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Kasugai

Monday, July 23, 2012

Kasugai Yuzu Gummy Candy

Kasugai Yuzu Gummy CandyI have learned a lot about world flavors through candy. One that I’ve become obsessed with are Yuzu.

Yuzu is rare in the United States but a popular and hardy variety of citrus in Japan. The flavor is a cross between grapefruit, tangerine with a little note of lemon and bergamot. For the most part the rind of the citrus is used though the juice is also included but not as notable. I was so entranced with the candies and marmalades I’ve been eating that I got a tree for my back yard. (Here’s a photo of a couple that I picked from my tree.)

So when I saw that Kasugai, a makers of one of the best gummis in the world, I bought up two packages. The gummis are more expensive than the European and American varieties, but also a bit more precious and special. The Kasugai Yuzu Gummy Candy comes in a rather light bag, with only 3.59 ounces inside. Each piece is individually wrapped and a bit larger than the mass of an ordinary gummi bear.

Kasugai Yuzu Gummy Candy

The gummis are nearly one inch in diameter, a cute little domed disk. They have a soft, powdery skin instead of a glaze of oil or wax. They smell like lemonade. The flavor inside is a bit more complex. The tartness is good, the texture is smooth with a jello-like chew that dissolves quickly. It’s truly a mix of grapefruit and tangerine, the bitterness of the grapefruit and harsh oily flavor is combined with the fruity, sunny flavors of the tangerine juice.

They’re really satisfying and have a fresh, zesty lingering note. Two or three were plenty as a little treat between meals for me. The individual wrapping means I can throw a few in my bag or just throw them in a dish.

They are ridiculously expensive, I think I spent $3.49 for a bag. But it’s easy to moderate my consumption, I’ve managed to make my two bags last quite while. The intensity of the flavor and the wrappers mean these are more of a solitary treat than the kind that I might mindlessly nibble on during a movie. There are no artificial colors but they do use artificial flavors. They’re made on shared equipment with milk, wheat, shellfish, peanuts and tree nuts.

Related Candies

  1. Bissinger’s Lemon Ginger Yuzu Gummi Pandas
  2. Tea Forte Minteas Lemongrass Yuzu
  3. Japanese KitKats: Yuzu & Red Bean Soup
  4. Kasugai Pineapple Gummy
  5. HiCHEW Yuzu & Valencia
  6. Dalandan & Juicy Ponkan Mentos


Name: Yuzu Gummy Candy
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Kasugai
Place Purchased: Woori Market (Little Tokyo)
Price: $3.49
Size: 3.59 ounces
Calories per ounce: 101
Categories: Candy, Kasugai, Gummi Candy, 9-Yummy, Japan

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:31 am     CandyReviewKasugaiGummi Candy9-YummyJapan

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Kasugai Pineapple Gummy

Kasugai Pineapple GummyI bought this package of Kasugai Pineapple Gummy Candy back in January on a trip to Little Tokyo that I’d hoped would cheer me up. After all, the most widely accepted definition of candy is sweetened, concentrated and read-to-eat fun [1].

The package is dominated by a photo of two real pineapples. Pineapples are the symbol of hospitality in Western culture and their Indian name, anana [2] means simply excellent fruit [3]. So what better combination to make lightly sweetened, concentrated and edible fun than to make it from the most excellent fruit?

The ingredients list goes like this: sugar, corn syrup, pineapple juice, gelatin, oblate powder, sorbitol, citric acid/malic acid, pectin, artificial pineapple flavor, palm oil, emulsifier, coloring (beta carotene).

Kasugai Pineapple Gummy

Each gummi is individually wrapped. This keeps them fresh, which is good because I don’t usually eat a whole bag of gummis in one sitting. (But then again I have no problem eating stale gummis.)

The pieces are rounded, with a little crease in the top that might even make this look like a heart to some. Or maybe a peach.

Opening the little packet and the gummi is super soft, a little most but most of all, heavily scented. It smells like opening a can of pineapple: sweet but very deep. The chew is soft and pliable, almost like a Jell-O dessert.

It’s tangy and has a little sizzle to it with a good fruity burst. If I have a complaint about them, it might be that they’re just too fruity. After about five of them I get that same tongue burn. No, wait, that’s not a complaint. I love them. They make me happy. They’re concentrated bits of sunshine and tropical beaches. My misgivings are the fact that I find them hard to find and they’re pretty expensive for gummis.

