces so we each had about a centimeter cube to try. My bite was slippery. In a bad way. I think everyone else agreed with my assessment as a chorus of “Eeeyyyyatch” rose up in the kitchen from all the other Guinea pigs. They then chased me around the table with butcher knives and the intent to kill and dismember me for putting them through the experience. Fortunately, I was prepared and had a box of cheesy crackers to keep them at bay, which saved me from certain doom.

Eventually, I went back for a second chunk just so you all wouldn’t think that slimy and Eeeyyyyatch were the only qualities of Gooey Cakes. After all, I do try to describe the snack foods as best as I can. The taste, beyond the slimy and firm is lotus nut. If you never met a lotus nut, they are a sweet bean that is often made into a paste for Asian after dinner delights. It’s hard to describe but mildly sweet and a titch beany in a white navy bean fashion might do for the western palate. The more of the little pieces I had, the better it tasted (crack? I wonder) but I do like lotus nut.

Unfortunately, they still had a displeasing slickness to them and a bit of gritty pastiness and they were just weirdly not gummi and not Jell-o but something wrongly in between. I just couldn’t ignore the distressing physical texture to enjoy the lotus nutness of them. Everyone else wanted to give them a rating of 0 but they do have the small redeeming quality of a pleasant lotus nut flavor so I decided to give them a

Rating of 1 Wasabi Pea out of a possible 5.

5 Comments »

  1. Rands in Japan said,

    October 16, 2003 at 12:09 pm

    OK, this is really annoying. It is 1:15am, my wife has gone to bed, my electronic kanji dictionary is at the office, and my paperback kanji dictionary is buried in a box somewhere. So I can’t translate the darn kanji on your sweets! But I WILL do it as I feel it is my Shinto Spirit given duty to do so since I do live in the cultural capital of the country from which you are sampling sweets from. So I will check this post again tomorrow with Aya when she is conscious and we will get you the lowdown on this stuff. And sorry for not reading your blog as much as your fiance’s. My link for yours was out of date and I didn’t notice the one at the bottem of his page until this evening/morning… Doh!

  2. boo said,

    October 16, 2003 at 2:09 pm

    Wait for this weekend (Saturdays typically) and I can have Jelly Cake (Green) reviewed for you. It too has symbols I can not figure out. TheMan and I were going to try Jelly Cake (Green) last night but…well…ummmm…yeah. See there was this thing and stuff happened and darn, we ran out of time to sample the green flavor. Heh.
    Hee! I can say I have a part time reader in Japan now! Whoot!

  3. kiki said,

    November 17, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    The green is a green tea flavor, the red is a red bean flavor. You bought really cheap stuff so its not going to be that great. Minamoto Kitchoan is one of the best sellers of japanese sweets. There is a store in costa mesa that has it inside. Everything is tasty, but a little expensive. They have really beautiful gift sets for the holidays.

  4. Boo said,

    November 17, 2009 at 6:05 pm

    OhHO! Although I hesitate to start peppering the Review with jelly cakes I would like to try something that was a tad tastier. Thanks for the tip kiki!

  5. Kate said,

    June 4, 2010 at 10:50 am

    Heh, my friends and I went to one of the Asian groceries by our college a couple months ago, and we also decided to try some yokan. I apparently find this stuff insanely addictive (but then again, I’m also, according to one of my friends, “the only Westerner who goes out of her way to get natto” ^_^), but everyone else had the same “EEEEEYACK!!!” reaction. It is definitely better if it’s been refrigerated– the slickness doesn’t feel quite so odd if it’s combined with “cold”.

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