11.05.05
Maccha Caramel
Again! Caramel! Except not exactly. This is the third and possibly last flavor of Morinaga caramels and by far the strangest of the breed. Then again, the Japanese seem willing to green tea anything that will stand still so I might be having a “western thing” when I say that there are some things that really don’t need to be green teaed. For me, that would probably be about most everything because I don’t much like drinking green tea in its pure unadulterated tea form so I’m not about to go looking for it in other forms.
I’ll try to be impartial with Maccha even though they look less like caramels and more like the aftermath of Gumby vs. Yakuza.
In the Maccha world, I’m not entirely certain what the difference between a Maccha caramel and a Maccha taffy would be, besides the ubiquitous caramel lines and perhaps a small order of firmness. Nothing about Maccha Caramels says “caramel” to me and really? If you made the Maccha round and put it in a wax paper wrapper and called it green tea taffy I’d be just as OK with that. In fact, I’d probably be more at home with Maccha taffy because then I wouldn’t be missing the butteryesque caramel taste Maccha conspicuously lacks.
On the other hand, if you could somehow make a strong cup of sweety sweet green tea into a square candy with a firm sticky texture, tea leaf dust and all, you’d absolutely have Maccha caramels. I have doubts about their claim to caramel but I totally bow to their assertion of green tea. I even rather liked the sweetness in a seven lumps of sugared tea sweet way (which is not really a bad thing as I tend to like green tea rather syrupy if I drink it) but the green was almost overpowering.
Sadly, most of my Guinea pigs were of my same mind about green tea and even the one who liked the flavor said she wouldn’t necessarily walk across the candy aisle to buy them. If you are a tried and true “all things green tea” lover, you might want to add a half pea point to the rating and take it from there. Otherwise you might be better off waiting until next week to see what golden goodies the JSFR will bring.
In short, I’m Rating these 2 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
Trish said,
March 5, 2010 at 2:10 am
Your spelling of Maccha is really bothering me. It’s an acceptable form of the English version of the name for the ground green tea, but it is far more commonly referred to as “Matcha” especially on food packages.
Beside, every time I see Maccha it makes me think of “caca” and all its obvious connotations.
Boo said,
March 29, 2010 at 10:50 am
I’m pretty certain I grabbed that spelling from the package as I usually copy/paste (copy/transcribe…whatever) the Japanese words. That said, the packaging labels have been know to have frequent mistakes so I probably got one that told me “Maccha” was the correct spelling. Sorry that.
Kate said,
June 3, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I have tried these and I absolutely love them! I -am- a green tea freak, though, so that’s definitely a part of it. They are extremely green-tea-ish, so I can totally see how someone who doesn’t like green tea wouldn’t like these.
Compared to a green tea hard candy that I had, I did find this to be a little more like green tea with milk and maybe honey, but you’re right, there wasn’t much that screamed “caramel!!” at me.