Oven-Fresh Egg Pudding / 窯出し卵たっぷりプリン

Circle K Sunkus' Oven-Fresh Egg Pudding
サークルKサンクスの窯出し卵たっぷりプリン

Circle K Sunkus' sweets line called "Cherie Dolce" added a new "oven-fresh pudding." 
One of the most popular one is "melting pudding," which had 5th anniversary of the product this year, 2013.
And they also had chocolate version, "chocolat pudding" which was launched on February 4, 2013.
I haven't seen the chocolate version recently, so I think it was a limited flavor.

A couple of days ago, I happened to find this new "egg pudding" and I bought one to try.
As it doesn't have the line "melting" like the original one, I imagined it'd have a little bit harder texture.

A smaller font lines describes how it's made; baked pudding to have firm texture with simple flavor.
So it'd be a hard and thick pudding I thought.

Ingredients are as normal as ordinary puddings.
Mainly used dairy products, egg, sugar, caramel sauce, etc., but not gelatin even thought it's got hard texture.

<Nutrition>
Calories: 183kcal
Protein: 4.5g
Fat: 9.9g
Carbohydrate: 18.6g
Natrium: 81.8g


When I removed the cover, there're caramel sauce over the egg part.

This is totally opposite from the original one since the caramel sauce was at the bottom.
Maybe the melting one is too soft to hold any liquid on the top.

This egg pudding, I could easily pick it up with a plastic spoon and it stayed well as you can see the photo below.

The hard texture of this pudding was like Portuguese pudding.
Caramel was a bit bitter so that it was a good combination with the sweet egg part.

150 JPY

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Ramen Burger / ラーメンバーガー

B-graded Gourmet "Ramen Burger" at Cinco de Mayo
シンコ・デ・マヨで見つけたB級グルメ「ラーメンバーガー」

I went to Cinco de Mayo festival held in Yoyogi Park during Golden Week, which is about a week off with national holidays starting from the end of April to early in May.

Cinco de Mayo is of course not a Japanese holiday but this year, they brought it here to celebrate and introduce some Latin American cultures and foods.

Every time there's some sort of festivals, I see random food stands which are not related to the theme.
And this time, it's not exceptional; there're Jamaican, Turkish, and Japanese food stands.

One of them was selling "Ramen Burger."
I've heard about it but never tried one, so I decided to buy one.

Ramen Burger became famous when B-graded gourmet started getting popular.
Maybe you wonder what B-graded gourmet is, here's a short explanation.

We call it B-kyu Gurume, "kyu" here means "grade," and "Gurume" is the way we pronounce "gourmet" in Japanese.
The definition is "ordinary folksy food and drinks which are not extravagant and cheap."
So-called local dishes are pretty much B-graded Gourmet.
However, B-graded Gourmet is not local cuisines since they're not connected to the rural cultures and don't have a long history. 
Yet this B-graded Gourmet is used to revitalize the towns and since 2006, B-graded Grand Prix  is held every year and the triumphed dish makes a lot of change to the town and reactivate the city a lot.

The Ramen Burger stand I went to had this sign with prcie; 500 JPY, which is an average price for food stand I think.
The way it's cooked was interesting.

There're steal plate with pockets which were similar to muffin cups but much shallower.
The guy who was selling put noodles into the pocket and placed a little weight over it and fried the noodle.
But as you can see some noodles shaped into flat circle, he used one of them after reheating in the hole.

While he's preparing, I asked him how many years he's in this business, then he said it's been a couple of years and this was one of the vanguards of B-graded Gourmet about 2-3 years ago (back in 2010) when the boom just has started.

There're two flavors; soy sauce or pork flavor and I chose soy sauce.

On the fried noodle, he put starchy and thick soy sauce paste (or broth), and added thin slices of naganegi onions.

Then he added mianma (bamboo shoot), naruto (steamed fish minced and steamed), then also char siu.
So basically the toppings were the regular ones you usually see on ramen bowl.

This is how it served in a paper wrap.

It was quite good like you're eating ramen with thickened soup.
However, the bun (made of ramen noodle) was so fragile that it's impossible to eat it without making a mess and wiping my mouth.

