British Scones & American Biscuits

Enough arguments about scones and biscuits, I have decided today to go online searching the differences between scones and biscuits. So pulling conclusions from some threads and wikipedia, here I have got some result.

Appearance Wise

British scones are typically cut into quarters. Round-shaped British scones resembles North American biscuits in appearance.

Ingredients Wise
Scone uses butter and either cream or soured/plain milk, while biscuits use either shortening or lard and buttermilk or plain milk.

SOYJOY - Apricot

Cravingness: ★★★★☆

Another new flavour, another new SOYJOY collection from Japan! Apricot SOYJOY is not launched in Hong Kong yet, so here I tried my soy bar and share how it tasted like.

The soy bar would not give you a strong immediate flow of apricot smell, but as you started munching on the bar, you could smell the fragrance coming from the bar and spreading into your mouth. In this soy bar, you could find apricot, papaya, raisons and almond along the bar. An interesting fact is this was the most chewy soy bar of all those I had tried out, meaning it is actually quite hard, yet not too hard to chew. Luckily the extra chewiness did not contribute an extra dryness, the soy bar had the same dryness as the other soy bars.

Reading the ingredient list, I often found quite puzzle to see the word 'perfume' along with all those sugar, salt, fruits or unknown chemical names. Is perfume eatable?

Another thing I found annoying about SOYJOY is their colour packaging, which is very confusing, especially in Japan where I had no idea what the japanese words mean. Let me explain where the confusion came from.

Blue Series
Blue	Blueberry
Shiny Blue	Plum plus
Purple	Raison Almond

Orange Series
Orange	Apricot
Shiney Orange	Orange Plus
Yellow	Mango Coconut
Shiny Yellow	Banana Plus

Sure, there is a slight different between all the colours, but when you have all of the colours in front of you, you wont be knowing which is which.

The Finale of Cheung Lee

Cheung Lee Restaurant
G/F, 120 Electric Road, Tin Hau

I had no idea about this restaurant until I saw its name listed in the Top Ten Restaurant on Openrice.com. I read from the reviews that it had opened for more than 50 years. I suggested paying it a visit to my parents on Sunday morning on its last day, and to my surprise, my mum used to dine in there before. I questioned about why are all old fashioned restaurant called Bing Café. She said its because Red Bean Ice and Pineapple Ice was what they always have when heading to those restaurants. There weren't much choice to choose from, not like what the cafes could offer nowadays.

Glico Dessert Pocky | Custard Cake of Strawberry

Coming with a fancy packaging, this box of Glico Dessert Pocky is sold at a price at approximately $25. It was an import from Japan and can now be bought in 7-11 and Okashiland. There were four flavours in the Glico Dessert Pocky series and custard cake of strawberry is one of them. The box contained 4 individual packs of Pocky, each containing 3 chocolate sticks, which means in total only 12 chocolate sticks in a box! What a luxury box of chocolate Pocky.

Not only the box looked fancy, the chocolate sticks themselves were too. The Creamy white chocolates coating was perfectly swirled with pink strawberry chocolate and thickly piped along the whole biscuit stick. The stick mainly gave a strawberry taste when first consume but the after taste did suggest a taste of taking a bit on a strawberry custard cake. The stick was mildly sweet and very so scrumptious that I polished two tiny individual packs at once. I am now looking at the box wondering whether I should continue having the rest of them….May be after a bit of work.

Glico Pretz | Curry

After all these Glico that I have tried, I reckon I personally prefer salty flavoured Pretz over sweet flavoured Pretz. I had this Curry Pretz last night and felt very contended after polishing the whole box off. The contentment was more than the one I had right after I had a sweet one.

Anyway, the pack of Curry Pretz had a robust curry aroma and an addicting taste. Although it was a bit salty, I could not stop myself from eating stick right after stick. The delicious curry taste kept lingering on your palate even after polishing the box. I guess salty flavoured Pretz gave more contentment because it gave you a similar feeling of eating pizza or something, food that are yummy and salty.

SOYJOY | Blueberry (New)

Having know that Japan has the most flavour variations, I had tried my very best to grab all the flavours that I have not seen or tried before back to Hong Kong. Here I had just tried this Blueberry Soy Bar, and it was pretty nice too! I just found out it was a nice flavour just came out from Japan.

The Blueberry Soy Bar was again a chewy soy bar with bits of dry blueberries, white chocolate, raisons topped along the whole bar. It was slightly sweeter than all the Soy Bars due to the bits of white chocolate, and was nicer than the ones I have tried before. There were two other flavours that I have brought and I can't wait to try them out now.

