Kracie Food Kit: Taiyaki and Odango

I've done a few Poppin' Cookin' kits in the past and saw this Kracie one and decided to try it out. It was definitely my favourite. It's a sample set of traditional Japanese desserts/snacks: taiyaki (a soft fish shaped biscuit with chocolate pudding like spread in the middle), ichigo daifuku (sweet rice flour dough with a strawberry filling), ramune (soft drink), and mitarashi dango (dango are sweet rice flour balls and in this style they're covered in a salty sweet sauce - you can also get dango with other sauces of which my favourite is black sesame).

The kit consists of a series of powders you mix with water in different combinations in the plastic insert (it also contains the fish pattern you microwave for the biscuit). You also cut apart the back of the packaging for size measurements and presentation aids. My Japanese isn't what it used to be (and it used to be fairly poor anyway) so I had to watch a video to get the microwave time and some other details correct.

 The finished product not only looked amazing it tasted fantastic (some of the other kits didn't taste that great). It was a fun kit to do and as they're expensive imports, I'm glad this one was worth eating. ;)

Popin' Cookin' Obento!

I've heard of Popin' Cookin' Japanese candy mixes before but they weren't a thing when I lived there, so I've never tried one.  Well, my husband located some and here's the one we did:

Inside the box is a foil packet that you cut apart for the box and accents, little packets of fruit flavoured candy powder, and a container for making the shaped candy that includes a little cup for measuring the water.

Here's a video by Kawaii Kakkoii Sugoi showing how to make the various components.



And the finished bento box with broccoli, spaghetti, fried chicken (meatball shaped), fried egg, hotdog octopus, and rice balls (onigiri).  I've displayed everything in the containers made from the foil packet.

The taste was... interesting.  I found some a bit grainy (maybe I didn't mix them long enough) and while I really liked the soda and grape flavoured onigiri, some of the others weren't that great.

Still, it was a lot of fun making everything.