08.23.08

I-Mei Chocolate Ice Cream Omochi

Posted in 3.5 Wasabi Pea Rating, Mochi, Sweet at 12:56 am by Boo

See? I told you I had something other than Pretz or Pocky for you this August. Plus! I found another company that makes mochi…this time it’s Taiwan based I-Mei (who formerly brought you French Cookies). I’m a sucker for mochi so any excuse to try new brands out is good in my book. These had such an interesting look to them with their rich, dark brown ice cream and contrasting white rice paste wrapper that it was really easy to persuade me to pick up a pack of them. This may also be the reason that the blogaversary project this year features a month long sampling from each store rather than the intended weekend showcasing. What can you do when there are so many tasty things to review?

Other than the awesome contrasty of these omochi (which is a mochi with an extra honorific…or something), I liked the fact that you got two omochi per package. It’s nice to have an extra to share with a friend or you can just be a piggy and eat both yourself. These omochi don’t judge.

They also come with a weird little pokey knife deelie which I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with. I suppose it is for cutting the omochi in half but the blade edge isn’t really all that ‘cut-in-half’ functional. And what’s with the pointy bit? Maybe they are omochi skinning knives for taking the rice paste wrapper off? I tried using one as a sort of stabby scoop to liberate an omochi from its packaging blister but that didn’t work out too well either.

My best guess is that they are an omochi’s native weapon of choice.

I-Mei bills this omochi as “chocolate” yet there is a picture of a hazelnut on the packaging. Nowhere in English, either the title or the ingredients, does it mention nuts but they are in there. If you are allergic to nuttage, this is not the omochi for you because I-Mei packs a whopping lot of hazelnut in these. I’d say they somehow managed to put equal parts chocolate ice cream and hazel nut shreds in the filling without compromising the ice cream’s integrity.

The chocolate is a deep dark chocolate tasting chocolate in the slightly bitter Asian chocolate style. Sadly, I think the hazelnuts detract from what would be a fantastic chocolate (o)mochi because they lighten the flavor up some and make the ice cream a bit gritty in texture. We also weren’t expecting hazelnut so it came as a bit of a surprise. I won’t detract pea points for that because the box does have a picture of a hazelnut and quite possibly it might mention nuts somewhere in the Taiwanese on the package.

My Guinea Pigs liked I-Mei Ice Cream Omochi but they didn’t love them. I took a wander through the other mochi and I think that Chocolate Omochi isn’t quite as good as the 4 pea mochi we’ve reviewed but certainly can hold its own with the 3.5 pea mochi. Ergo, I’ll grant these a

Rating of 3.5 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.

Permalink