Snack Review: Ghana Cookie
Japanese cooking is my favorite cuisine in the world. And no one loves chocolate more than I do. Put the two together, and you’d think, how can it go wrong?
It is true that chocolate is not a native Japanese thing, but it’s not native to Belgium or any of those other places that are famous for it, either. And the Japanese have done a fantastic job of assimilating Western desserts – there is nothing I love more than a good green tea ice cream.
But when I buy a Japanese chocolate snack, it’s nearly always a disappointment. Unfortunately, this was no exception.
In the picture this looks like a dark chocolate coated cookie with dark chocolate cream inside. In reality, the coating is milk chocolate, and the inside is a solid piece of milk chocolate.
The cookie part tasted familiar, and after a little thought I realized that basically this tastes like a Twix bar without the caramel. Which is not the worst idea in the world. I like the cookie in a Twix bar, and the caramel is too sweet, so it’s better without it.
But I expected this to be a dark chocolate experience, and it definitely was not. And there was nothing else about it that made up for that, unlike the interestingly-flavored crispy stuff inside the Crunky cookie, which is the only exception I can remember to the disappointing-Japanese-chocolate rule.
I wish I could just learn the lesson here. It’s like when you have two good friends who don’t like each other, and you keep trying to convince them to be friends. It doesn’t make sense that they don’t like each other when you like both of them. If it’s fun to be with one of them at a time, why isn’t it twice as much fun, or exponentially more fun, to be with both of them?
But sometimes it just doesn’t work. Oil is great, and you can’t live without water, but they don’t mix.
So from now on, I am going to give up trying to make Japanese food and chocolate be best friends with each other. When I can’t stand it, I can comfort myself with Crunky, and even better, I’ve discovered that there is a Crunky chocolate bar without the cookie.
Otherwise – and I am saying this in front of the whole Internet in the hopes that I will stick to it: I am going to try to stop buying Japanese chocolate things. Wish me luck.
5 Comments
Candy Addict » Snackerrific Roundup: Cookies Are The New Black, Chips Are Still Hip, And A Classic Is Vintage Trendy Once Again on December 19th, 2008
[...] compiled on them. These last few weeks feature reviews from all over the cookie globe, including a Japanese cookie, a Philadelphia classic of spiced wafers, and West Coast gourmet at an affordable price in Trader [...]
moko on December 20th, 2008
What about Pocky?!? Or Meiji chocolate bites?!?
Don’t give up yet. Chocolate concoctions are by no means the best Japan has to offer in terms of snacks and desserts, but they’re definitely not the worst out there. Poland and chocolate is a far deadlier combination…
Linda on December 21st, 2008
I have only tried Pocky a couple of times, but the ones I had were, um,
gross, actually. I figured they were meant for kids and gave up. Should
I reconsider?
Snackerrific » Japanese Snack Review: Every Burger on January 6th, 2009
[...] in a bag rather than my stomach, the market disappointed me by a lack of Crunky, and I remembered my vow not to buy any other Japanese chocolate snacks. But these Every Burger things - OK, there is some chocolate in them, but that is clearly not the [...]
~(( ms.__2 be! ))~ on December 2nd, 2008
Bad chocolate eh, save me from buying this…hehehe