Thursday, January 15, 2015

Meltyblend Royal Milk Tea Chocolates - Asian Food Market: Cherry Hill, NJ

Meltyblend Royal Milk Tea Chocolates - Asian Food Market: Cherry Hill, NJ
This is another case of me wandering around the Asian Food Market and having a pretty package catch my eye. I wasn't a fan of the spiced chocolates I tried this fall, but I wonder...how will a tea infused chocolate taste? I guess I'll find out!

Just look at this box! Everything in these photographs that has a goldenrod coloring is actually gold foil, and it's slightly embossed to boot! Several other food blogs discuss the importance of packaging and presentation in Japanese culture, and I think this is a great example of that. This is just a slightly fancy chocolate, similar to brands like Lindt, that is meant to be sold at convenience and grocery stores, but the design and packaging for this item is very elegant and appealing. We have gold foil, snow flakes, and beautiful product photos, sure, it looks a bit busy, but none of it's ornate features get in the way of it's function,

What do I mean by function? Well, the box is perforated to open up in a way that it's easy to share the candies, like a bowl, or you can open it this way (pictured) which is more like a display, plus, the display version is resealable. This style of packaging is similar to the ones used for the fancy flavored Kinoko no Yama, also made by Meiji, and I absolutely love it!

Inside are several individually wrapped chocolates, each one is covered in a metallic blue foil wrapper, and they are pretty tiny. The image of the little cube-shaped chocolates on the front of the box look so big, but they're actually a lot smaller.


It's so tiny and freaking cute! Whenever I review cube-shaped food items, I always have this urge to make a little pyramid, and I almost did this time, but I didn't want to unwrap 5 more candies to do it. The chocolate cube smells like bitter cocoa powder, which it's coated in, but there's also a light tea-like aroma.


They don't call these "Melty" for nothin'. I took a bite out of the teeny chocolate to see if the inside was any different, or had a filling, but it didn't, and, as you can see, it started melting onto my fingers really quickly.

I tossed the rest of the chocolate into my mouth right after taking my bite photo, and it immediately started to melt on my tongue. This chocolate has a smooth and silky texture, similar to these almond meltaways I buy at a local candy shop in NJ, Aunt Charlottes. The initial flavoring is chocolate, of course, and even though the chocolate itself is rather sweet, the cocoa powder coating adds a bit of bitterness to balance everything out. After the chocolate melts, the tea flavoring sets in, and at first I didn't like it. It tastes the way a tin of earl gray tea bags smell, which isn't bad, but I originally thought it was a bit too perfume-y. I ate my second square, and it grew on me, plus the texturing is absolutely wonderful, so I had another...and another...


You can see where I'm going with this. My first bite didn't make me fall in love with this chocolate, but once I gave it a chance I found it really addicting. The tea flavoring builds up as you eat the candies, and it starts to have a noticeable black tea and cream flavoring, it's not very bold, but you do notice it, and I think it really did enhance the chocolate flavoring. I'm glad I tried another square, these turned out to be a very interesting little item, and I look forward to finding more tea related sweets and candies.

If you are addicted to tea, this is definitely worth trying, and even if you aren't, I think this is still worth checking out. It's so subtle, but unique, and they're so easy to share. What's not to like?
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