This week my friend Meg is visiting from LA, so I am taking a break from candy reviewing to travel around with her and gorge myself on food I love in the name of being a good tour guide. Instead, I present a review from official GJP stalker fan, Gifu Knit Club member and all-around lovely Irish lass, Carol. Enjoy!

Puchi purin choco (Little pudding chocolates)
by Special Guest Candy Journalist, Carol

As a little girl, I was incredibly fond of listening to (eavesdropping on) the chatter of the grown ups around me. One of the things I used to love (over)hearing was my Grandmother telling people definitively that I was a “mini Ollie” when I was born. That I so delighted in overhearing this is somewhat bizarre given that Ollie is a balding fifty-year-old man, and what little girl enjoys being compared to any fifty-year-old man, with or without a full head of hair? But of course, Ollie is not just any fifty-year old man, Ollie is my Dad, my wonderful father, whose patience seems to be housed in a bottomless pool, and the man from whom I inherited my red hair, (which has recently earned me the nickname “carrot sensei”), my impractically pale skin, (which sizzles painfully under the hot Japanese sun [thanks a lot Dad!]) and my freckles (with whom I have a changeable relationship). More importantly though, Ollie is the man from whom I inherited my love of all things custard. It is from my father that I learned the joys of a big bowl of glooopy yellow Bird’s custard, topped with a spoonful of stewed fruit, usually apple or rhubarb. Irish peasant desserts are delicious. (Irish peasant dinners, incidentally, are not). And so, it is my father who I must thank for prepping me for my recently cultivated obsession with the omnipresent Japanese purin.

Purin or pudding, is not a general term for dessert as it might be understood in England, nor is it a term for a hot flour based, boiled cake, as it might be understood in Ireland. In Japan, purin is a delicious custard treat that comes housed in a transparent plastic tub shaped delightfully like a cartoon jelly mould. Usually it will have a delicious layer of runny caramel at the bottom. The best thing about “purin” is the texture/flavour combo. The texture is soft and smooth with just the right consistency, not too thick and not too thin. It is good to smush against the roof of your mouth, where the flavour can be released and wallowed in. The flavour is mild, pleasantly mellow and thankfully not at all sickly sweet, which is always a danger.

Prior to my discovery of Anjali’s wonderful blog, I had found myself in a temporary candy rut. I had developed an unhealthily monogamous relationship with Meiji milk chocolate bars shortly after arriving and ceased to look any further down the vast candy aisle. I was ridiculously unadventurous. Newly illiterate, I had been intimidated by the daunting rows of strange flavours explained in a language I could not speak or read. During this horrifying era, purin, housed as it was in a transparent tub, was a great source of familiar comfort to me.

Months later, when I had emerged with glee from my milk chocolate cocoon, to comprehensively experience the multiple joys of Japanese candy, I came across puchi purin choco. These puchi (meaning mini, little, or a Simpson’s once off character) candies are two tone chocolates shaped like tiny purins and housed in a cardboard box loosely imitating the shape of the plastic tub of the real purin. The box is adorned with multiple cute cartoon puddings cheekily sticking their tongues out to one side. The largest of which has a white exclamation mark printed on the side of its* forehead. Interesting…

To the left of its head, the protagonist purin thinks of a word to describe itself/ the contents of its belly. (???) (More candy cannibalism…it really is omnipresent.) Arriving at a one-word definition, it proclaims itself/its contents as maroyaka (smooth, mellow and with a good body). This is indeed an ample description of the purin which inspired the chocolate, but what of puchi purin choco itself? Is it worthy of such a generous description?

Unfortunately, I would have to say “no”.

Puchi purin choco is disappointing for the following reasons:

1. Unlike Cadbury’s Top Deck, where the upper layer is a distinctive white chocolate and the lower layer a creamy milk chocolate the two tones of puchi purin choco are only visually distinguishable. The custard and caramel layers are indicated by food colouring alone. I had been hoping for a caramel flavoured milk chocolate, and a custard flavoured white chocolate.

2. Unlike the picture on the tub, which promises smooth glistening chocolate, the mini treats on the inside of the box both look and taste just a little chalky.

3. The flavour, although impressively custard-like for chocolate, is just a tad too strong, and tastes more like condensed custard powder than actual custard.

In saying that, they weren’t bad and I managed to polish the lot off! It’s still chocolate, after all!

*I was unwilling to presume as to the gender of purin.

Carol -- teacher of English, knitter of hats, eater of grilled octopus -- lives in Japan. She is also half-leprechaun. (No, seriously.) But rumor has it if you ask her to take you to her pot of gold, she'll instead show you to a pot of pudding.