Japanese Candy Review: Senjaku Four Seas Ice Cream Candy

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - by Laurie

Now that I’ve worked through my backlog of Christmas chocolate reviews, I thought I’d do something I haven’t done for awhile – review some Japanese candy from T&T. (Though Christmas chocolate is great too – don’t get me wrong.) I picked up a couple of items, the first of which is this Senjaku Four Seas Ice Cream Candy.

But to start with, let’s get something out of the way. Yup, I’m reviewing Asian candy. Asian candy that contains milk and was, in all likelihood, made before the whole melamine scare. Would I chug melamine-contaminated milk by the glass? No. But the tiny amount of milk in one or two hard candies isn’t going to contain any more than a truly infinitesimal amount of melamine – if it contains any at all. I’d call that an acceptable risk, but if it bothers you, no one’s making you eat them.

If you’re not phobic about that sort of thing, there are a lot of really tasty milk-flavored Japanese candies around. There’s even a type that’s actually called “milk candy,” a condensed milk-based chew that comes plain and in various flavors, from caramel to corn (for serious!). These Ice Cream Candies aren’t milk candy, though really, it doesn’t get much milkier than ice cream. However, Senjuku one-ups American offerings like the Baskin-Robbins candies by making these not just ice-cream flavored, but also ice-cream shaped.

Each little piece, about an inch high, is shaped like a little ice cream cone, with a swirl of “ice cream” on the top and a caramel-colored “cone” on the bottom. They’re very hard and shiny-looking, like plastic, and some of them are just a little bit squished looking. Overall though, they’re nicely made, with good color separation between the “ice cream” and “cone” portions. The ice cream’s swirls are neatly delineated, and the cone is even lightly patterned with waffle cone-like crosshatching. The colors are a little disappointing, though they are better than that crappy photo would have you believe – the strawberry (center) is actually pink, though it’s a slightly brownish-pink.

Like a lot of Japanese candies, these have great packaging – just look at how happy and bouncy and fun it looks, all pink and yellow and shiny little highlights. According to the package, they come in three flavors: “chocolate softicecream,” “strawberry softicecream” and “vanilla softicecream.”

In all the flavors, the ice cream flavor seems to be in the “ice cream” part, while the cone has more of a caramelly/toasty vanilla-y flavor – it really does remind me of the taste of a waffle cone, and it goes well with the ice cream flavors. They feel oddly knobbly in your mouth at first, but quickly smooth out to a slightly milky, buttery feel, like a good hard toffee.

Vanilla: These are strangely tangy, not something I’d usually associate with vanilla. They’re a little yogurty, actually – I’d almost call this a frozen yogurt rather than an ice cream flavor. Though unexpected, it’s not a bad thing – the tangier vanilla goes well with the more mellow, rounder vanilla flavor of the cone portion.

Chocolate: Chocolate hard candies are usually hit or miss, and this one’s no exception. You have to suck on one for a while before you get any chocolate flavor at all out of it, and then it’s very faint. It’s got that slight yogurty tang, like the vanilla, though it’s a lot fainter. As a straight caramel flavor it’s pretty tasty, but I wouldn’t have pegged it for chocolate in a blind taste-test.

Strawberry: A milky strawberry flavor, actually pretty much dead-on with strawberry ice cream. The toasty burnt-sugar waffle-cone undertones are a good fit for the brighter strawberry flavor – in fact, the combination tastes a lot like cotton candy.

Not only are they tasty, they’re also cute as the dickens. So if you feel like an ice cream cone but not the cold and drippy mess, then these are definitely worth your while.

• Senjaku’s Website (Japanese)

Buy Senjaku Candy Online:

• at Amazon.com