Glico Pocky | Strawberry

I remembered when I was small there used to have Strawberry Pocky available everywhere in the market. I had no idea since when there are only Chocolate Pocky left available for sale in 7-11. Even if there were Strawberry Pocky available in 7-11, it was not the same kind that I used to have. Due to this reason, I had totally forgotten the taste and had got myself totally addicted to Chocolate Pocky. Finally I found this pack of Pocky in Okashiland. Although it is a Japanese version, still it was pretty closed to what we used to have.

After tearing off the wrapper, I could immediately smell the lovely sweet strawberry aroma coming out of the Pocky. The pink strawberry chocolate coating was pretty thin as you could see the bread stick's pattern underneath it. The coating was quite sweet and the strawberry flavour was strong and lovely. The stick was very moreish and since the box was pretty small, I polished it off quickly. Begging for more, I would definitely buy more when I went to Okashiland next time.

Yi Yue | Not So Taiwan Style As Its Name Suggested

My family and I wanted a quick tea in Prince Edward this afternoon, we found this restaurant around the corner and seemingly looked nicer than the ones around. Although there weren't anyone dinning in the restaurant, we went in as the pictures on their food stand looked nice.

Minced Beef Rice

Since Yi Yue served typical Taiwanese food, we already had the dishes we want in mind upon seating. I skemmed the menu and saw a dinner set for two, athough there were 4 of us, we ordered the set anyway. The set was a very good bargain. It had 2 soups, 2 starters, 2 main courses, 2 drinks and a veggie at a price of $108. We originally had no idea about the soups until it arrived. The soup was in normal Chaa Chan Ten standard, nothing special about it. Let switched our focus to the foods that are on the menu.

OWL | Eating Art

Searching a spot in Openrice.com with relaxing atmosphere for friends chitchatting and catching up, I came across Café OWL and decided to pay a visit there. Pouring rain on this Saturday afternoon, My friends and I met at Tsim Sha Tsui MTR Exit B, and thanks for the Café’s location, we weren’t soaking wet as the Café was just 5 minutes walked from the MTR Exit.

Knowing little about the café, my friend and I were amazed and impressed by the interior furnishing of the Café once the elevator door slid wide. We didn’t expect any nice café in this building not to mention an up scale one. We were brought to a window seating. Locating on 5/F floor, a full overview of the hustle pedestrian street was at sight, pretty awesome. The interior furnishing looked classy and there were graffiti everywhere around the café. Ladies would probably use the washroom longer than usual, as the 4 walls were nicely drawn with remarkable graffiti, each expressing its own thoughts.

Tokyo Banana | Strawberry Custard Cake

Strawberry Custard Cake is another product by the Tokyo Banana. Why would I buy a box of Strawberry cake in a shop that specialized in Banana? It was simply because the strawberry cakes came with a nicer gift box, whereas 5 individual packs of banana cake came with a simple plastic wrapping. Marketing is always the key for better sale.

The Strawberry Custard Cake had a strong decent strawberry and a light pineapple aroma. It was a sponge cake with a light touch of butter. The texture is very soft but a bit rough.

The paste within the custard cake was also another reason for me to chose over Banana Custard Cake. Slicing the cake in half exposed a creamy yellow and pink paste. The yellow paste was vanilla flavoured, very sweet and somehow gave a delusionary pineapple scent. The texture was smooth, creamy and very jam like.

The pink paste was apparently strawberry flavoured. It also had the exact texture as the vanilla paste but was less sweet. The strawberry flavoured paste tasted a bit like strawberry lollipop and was pretty scrumptious.

The Strawberry Custard Cake came with a nice box.

Each box contains 5 individually packed cake.

Green Tea Kusa Mochi

Kusa Mochi is another Japan Souvenir that I brought from Ueno, Japan. Kusa mochi (草餅 a.k.a. grass mochi or yomogi mochi) is a Japanese sweet and is considered a seasonal dish for spring. It is made from mochi and leaf of yomogi and does have the name grass mochi.

Daifuku (大福) is a derivate of Musa mochi. It is a small round mochi stuffed with sweet filling, most commonly anko, sweetened red bean paste made from azuki beans. Daifuku comes most commonly in two sizes, one approximately the diameter of a half-dollar coin, the other palm-sized. 'cited from wikipedia'

The Green Kasa Mochi had a strong green tea flavour. The mochi was soft and gave a lovely chewiness. It was mildly sweet with a scent of green tea flowing into your nose. The Mochi was filled with anko paste, although not as much a filling as the packaging suggested, it is still reasonably enough, It was covered in a fine layer of taro starch on top to keep the mochi from sticking onto the fingers. A minor comment is that the Kasa Mochi was very perishable which had to be consumed within few days, or else the outer mochi layer would start to harden.