Kasugai makes a pretty large array of flavors, most of them tropical including Lychee, Kiwi & Mango as well as the more middle-of-the road like Orange, Apple, Muscat (white grape), Peach and Strawberry.

[1] - This definition first appeared on Candy Blog on August 6th 2008, so may not be as widely accepted as I might hope.
[2] - I recently tried the German brand Katjes Saure Ananas which were also pineapple gummis
[3] - If anyone knows what the Caribbean fruits that go by “mediocre fruit” and “bad fruit” are, I’d appreciate the heads up.

Related Candies

  1. Japanese Black Sugar & Tropical Chews
  2. Meiji Gummy Choco
  3. Kasugai Fruits Lemonade
  4. Mentos - Pine Fresh (Pineapple)
  5. Sour Gummi Bears
Name: Pineapple Gummy
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Kasugai Seika Co. Ltd.
Place Purchased: Mitsuwa (Little Tokyo)
Price: $2.89
Size: 4.76 ounces
Calories per ounce: 101
Categories: Gummi, Kasugai, Japan

POSTED BY Cybele AT 11:40 am    

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Kasugai Fruits Lemonade

Fruits LemonadeSometimes I order stuff on the internet because I like the sound of the name. I saw Kasugai’s Fruits Lemonade (also known as Ramune Iro Iro) on JBox.com and since I was already ordering a gazillion rolls of Pineapple Mentos, so I figured I should get some other stuff too.

From the description it was clear that these were just compressed dextrose candies like Smarties or SweeTarts. But the intriguing part was it looked like they came in pineapple. As I was in a pineapple mood, it was quickly in my cart and on its way to me.

The little package is cute and has a variety of different sizes. Some are large sweets, about the size of four quarters stacked up. Others were little tablets in rolls - some were tiny, others were a little bigger (like the size of American Smarties).

image
(photo by Emanuel Treeson)

Most of the rolls were of all one flavor: Lemon, Strawberry, Pineapple, Kiwi or Orange. They were color coded and had little images of the fruits, so I had no trouble figuring out what I was going to get. (Well, the green one was a bit of a puzzle, but I eventually figured out that it was Kiwi, either that or a honeydew.)

There were a couple of rolls that were combinations of flavors. It was extremely hard to tell as they weren’t really different colors. I kind of liked that it was all about the flavor and there were no colors in there.

image
(photo by Emanuel Treeson)

The texture was softer than Smarties ... in fact, the large ones were downright powdery. There was one larger roll (shown above) that had truly dense ones, but the rest were about the same. While I like a softer style most of the time, because you get right to the flavor, these had an odd chalky taste to them. It was like there was something else in there along with the sugar, maybe some sort of calcium carbonate and I’m actually getting some nutrition or something.

Overall the flavors were more intense than Smarties, but not as flavorful as SweeTarts. They weren’t truly sour through, not like a lot of other ramune products I’ve had. However, the high proportion of Pineapple items in this was what made it truly tasty. Sure it’s called Lemonade Mix, but it was really all about the Pineapple.

As a small side note, I’ve been experimenting with my husband’s Nikon D70 DSLR. He shot the two photos above in a little session we had over the weekend. I’m debating a move away from my point & shoot Sony DSC-V3. While I love my little camera, the control I have on the focus is a little frustrating sometimes. For now I’ll just borrow his for a while. (I think his photos turned out fantastic. It’s very hard to get a crisply focused shot on cellophane items, and the control on the depth of field is also amazing.)

Related Candies

  1. Goodbye Tart n Tinys
  2. Candy Blox
  3. Ramune & Cola Bubble Ball
  4. Smarties Bubble Gum
  5. Bottlecaps
  6. Fragrant Gummies
Name: Ramune Iro Iro (Fruits Lemonade)
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Kasugai
Place Purchased: JBox.com
Price: $1.69
Size: 4.59 ounces
Calories per ounce: unknown
Categories: Compressed Dextrose (Chalk), Japan, Sour

POSTED BY Cybele AT 6:40 am    

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Konpeito

What’s truly baffling in the whole confectionery world is that most sweets are made from the same ingredients. Yet the processes applied to them and the combinations can yield vastly different results. The Bunny Basket Eggs reviewed last week are an excellent example of sugar done wrong.

imageKonpeito (or Kompeito) is just sugar, and done so well. These little rocks, about the size of a pea and simply rock sugar with a little food coloring. And when you compare iit to those awful marshmallow Easter eggs, it makes no sense.