I'm not sure if you can get whenever there's a festival in Yoyogi Park, but if you find it, this could be interesting enough to try.

I found a website you can actually buy a set of frozen Ramen Burgers online, which has nothing to do with this food stand, but all you need is to reheat and put them in order and eat.

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Chips Ahoy! "Gooey Caramel"

Chewy Chips Ahoy! Gooey Caramel

Nabisco's product "Chips Ahoy!" has added a new cookie to the line.
It's called "Gooey Caramel."
Underneath Chips Ahoy!, it indicates what it is like; Caramel Filled Soft Cookies.

The package is red and the color reminded me of Charlie's Chocolate Factory somehow.

The package is same as others; adhesive section under the lift on the left, so you don't need a clip to close the package when you wanna leave some cookies.

I think the size of the cookie is same but it was slightly heavier than crispy ones.

Cookie was soft and moisture, and the surface looks smooth.
These aspects are very different from regular Chips Ahoy! cookies.

The amount of chocolate chips in the cookie seemed about the same.

After a bite.
I didn't see any chewy object was coming out like the image on the package.

Tried another cookie and it had slightly more caramel filling, but not thick enough to stretch out between cookies.

Overall, the cookie tasted good but filling wasn't satisfying to me since the advertising line, "soft cookies" was correct but I don't think it was "chewy" or "gooey" so much.
I'd have named it "Chocolate Chip Caramel Cookie" and not have used the word "chewy" or "gooey."

<Nutrition>  per 2 cookies
Calories: 140kcal
Calories from fat: 45kcal
Total fat: 5g
Saturated fat: 2.5g
Trans fat: 0g
Polyunsaturated fat: 0g
Monounsaturated fat: 1.5g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 130mg
Potassium: 50mg
Total Carbohydrate: 21g
Dietary fiber: 0g
Sugars: 12g
Protein: 1g

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Milano Melts "boston cream pie"

Pepperidge Farm's New Milano Melts "Boston Cream Pie"

My husband was on business trip and got me some souvenirs.
One of them was a new product from Pepperidge Farm cookies, which is my one of my favorite brand!

The Connecticut based company added Milano Melts as a new line with "Boston Cream Pie."
Apparently it was launched in March, 2013.

It's May now but I'm sure not many places have this new cookies in Japan anyway, it's totally new for me.

First of all, I'd never had or seen Boston cream pie before so I had to search what it is like.
I just found out that even though it's called "pie," it's not a pie and it's a type of cake.
The fillings are chocolate and custard cream.

The other side of the package.
"Face it. your resistance is slipping away."

Grammatically, I don't understand why they used lower case after "Face it." 
As it ends with period, lines after that should start with a capital letter....
When I opened the package, sweet vanilla flavor came out.
I didn't smell chocolate at that moment.

The surface of the cookie was smooth and it looked like other Milano series (pale color cookie).

I wonder why this cookie has a tail (or a beak) on the top.
Maybe the dough is soft and machine is squeezing piles on belt conveyor and this extra part wouldn't be removed?

The package is showing melting white cream (which is custard cream), and also the package says "melts" with dripping calligraphy, but the actual product doesn't have that.

As you can see, this cookie's fillings are pretty stable and still.
The hanging part is actually chocolate.

From another angle.

I could see layers and was thinking if the dough is already made like this before putting into the machine to make this.

It was my first time to try Boston cream pie, so I'm not sure if it's genuinely copying the flavor and taste, but it had pretty strong custard taste with vanilla flavor.
The cookie was light and crispy but definitely thicker than other Milano series.
It's not melting like the package and I was a little bit upset since I thought it'd be actually soft and droopy.

<Nutrition>  per 2 cookies
Calories: 150kcal
Calories from fat: 70
Total fat: 8g
Saturated fat: 2.5g
Trans fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 45mg
Total Carbohydrate: 18g
Dietray Fiber: less than 1g
Sugars: 12g
Protein: 1g

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Garigarikun Rich! Ichigo Au Lait & Jelly / ガリガリ君リッチ! いちごオレ&ゼリー

Garigarikun Rich! Ichigo Au Lait & Jelly /
ガリガリ君リッチ! いちごオレ&ゼリー

Akagi Nyugyo (Akagi Dairy Industry) has been producing new Garigarikun Rich! series' flavors and on May 14, 2013, they released a new flavor in a limited quantity.

