Asian Snack Review: Kinoko no Yama and Crunky Biscuits

Mushroom Shaped Cookies

One evening recently I was overcome with a craving for a chocolate chip cookie. There were none in the house, but I remembered I had a stash of snacks from the Japanese market that I’d hidden away so as not to eat all of them at once. There were two kinds of cookies that combined chocolate with non-chocolate cookie, so I decided it was time to give them a try.

Kinoko no Yama are very cute. The name means mountain mushrooms, and I don’t know about the mountain part, but they do look like mushrooms. I am sure they would be great for decorating a cake in a woodland theme with mushrooms and - toads, maybe?

Kinoko no Yama Mushroom Shaped Cookies

But as far as eating…. Since the cap of the mushroom is solid milk chocolate with a little cookie-stick stuck in it, the chocolate would have to be really great and.… OK, I am crazy about nearly everything Japanese. But when you think of a great chocolate-making country, you think of Switzerland or Belgium, not Japan. Unfortunately, there is a reason for this. I like the idea of these cookies, but the chocolate is just not good enough to make them worthwhile.

But, never fear: I had another possibility:

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