Jean Paul Hevin New Spring Afternoon Tea

Price: $$$

Cravingness: ★★★☆☆

Attention to all afternoon tea lovers, Jean-Paul Hévin has recently launched a new afternoon tea set "Voyage de Printemps" to celebrate Spring becoming. The high tea set priced at HKD368 is available now until 20th April, only at its first Parisian style Boutique et Bar à Chocolat at Lyndhurst Terrace. If you like their Macarons and chocolates, you have to come savour this beautiful afternoon tea set.

清真笑爺 - Halal Mooncake Launching Soon!

There might have lots of mooncake brands in Hong Kong, but none offers Halal certified mooncake. There is one Halal pastry shop, namely 清真笑爺 (Lets call it Halal Shaoye for now as they do not have English name yet), opening soon in Wanchai to cater Muslim's crave for mooncakes but can't due to the use of lard, or without any prayer to Allah before slaughtering.

Halal Shaoye is founded by a wholehearted Muslim. The store is still at its preparation stage, waiting to be opened in Wanchai. I will share more details on this page once the store is opened. To offer authentic and certifies Halal food, Halal Shaoye obtains a certificate issued from the Incorporated Trustees of the Islamic Community Fund of Hong Kong to guarantee quality and properly treated Halal food.

Japan Souvenir - Green Tea Mochi

After a month of my Japan trip, I still have at least two drawers of snack and a few souvenir foods left to consume lol. But why had this Mochi today? The reason I left this Mochi tasted at that moment was because it had to be consumed within two days after opening, which is rather impossible having me eating it alone. Well, there were three visitors at my place yesterday, so I figured it was a good chance to have it.

In the box, there were a yellowish brown powder and a square plastic box of 16 mochi. I put the powder in a bowl for easy dipping, as I thought sprinkling the powder directly to the plastic container was stupid.

The mochi had a sticky hand feel and could only be picked up by fork. (I tried spoon and failed lol.) The texture was very lovable. It was glutinous and extremely chewy. The stuffings tasted like red bean paste, the green tea flavour wa not that strong at all.

The glutinous texture and the filling paste were very moreish, which I could not stop eating one after another. In the end, I nearly had the whole box myself.

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Tokyo Chocolate

This chocolate cake is another souvenir I bought from Japan. I bought the box because its name contained the word 'Tokyo', which seemingly can represent the place where I'd just been.

The chocolate cake had a layer of soft solid chocolate in between the 2 layers of cake. The texture of the cake was rich, thick and moist. The outer cake layer was softer than the inner chocolate, so it gave you a combination of mouth feel, soft rich cake and soft solid chocolate. The soft chocolate had a familiar taste, something like the taste of lemon's sourness but without the real sour taste. The cake itself was not very sweet, taste something similar to 70% cocoa chocolate's sweetness maybe.

The Packaging

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Tokyo Banana - BLACK Banana Custard Cake

Cravingness: ★★★★★

After tasting the yummy original flavour of Tokyo Banana, I asked my sister to bring me back some more in Japan since her trip was just right after me.

The Black version turned out to be as nice as the Original Version. The new taste did not taste much difference from the original one, just the sponge cake was replaced by chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was as typical soft and spongy. The chocolate flavour was rich, and was mildly sweet. It contained a strong nice chocolate aroma. Yet the bottom of the cake was a bit softer when compared to the whole cake, may be the custard made it softer?

On the other hand, the banana flavoured custard was still very silky smooth, thick and rich. Yuuummmmm, I simply love Tokyo Banana.

Black Version of the Tokyo Banana Custard Cake.

The box came with 8 banana Custard Cake.

Asakusa - Chestnut with Thin Coating

Cravingness: ★★★☆☆

I bought this box of souvenir because I didn't buy anything from Asakusa, so I figured may be I should buy something back for my family. Although this is supposed to be a souvenir bought from the Asakasu Temple, it was actually bought in the Airport. You could literally buy any renowned souvenirs in the airport nowadays, so I wont be bothered to buy anything when I was sight seeing next time.

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.

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.