07.10.04

Takenoko no sato

Posted in 3.5 Wasabi Pea Rating, Cookie, Sweet at 10:56 pm by Boo

ChocolatePopeHat.jpg

These “Pope Hats” are incredibly similar to the “pope hats” of last review save they are coated in chocolate instead of chestnut. Like the beige pope hats, these too are less thumpy than but texturally similar to a typical English shortbread and they have the same sugar cone taste. In other words, the bases are exactly the same (for those of you who missed the beige pope hats).

The chocolate coating isn’t exceptional but it gets the job done. I liken it to a midway chocolate; a bit waxy but still fairly meltable and nicely chocolate tasting without any bad aftertaste or other weirdness that tends to slip into the poor end chocolates. It isn’t incredibly sweet either, sort of like how dark chocolate is a tad more bitter than milk chocolate but the pope hat topping is much meltier than dark chocolate. As Badmovie claimed, “The chocolate is not so sweet but with the cookie sweet it meshes.” There is a bit of a faint secondary flavor (more along the lines of a flavored chocolate rather than a plain bad chocolate flavor) which may be nutty, or it may not. The packaging seems to indicate a second layer under the outer layer but it’s hard to distinguish anything definite through the taste of the chocolate.

PopeHatProfessorMonkey.jpg
(9 out of 10 educated monkeys approve of the buttery cookie taste)

It may be that whatever the other flavor is, it blends too well, or it may be that the chocolate itself is different enough from what I am used to that it seems to taste nutty-ish. If indeed the undercoating is intended to be a nutty flavor, it sure doesn’t go out of its way to make its presence known. Good? Bad? Can’t tell, I still don’t read Japanese so I don’t know if there is supposed to be grand nuttiness or subtle nuttiness.

These Takenoko no sato were better received than the chestnut coated ones but there were still some who did not care much for the chocolate pope hats either. Therefore I am going to give Takenoko no sato a

Rating of 3.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.

2 Comments »

  1. Kero said,

    January 25, 2009 at 10:47 am

    i’m reading back through your archives (obviously haha) and according to the packaging, the undercoating is just ‘mild’ milk chocolate (:

  2. Boo said,

    January 25, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Hello! I hope that the archives are at least keeping you amused 🙂

    So that’s what the second layer actually is. It’s good to finally know after all these years. Thanks for reading (and letting me know about the ‘mild’ milk chocolate).

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