Sakuraco
Box Nine - November 2021

Part Two

January 3 2022

And just like that - poof, the year is gone and I am two and a half boxes behind. Clearly, I am not a blogger in any meaningful sense of the word. It's been Christmas and New Years - the hottest on record, hitting 42 degrees Celsius. And the work in retail with the Boxing day Sales. At least the Shopping Centres are air conditioned! I think I've kept you on tenterhooks for long enough, so without further ado: the thrilling conclusion to my review of Autumn Chestnuts, my nineth Sakuraco box...

My picture wall is growing!

Such a pity passionflowers only bloom for a day.

Vase: vintage bought from

I changed the picture by Jill Saunders of 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem' to 'Nottingham Castle'

to try and bring in a 'castle' vibe to this end of the Wall

- pity this box didn't have a postcard of Kumamoto castle!

The Food (part two)

Sweet Potato Karinto

As we remember from box two part two karinto is a deep-fried sweet knobbly tube, with a fluffy-crunch; these are more like sweet-potato french-fries, somehow both deep fried and candied. The packaging is very simple, and leave no hint that you're about to eat crunchy candied sweet potato (although the motto is a bit cute!). I quite enjoy sweet potato chips/crisps with salt, but these not so much. Normally with sweet potato I don't get the earthy flavour, but this was all crunch, sugar and earth... and I'm not sure how well judged a flavour profile it was.

Chestnut Jelly

The packaging of the jelly is very understated, just a simple matte plastic tub with a neat black-on-white label with a fleck or two of gold and silver foil. If only the opening was as civilised! I had to cut it open with a pair of scissors.

The jelly doesn't look as bad as the mochi azuki jelly in box 4 (part 2), which I still think looks more like a biolgical specimen than food, probably because the chestnut is slightly browned on the edges, and the azuki have been cooked enough that their skins have split.

The jelly tastes smokey with a sweet, nuttyness - I'm guessing that the smoky roasted flavour is courtesy of the chestnut. The flavour is pleasant, but I don't think I'm ever going to love jellies in flavours other than fruit - or like highly textured jellies.

Chestnut Jelly ^

Mochi Azuki Jelly v

Purple Imo Bread

As you can see in the tasting notes, Imo is supposed to be flat, and hasn't just been squashed in transit (anybody else feel weird typing Imo? Just me? Showing my age I guess). As you can see through the clear plastic, the bread is a soft pink/lilac colour, pretty much matching the pale pink of the sweets on the fabric.

The packaging is cute and feels very 'authentic', like I just bought it from a bakery. The purple is a nice touch. As you can see the bread is as big as the plate! It has a light yeasty smell and a light yeasty taste. It's soft and fluffy with a jammy centre (as seen in the tasting guide). I'm guessing it's azuki, but whether it has sweet potato added to it I can't tell. Unlike the earthy karinto, there is no real hint of the sweet potato that has been added to the dough, except the colour. The notes also tell us that "Bread... is now a popular breakfast for people on the go" - who wouldn't want a freshly made jam sandwich?

Amanatsu Citrus Jelly

The packaging is work-a-day but adequate: brace yourself, citrus is coming. After the azuki chestnut jelly, it's nice to have something with real flavour. It's not a really strong punch flavour, just light, with just enough bitterness. The flavour profile is like a Venn diagram: where orange, lemon and grapefruit intersect. According to the internet, amantsu is used to make marmalade, and I suspect that that marmalade is superb.

I think the jelly is sweet and the pulp is bitter which gives a dimensional flavour profile.

But.

It ought to be impossible for a jelly to be dry - and I'm not talking dry vs. sweet like they do in wine. The floating amanatsu pulp is not juicy. I'm not sure if it's just the 'skins' of the pulp-sacks (wait, is there a better term than 'pulp-sack'? *googling*. Apparently there is no consensus, but juice-sac is allowable, or juice vesicle or 'juice-filled hairs'. Ahem)

So... I'm not sure if the juice filled hairs have been drained of juice and thus taste dry or... you get the picture.

Do You have your shovel? Do you have your back-up shovel.

100 nerd points if you get THIS one!

Brown Sugar Bolos

This is an interesting one. According to the tasting guide it 'gets its name from the Portuguese word for "cake"', which is nice that it's not somehow referencing a South American weapon (that's Spanish). It kind of does taste (and look) like something that 16th century Privateers would eat. It has a dark primitive smell, charred, almost. It's not caramel or brown sugar. It has the dry, slightly stretchy consistency of slightly stale cake - not Japan's usual moist castella. However, it does taste rather good! There are crunchy caramelised lumps of brown sugar in the dough, and it rips rather than breaks - it's much more reminiscent of a chewy biscuit, like a gingernut, than cake. The packaging is probably a bit too elegant for how prosaic this cake is, with it's golden swirls and matte plastic!

Chestnut Manju

Let's be honest. We all know I'm going to love this: Manju. Chestnut. What's not to love? The package goes with simple old-school vibes, with everything in either orange/brown or white, with a clear section to show off the product, and two spots of neon green chestnut spike-balls to revitalise it and keep it fresh.

Within is our manju, and for a round, brown lump based on a round brown food, they've done a really good job. It's a bit like turning a crocodile into a cute cartoon character, it's not easy, but it can be done. It's got a deep brown glossy top and some mini-sprinkles on the side. There's not much smell, a slight meaty-hint like soy sauce, that we seem to have found on some of the sweets. The glossy top is slightly salty, but not like soy-sauce, with a charred bitterness. Reminds me of that Farside comic where a caveman is told "Don't eat the parsley! Just for looks!". The filling is a little dryer/flakier than previous manju with a simple sugary sweetness - when WHAM! The nuttiness comes out of nowhere. It has small pieces of nut in the filling, and because of the inherent softness of chestnut, it doesn't make it feel gritty. As you can see the dedication to making the manju look like a chestnut is carried over to the pale filling surrounded by the dark shell.

The sprinkles don't add much

Sweet Potato Monaka

Like our previous monaka, this one is marked with the sign of the chrysanthemum, which is very pretty, but after the first in box 4 (citrus) thinking that it was a cross-section of a citrus, the chrysanthemum is just disappointing. The packaging is simple, with an image of a yellow sweet-potato (annou-imo) at the bottom and a gold tearing triangle at the top - I don't tear, I cut. It's easier to reseal the package. As always, theres a bitter-sour rice smell, that I associate with monaka. I think the azuki paste inside is denser than in previous boxes, but its a bit hard to tell. It is sweeter and earthier than usual, which I'm assuming is thanks to the sweet-potato. It also has a fruitiness that reminds me of mango.

Honey Castella

Not sure how much more can be said about the castella. It is a part of the Rainbow Series by Sanseisha, last encountered in Box 8 (Mount Fuji), with the Castella Roll Cake. It's pretty pale for a rainbow connection. Perhaps it is because, by and large, honey is not allowed to be exported into Western Australia because of biosecurity reasons, so what does get imported tends to be of high quality and 'special-ness', and our native honey is strongly flavoured... What I'm trying to say is, I don't really taste any kind of honey. The base and top seem to be more darkly coloured than usual, and tastes a little like burnt honey. It's pleasant, but it's really just a castella.