Pretty Basic Daifuku

Caramel Pudding Daifuku

Brand: New Tasu

Price: 186 yen

Place of purchase: New Days

Rating:

Daifuku are mochi (pounded rice) based sweets. As well as having more traditional flavours like anko (red bean paste), they also sometimes get the seasonal treatment with some sort of interesting flavour instead. I quite like them because they’re pretty filling and while not exactly healthy, you usually have to eat a fat more calorie dense sweet to get that much out of it. However, to get it straight out of the way, I made the rookie error of rushing and only looking at the English (gasp). I saw the word caramel and got quite excited. It is NOT some new caramel treat, though. “Caramel pudding” is the translation for the ubiquitous Japanese “purin” pudding. I suppose it purin actually is kind of caramel pudding, but it’s still not quite what I was hoping for. The Japanese original name of the product summarizes the whole thing perfectly - it’s a daifuku, with purin sauce, exactly what it says it is.

I want to be clear that this isn’t a bad treat. I quite like chilled daifuku, and the caramel “purin” sauce is perfectly nice. It just wasn’t really worth bothering with. I’m sort of surprised that it is a fairly new product. I would expect “purin” flavored things to be pretty thoroughly done by Japanese confectionary companies by now. Purin is so readily available, and that’s before I even get to the surge in popularity that my personal favorite Sanrio character, Ponponpurin, has recently been experiencing. It wasn’t bad, but I’m not sure I would get it again. I feel like there are more interesting daifuku out there and I can satisfy any purin cravings I might suddenly develop with… well, purin itself. Still, I want to reiterate again - it is exactly what it says it is. So, if you do feel like a purin-flavours daifuku, this is the thing to seek.