文明堂 | Bunmeido Cake Roll

This was another souvenir that I bought in the Hanedo Airport in Japan. I was not planning to buy this box of cake, but as my best friend Sarah highly recommended it and on the rack there was only one box left for purchase. I bought it lol. The box came with two flavours, original and Green Tea.

1) Original flavour

The cake had a special texture different from what normal sponge cake had. Although it was still soft and moist, the surface texture was not that smooth, a bit rough, like you can feel the honeycomb-like roughness on your palate. The cake itself was also surprisingly extremely sweet, again different from sponge cake but gave a very familiar taste. Later I found out the cake was actually a Doll Cake(人形燒a.k.a. Doll Burning), no wonder it was that sweet.

Observing the cake closely you will find a thin layer of red bean paste in between the outer layer and the cake. Being a revolutionary Doll Cake, this thin layer of paste added on an extra sweetness to this cake. Even served with unsweetened coffee, the cake was still a bit too sweet.

2) Green Tea Flavour

Although the cake was still extremely sweet too, it tasted better than the original as it had a strong green tea flavour along with the sweetness. The strong flavour dominated the cake and lessen the sweetness impression down.

A bit of information here having Wikipedia as reference. Doll Cake is a specialty originated from the Asakusa Temple in Tokyo Japan. It mainly uses flour, eggs and sugar as raw material and can gave any kind of shapes by blending the mixture in a special mold. The Doll Cake usually come as a plain cake or has a red bean paste filling and is in the shape of the Seven Lucky Gods and Asakusa Kaminarimon.

The above leaflet came along with the box.

Glico Pretz | Butter

My friend commented that the Butter Pretz tasted liked Four Seas Stick Biscuit which got me pretty excited as i love that snack too.

I wrapped open the packing and again it was full of a decent butter scent. The biscuit although was heavily butter flavoured, it was not the taste I was anticipated for. It has no similarity with Four Seas Stick Biscuit. Four Seas Stick Biscuit is sweet and butterly, while Butter Pretz was also butterly but extremely salty, every stick i had was full of salt and it was not pleasant at all. I will go for other Pretz next time in store.

Glico Double Pretz | Matcha Vanilla

I brought 2 packs of Pretz back to work this morning, Matcha Vanilla Double Pretz and Butter Pretz. I have just polished a box of Matcha vanilla and I can foresee I would be polishing the other box pretty soon! Judging by my Glico try-out pace recently, I am kind of worry about my weight.....I did not see myself growing in weight, but my stomach seems stucking out! Hope a bit of exercising could flatten it back.

The pack of Matcha Vanilla had a strong scent of white chocolate, with just a light matccha aroma. This Double Pretz had a greenish white vanilla flavoured coating pipped along the green matcha biscuit stick. The Vanilla had a stronger taste than Matcha, yet the stick still contains a slight touch of Matcha along with the thicker taste of vanilla on it. The overall taste and after taste was not strong, so the whole pack was munched stick by stick without noticing it. In the end, I was not contented as I seem like having a flush of wind.

Glico Double Pretz | Milk Coffee

Havn't had a box of Double Pretz for long and I almost forgot why it was different from the original Pretz. The Milk Coffee Double Pretz overall had a thick great taste in between milk tea and latte. The flavour was brought about by a pearl white milk chocolate coating piping along the coffee flavoured brown biscuit stick.

The bread stick was pretty sweet but amazingly moreish. The milk taste was a perfect pair to the coffee stick which is pretty understandable as latte is a conventional drink in everyday's life. Thumb up for Milk Coffee Double Pretz!

Glico Pejoy | Red Wine Chocolate

I personally hate liquor with chocolate. To me, the taste of liquor just does not pair up with chocolate. It made the chocolate extra bitter and gave a nasty taste which whenever I taste chocolate with liquor, I puke it out immediately.

When I tore off the wrapper of Red Wine Chocolate Pejoy, I first smelt a nice fruity smell of raspberry, later my nose was filled up with a thick and heavy aroma of red wine. As it smelt more of a raspberry to me, which is my favourite fruit of all, I took my very first bite on the biscuit stick straight away.

The dark red cream within the dark brown biscuit stick was very sweet. It had the taste of sweetness and sourness at the same time. It is like you are having lots of raspberry in your mouth at the same time, and some of the more mature berries would give a sweet taste; whereas some less mature ones would give a sour taste. It did not give any liquor taste at all, but some lovely combination of sweetness and sourness. Quite a lovely snack to enjoy.

Glico Pejoy | Chocolate

I guess Pejoy is sold more expensive than Pretz for two reason. First, it is more difficult to produce Prejoy biscuit as cream filling has to be inserted into the circular biscuit. Second, Pejoy comes with two separate packages and a box with nicer and more appearling design.

