05.30.09
I Mei Dark Choco Puff
These critters look absolutely delish on the packaging with their pretty blobby chocolaty brown selves and their bountiful creamy filled insides. I was expecting something like the Porte (Porute/Polte) clan with the delicious chocolate and cocoa dusting, crispy cookie and wonderful insides. However, these were not the cousin for me because they are not a dark chocolate Taiwanese equivalent of the Porutes. Sadness.
What they do have is a keen little chocolaty chocolate cream pufflet that is filled with some sort of ivory/whiteish goo. Kudos to the cream puff for it indeed is nicely dark cocoa-y and very cream puff eggy. In my humble but probably not entirely educated opinion, cream puffs are crispy on the outside and gloriously moist in the inside. I am also of the opinion that cream puffs are hard to make “right” because a whole lot of them get the crispy part right and then are so proud of their accomplishments that they gloss over the inside moist part. You might as well stick crème fresh in a cardboard box and glaze it with chocolate then, because a thoroughly dry cream puff is disappointing.
I’ve also noticed, and this from experience, it’s harder to make a little thing turn out as moist as the bigger thing. Mostly I know this from muffins but I’ve seen it happen in those mini-cream puffs too. These choco puff critters? Very mini and true to the dry small version axiom. Sigh. They do say “Crispy Dark Cocoa Puff” but I’d have liked a little more of the moist cream puff middle. I Mei does get the chocolate right though, that’s pretty tasty and takes the edge off the disappointingly dry pufflet.
The “Tasty Milk Filling”, which could have really brought this review up a notch or two from the rather dry but cocorific cream pufflet, is nothing to write home about. It’s sort of gooey but also a little firm, like the offspring of vanilla frosting and white chocolate had crawled into the cream pufflet to take a nap. It’s not bad, but it has pretty run of the mill sweet vanilla flavor. Eh. Visually, it isn’t as appealing as the brilliant white filling depicted on the package. Instead, the color is less freshly bleached bed sheets and more yellowed ivory piano keys. The package also shows a substantial amount of filling which isn’t true either. I guess I should amend my description to say it’s like the runt of the littler from a frosting/white chocolate union snuck into the pufflet for a snooze. I’d have given many more pea points if there were enough goo to offset the dryness of the pufflet but there is not.
In the great cosmic JSF buffet, I’d put a couple Dark Cocoa Puffs on my plate for sure (even though they do kinda look a little bit like someone took their pocket Chihuahua for a walk and forgot to bring along a baggie) and I might come back for seconds but I probably wouldn’t. They are decent snacks and nicely cocoa-y with a good crunchity, but also a little dry and filled with rather forgettable filling. Well, partially filled anyway. Maybe if I hadn’t been doing a Japanese (Asian) snack food review for six years I would come back for a second helping of Dark Choco Puffs but this is not the case. I would definitely jettison a second helping of puffs in favor for the better Porutes or any of the Meltys.
If you are new to Asian snacks and haven’t run into any of the other more tasty treats, these will do nicely for something crispy, cocoa and filled. Give them a 3.5 pea snack rating for now but I encourage you to experiment and expand your Asian snack base. If you have some experience with snackering, then you could probably pass these by for a box of your favorite crispy/ chocolate/ goo filled snack; but you shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to try them if someone else has bought them and is offering you one. For the intermediate and above snacker, these would probably deserve a
Rating of 3 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.