The flavor is called "ichigo au lait."
Ichigo is strawberry in Japanese, and as you know "au lait" means "with milk" in French, so the flavor is strawberry milk.

This is not only a limited production but also collaborated with Tsuburaya production, which created Ultraman.
This year, 2013, is the 50th anniversary of Tsuburaya production and Akagi Nyugyo collaborated with the company and made Ultraman packaged Garigarikun.

Usually, Garigarikun's packages are 3 types for each flavor.
From the left, Ultraman, Ultraman Seven, and Ultraman Zero.
*Images are from Akagi Nyugyo's HP.

You can see Garigarikun is copying the famous poses like Spacium Ray (スペシウム光線), 
Emerium Beam (エメリウム光線).

I picked up Ultraman package as it's something I know.

If you tak a close look, the upper side of the package has a same pattern of Ultraman's suite.
And Garigarikun is flying with the same pose that Ultraman flies.

Package describes that this ice cream bar consists of strawberry jelly, strawberry milk flavored shaved ice, and strawberry milk ice cream.

Garigarikun and Ultraman pose the same way and on the left side of Ultraman's head, there's a Tsuburaya production's 50th anniversary logo.

This is the ice cream bar.
Pale pink colored ice cream on a wooden stick.

Inside of the ice cream.
You can see layers here and also red jelly cubes in the center.
15% of this jelly contains strawberry fruit juice and had stronger flavor than outside.
And surprisingly, the jelly wasn't frozen and it's soft and flabby. 

Each bar is 110ml.
Suggested retail price: 126 JPY (but I bought in a supermarket for 98 JPY)

<Nutrition>
Calories: 135kcal
Protein: 1.1g
Fat: 4.9g
Carbohydrates: 22.1g
Natrium: 18mg

If the wooden bar has "当たり (Atari, bingo!)" sign, you can get a special T-shirt.
Unfortunately I didn't win this time either... :(

I'm not sure how many ice cream bars they made for this special collaborated packages, but it's pretty tasty but not that heavy as it's mainly shaved ice.
Jelly inside of the ice cream could be something you've never tried before!

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It's My Wonderful Pizza! / イッツマイ ワンダフル☆ピザ！

You can make one-of-a-kind pizza on Domino's "It's My Wonderful Pizza!"
ドミノピザの「イッツマイ ワンダフル☆ピザ！」で自分だけのピザが作れる

On October 31, 2012, Domino's Japan launched an iPad App and PC content which allows you to make your own pizza to order online.

The content (including app) was made to celebrate its accomplishment of 10,000 shops in the world.
Among pizza industry, Domino's innovated internet order system and they created a tracking system of orders, and also well-known "Excellent Tracking Quiz Show!," which you can win coupons while you're waiting for the pizza.
Domino's has provided entertainment aspect besides new and limited pizzas.

"Domino's App," a delivery app, has reached more than 1.4 billion yen sales on pizzas, including sides and drinks, and this is hailed as a new way to set an order, in addition ordering on the phone and via internet.

With this "Wonderful Pizza!," you can choose size, crust, sauce, topping, and name the pizza you make.
And you can introduce the pizza you make on SNS and order any pizza on Domino's "Wonderful Pizza" site via the content or SNS.

Here are some info what you can do to make your dream pizza. Size: medium or large
Type: whole or half & half
Crust: 4 types (regular, ultra crispy, camembert mille-feuille, triple camembert mille-feuille)
Sauce: 5 types (tomato, basil, pomodoro, bolognaise, white sauce, or no sauce)
Topping: 24 kinds

Lately I'd been craving pizza(s) and actually created my own pizza but didn't order.
Tonight, I finally set an order after making the same pizza I've been interested in.

It's not on Domino's website so you need to search for the correct site; typing "It's my wonderful pizza domino japan" would work fine.

http://mypizza.dominos.jp/

In case the link doesn't work, here's the screen shot.