Back to the Chocolate Pejoy, it tasted like Lotte's koala biscuit which was very tasty. It has a strong chocolate taste as well as aroma. This Pejoy flavour is such a moreich that I polished the whole off in a sec. Such a nice snack to munch on, love it.

SOYJOY | WolfBerry Raison

It was not the first time I had this soy bar, but everytime after I had the bar, I forgot what it tasted like. It had a very weak and vague after taste. So this time I decided to write this as soon as I have finished the bar.

Actually the soy bar itself did not contain a strong taste or aroma. You occasionally came across some sourness assumably coming from the dry wolfberries. Yet there was something in the soy bar that is quite moreish. I bet it was the sourness. The sourness is those pregnant women will like to munch on, and no I am not pregnant lol.

PRODUCT INFORMATION
Price	RMB$3.50
Net Weight	27g
Manufactured by	SOYJOY, PRC
Calories	105kcal	Per bar
GI Value	29
Protein	3.7g
Total Fat (Sat.)	4.3g (1.5g)
Carbs (Sugar)	12.9g(8.6g)
Sodium	41.6mg
Fibre	2.3g

Tokyo Banana - Banana Cream Biscuits

Cravingness: ★★★☆☆

Along with the Banana Custard Cake, I also got the Banana Cream Biscuits from Tokyo Banana (東京ばな奈). Simply because of its nice packaging and seemingly light and easy to carry as souvenir. The box contains 6 individual packages of banana cream biscuits, with half of it in chocolate flavour and half of it in original flavour. Each individual package is packaged meticulously with a cute banana brand logo in the middle.

This Banana Custard Biscuit was a double layer of circular biscuit, filled with banana cream in between.The circular biscuit had a nice cute pattern on it. The biscuit did not contain the same strong banana aroma as the custard cake. The biscuit was not the usual crispy type, the texture was in between those Japanese biscuit chewiness and crispiness. The banana cream was smooth but only give a light touch of banana flavour.

If you are going to buy any souvenir from Tokyo Banana, just go for the Banana Custard Cake, don’t go for this biscuit

Tokyo Banana -| Banana Custard Cake

Tokyo Banana’s (東京ばな奈) advertisement was everywhere in Tokyo City. There was a branch shop around the corner in Shinjuku JR station that I could not withhold my desire to taste it. Tokyo banana mainly offers a range of banana flavoured items. I originally was planning to get a box of 5 Banana custard cakes, but they only offer 5 cakes in package. As I wanted to buy it as a souvenir gifts to my family(which although I have got way too many already), I chose the alternative Strawberry Custard Cake and a box of variety Banana Custard Biscuits and an individual package of Banana Custard Cake.

Glico Pejoy - Tiramisu

Once again a great tiramisu smell rushed to my sense as I tore off the wrapper. I immediately had my first biscuit stick and it tasted really good. The cream filling was a bit sweet and had a strong thick cheese taste. The texture was very smooth and light that it melted on your palate soon after you bit the stick. The biscuit had a taste of cacao, not as bitter, mostly tasted of coffee. The combining taste of the coffee biscuit and the cheese filling gave an overall tiramisu taste which is very tasty. It taste like drinking cappuccino!

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SOYJOY - Raison Peanut

Out of all the flavour that are available in Hong Kong, I might like Raison Peanut the most. For the simple reason that it contains bits of chocolate chips inside the bar has already made the bar extra yummy.

Glico Pejoy - Cheese Cake

Another pretty packaging of Pejoy is this cheese cake flavour. Upon tearing the wrapper, you could immediately smell a nice strong scent of cheese from the wrapper. I recognize almost every single pack of Glico provides this kind of lovely smell, so I started to develop not to have as much expectation to any new Glico flavours that I am trying.

Glico Pocky - Milk

Cravingness: ☆☆☆☆☆

When I first encountered this box of pocky, I had this slightness thought of not trying it. Yet already purchasing that much amount of Glico flavours, I could not withdraw myself from trying all the flavours despite how horrible they look. So here comes this box of Glico Milk Pocky.

Mammy Pancake - WOW! Lovely Chocolate Egg Pancake

Price: $

Cravingness: ★★★★★

Having done my research I heard there was a very nice egg pancake stall somewhere nearby Si Sun Fast Food Restaurant. Not to waste a moment, I immediately set my path towards the stall after polishing off my burger at Si Sun. Stupid as I was I had forgotten where the stall was and stood at a junction of a road pretty miserably. Just at this moment, my old University friend who lived nearby suddenly appeared and yay, there she brought me to the stall so I could have my lovely dessert after my contented lunch.