If you ever saw Spirited Away, you may have seen this candy. They’re little multi-faceted sugar crystal lumps that look like three dimensional stars.

There’s not much else to say about them except that they’re sweet and cute. If you’re looking for a special little something exotic for an Easter basket, these might fit the bill, the packaging is pink and pretty and of course the little pastel morsels of sugar are, well, rock candy. And rock candy rocks. You can even pick up a package and use it when you serve tea or coffee as a cuter version of the old sugar cubes.

See also: CandyAddict.com review, JunkFoodBlog has more on the cultural significance and limited edition versions and Wikipedia has a full entry including the references to Kompeito in media.

Name: Konpeito
    RATING:
  • 10 SUPERB
  • 9 YUMMY
  • 8 TASTY
  • 7 WORTH IT
  • 6 TEMPTING
  • 5 PLEASANT
  • 4 BENIGN
  • 3 UNAPPEALING
  • 2 APPALLING
  • 1 INEDIBLE
Brand: Kasugai
Place Purchased: Mitsuwa Marketplace (Little Tokyo, LA)
Price: $1.39
Size: 2.64 ounces
Calories per ounce: 115
Categories: Hard Candy, Japan, Easter

POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:39 am    

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Japanese Black Sugar Candy Finds

One of the best things about this blog is finding out about completely new varieties of candies I’d never heard of. One of these is Japanese Black Sugar Candy. Known as kuro sato, black sugar is basically brown sugar/molasses.

True brown sugar is basically sugar made from the whole boiled cane instead of just the cane juice that keeps the molasses. Molasses and black sugar is high in potassium as well as traces of iron, calcium and even a little salt. The taste of black sugar is similar to muscovado and has a salty, smokey taste to it. In the States, most brown sugar that you buy in the grocery store is just white sugar that has a bit of molasses added back into it.

Some Japanese just eat nuggets of black sugar as a treat (similar to maple sugar candies or Mexican panela). In fact, I used to eat brown sugar right out of the box as a kid. I loved the flavor of it. Many doctors and pharmacists have for years used muscovado-type sugars for medicinal use, either as a base for cough remedies or added to make medicinal syrups.

The Japanese use the bold taste of kuro sato to full effect in a lot of candies. Most are hard candies which are either for eating or for use as cough drops (often with the addition of honey or menthol).

Here are a few I found:

Name: Kuro Ame
Brand: Kasugai
Place Purchased: Jbox
Price: $2.00
Size: 200 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Hard Candy

from JBox - “A wonderful traditional Japanese hard candy, this is “Kuro-Ame” (Black Candy), a famous Japanese treat loved by everyone since the 1860’s. With a long history and a unique brown-sugar taste, this is a classical Japanese treat. One bag includes 22+ individual wrapped candies.”

Name: Pocket Black Sugar Throat Treatment Candy
Brand: Nobel
Place Purchased: Jbox
Price: $1.50
Size: 50 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Hard Candy

In the tradition of a cough drop (similar to Ludens), this black sugar candy is packaged to carry easily in your pocket. Each piece is individually wrapped and has the distinctive taste of black sugar mellowed with a tinge of honey and menthol.

Name: Kasugai Honey & Black Sugar Candy
Brand: Kasugai
Place Purchased: Jbox
Price: $1.50
Size: 250 grams
Calories per ounce: unknown
Type: Hard Candy

Shaped like little gems, these black sugar hard candies are individually sealed and packed with a little silica gel pack to keep them dry. They have a very smooth, sweet taste because of the honey. Not as smokey tasting as the Kuro Ame made by the same company, these are probably a great one to carry as a little pick me up and throat soother. Of the three products I bought, this is the one that is already gone.

Ratings - Kuro Ame - 6 out of 10
Pocket Black Sugar Throat Treatment Candy - 7 out of 10
Kasugai Black Sugar & Honey - 8 out of 10

For more reading: Black food power, Sugar Cane - Okinawa’s Way of Life, Kokutoo - Black Sugar

Also - see previous review of Asahi Drops (I didn’t know what Japanese black sugar was when I reviewed them)

POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:32 am     CandyReviewKasugaiHard Candy & Lollipops6-Tempting7-Worth It8-TastyJapan

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