I used PC site and started creating my pizza.

First I chose the size; Medium.
Then decided to do half & half.
I picked camembert mille-feuille for the crust, which has smooth camembert cheese sauce between 2 crispy crusts.
One side, I put tomato sauce and the other side, I spread basil.
For the toppings, pepperoni and mushroom on the tomato sauce side; on the left side,  jalapeno, anchovies, and garlic slices.

You can add up to 8 toppings each side and use same toppings twice for the maximum.

Every time I choose item, this character shouts what I chose and starts singing while I'm putting toppings.
He's just singing with the toppings I chose, for example, "Pepperoni, pepperooooniiiii~~~, mushroom, mushroooomuuuuuu~~~~"

If you don't wanna hear him shouting and singing, of course you can mute audio anytime as you wish.

In the end, you give a name to the pizza you made, describe the concept, choose your age range and gender, categorize your pizza (gift for myself, for a party, to cheer me up, etc.).
Also use your nickname to show everyone to indicate who made this pizza.

I named my pizza "ChiPizza," by the way.

Depending on items you use, the price differs and mine became 2,344 JPY.
Via internet, they deduct 5% thus the total became 2,226 JPY.

After setting order, I was playing the quiz show and won 50% off coupon which I can use on next order!

My pizza arrived within 30 minutes and the delivery person said, "It's 24 minutes after you ordered."

I think the reason why he said was to make sure it didn't take more than 30 minutes since they give you 500 JPY off coupon if it excess half an hour to deliver the products.

It was nice of him to warn that the bottom of the box is pretty hot and they always mention that if there's any problem in the food, please call them.
I've never had any trouble with Domino's but they're being careful even though it's a fast food chain.

This is my pizza.

Red part is tomato sauce and pepperoni + mushroom.

Green side is jalapeno, anchovies, and garlic over basil sauce.

This is what camembert mille-feuille looks like.

Pizza itself looks thin but once you bite into, you can feel the melting cheese sauce between thin crusts.

Usually pepperoni tastes salty but with mille-feuille crust, it didn't have much saltiness or even flavor as the camembert cheese is really thick.

For basil sauce side, they put good amount of jalapeno.
The pieces were pretty spicy but with the camembert crust, it didn't have much kick unfortunately.

I loved the toppings and sauces (tomato and basil) I chose, but it'd have been tastier if I had chosen regular or ultra crispy crust.

In the end, I realized that they actually type the name of the pizza I made, "ChiPizza" on the receipt.
I thought it's pretty cool!

This content and app are available only in Japan besides the area they could deliver, but if you're tired of regular pizzas and want something new and creative, this "It's My Wonderful Pizza!" would solve the problem.

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Iron Man 3 Packaged Red Chili Noodle / アイアンマン3 レッドチリヌードル

Iron Man 3 Special Package Red Chili Noodle/
アイアンマン3 レッドチリヌードル

Iron Man 3 came out on April 26, 2013 and my husband got me this cup noodle a couple of days before the roll out.
It's sold for 228 JPY.

Sanyo Foods Co., Ltd. collaborated with Walt Disney Japan to create Sapporo Ichiban (a cup noodle brand of Sanyo Foods) Red Chili Noodle, Iron Man 3 special packaged cup.
They launched this on April 22nd, which is 4 days before the roll out of the movie.

This cup isn't only collaborated with Iron Man 3, but also it's called a King Cup size, which is 1.9 times more than the regular cup.
The content is 112g (noodle takes 90g out of it).
Without hot water, it looks pretty large and I was wondering how fulfilling this would be once it's ready to eat.

Motif color of this cup noodle is, needless to say, red and the soup has deep-heat chili flavor.
Base of the soup is pork and beef, added super spicy spices, also garlic and onion to add richness.
Smooth noodles are already seasoned with soy sauce in order to let it integrate with soup.
Toppings are cabbage, ground meat, star-shaped kamaboko (fish mince), and red peppers.

Before pouring hot water.
I thought the red pieces were chili pepper but they're red peppers.

