08.22.10
Fruit Cake
Oh you don’t want to know how many times I’ve bought this snack; it borders on the ridiculous. The first package had a rip in it that we did not see until I got my snacks home so we tossed it and bought another. Which I didn’t review for quite a while because I don’t read Chinese and had no idea what they were. By the time I showed them to the Web assistant (who was from Hong Kong/Thailand) the second package had expired. I may have bought a third package and then there is this one which is also pushing its expiry date. One might think that I should give up and abandon this particular snack but one would be wrong. “Why?” one may ask and I shall tell you.
This. I don’t think I’ve come across a more poignant representation of Engrish than the instructions on the back of these fruit cakes. They had the Web assistant in stitches, who kindly told me after he picked himself off the floor that you could eat these cakes dry or steamed in milk but be careful that the milk wasn’t too hot. Steam steamed not get angry indeed.
The cakes smell lightly sweet and a bit dried milky and that’s pretty much all they have going for them in the olfactory sense. As far as taste, I took a bite of one not steam steamed and it has the texture and taste of compacted cream of wheat…except with a much finer grain so there are no crunchy bits. They are vaguely ricey, somewhat sweet, a tad milky, generically meh, insipidly bland and thoroughly unappetizing. Not steam steamed I’d give them a 1.5 pea rating.
So I tried them steam steamed (re: dipped in warm milk). I’m not sure if I made them angry or not but like compact cream of wheat, dipping the fruit cakes in milk only caused them to suck up the milk and become like bad squares of bland cream of wheat. With fruit bits. Yuck. They are still sweet, somewhat milky (moreso when dipped in milk) and just not something for snacking on in their dry form or their steam steamed form. I wonder if they are like blocks of fruit laced porridge that you steam up in a bowl for breakfast. I’d still stick to cream of wheat, corn, rice or oat meal though.
Rating of 1.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