Waited for 3 minutes and it's ready like other cup noodles.
Before mixing, all the cabbage pieces were soft and swollen.

Mixed well with the soup.
Soup was pretty red and it smelled really spicy already.

And you can see star-shaped kamaboko in the noodle.

I love spicy food except wasabi and karashi (Japanese mustard) and I usually can handle most of the spiciness.
However, this soup was pretty spicy and it made me cough also...
It was spicy-hot but also the soup had great beef and pork flavor so that it wasn't a torture.

If you like spicy food, you may like this.
If not, your stomach might not be able to tolerate, besides this is only available with King Cup (meaning huge).


You can see dashed line with arrow facing the bottom on the left side, it can pulled up to separate the package.
This ad-cover was paper but the actual up was plastic, so that to divide the materials before throwing away, you'll see most of Japanese products has this dotted line to peal off the film easily.

After taking off the paper package.

<Nutrition>

Nutrition
Calories: 499kcal
Protein: 11.7g
Fat: 18.5g
Carbohydrate: 71.4g
Natrium: 2.9g   (noodle and toppings: 1.0g, soup: 1.9g)
  *Sodium chloride equivalent: 7.4g
Vitamin B1: 1.62mg
Vitamin B2: 0.58g
Calcium: 200mg

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Pancake at Artnia / アルトニアのパンケーキ

Pancake at Artnia, Square Enix's Official Shop /
スクウェア・エニックスのオフィシャルショップ「アルトニア」のパンケーキ

Artnia is a Square Enix's exclusive official shop in the world and located by the SE office building in Shinjuku.
This official shop doesn't only have goods but also has cafe and bar.
The name "Artnia" is a coined word; Art + Area + Near as they wanted this shop to work as a bridge between customers and goods.

The other day, I found this cafe has afternoon tea set, too, and today, May 5th, my husband and I decided to go.

We got there and it's pretty packed.
There's a board with a paper to write down names for the waiting list.
We put our name at 3:43PM and before us, there're about 5 groups on the list.

As it's a goods shop, so we looked while waiting.
We're seated at around 4:05PM and were provided menus books at counter.
They said alcohol beverages are available from 5:00PM, but it didn't matter neither of us drink.

I asked a waiter why there're open tables but people aren't seating there.
He said there'd be a group of 5 so that the table was empty, however there're some other table without any single person so I didn't understand the way they treat customers.

I realized that afternoon tea set wasn't on the menu so I researched and found out that the afternoon tea set was available till end of April.

I decided to get chocolate pancake as it has Chocobo mark (Chocobo is a character from Final Fantasy), but the menu said the stamp is random so I was hoping to get Chocobo.
Besides Chocobo, they have Mog (FF) and a logo of Shinra (FF VII)

We were waiting for someone to come and take our order but none came.
After more than 10 minutes, finally a guy came and asked if we're decided.

We ordered out pancakes at 4:15PM and waited for 10minutes or more to have pancakes.
It might have been taking longer than usual since the manager came and said, "Sorry for making you wait. Pancakes are coming soon."

This is the pancakes.

Strawberry pancake (950 JPY)

Stamp was a same character that the menu had, "Mog" from Final Fantasy.
Some slices of fresh strawberries, whole blueberries, and a raspberry.

Chocolate pancake (900 JPY)

Close look of Chocobo.

Both pancakes had 3 slices and came with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream and some fruits.
Chocolate pancake had banana slices and chocolate ganache with chocolate sauce.
You can't see in the photos but almond slices were added, too.

This pancake was ok; not bad yet just a normal pancake with game characters' stamps on the top.
I'd have enjoyed this more if it's only 500 JPY or a little bit cheaper like 700 ~ 800 JPY without those fresh fruit slices.
I'm sure there're some people who prefer just a plain pancake without those fatty toppings or fruits, so if the cafe can cut the cost of the extra ingredients, they could sell pancake much more quickly  for more reasonable price since the special aspect of this pancake is just the character stamp.

It was the most crowded day I've ever seen today and it might be one of the reason the service wasn't that good.
I actually don't know much about Square Enix games but if you like the games, this place could be really interesting to find limited goods and also enjoy the cafe.

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