These adorable little panda chocolate biscuits are made by Kabaya and are called Sakusaku Panda Cookies or Sakupan. The pandas come with a wide variety of facial expressions and the cookies, or rather the chocolate, in several flavours. Sakupan used to have a different panda drawing on its packaging and was available in a more traditional white panda with black markings, but at the moment only a double chocolate and strawberry version seem to exist in stores.
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Kabaya – Sakusaku Panda: Strawberry
Price: ±€2
The strawberry Sakupan smelled like artificial strawberry and pretty sweet. I’ve noticed before that a lot of Japanese candies and chocolates have a much stronger smell than flavour, but this was not the case with the Sakupan. Unfortunately, the chocolate itself tasted very strongly of artificial berry flavour and very sweet. I couldn’t specifically detect any strawberry flavour and was a bit taken aback by the overall sweetness of the treat. It also has a bit of a sour flavour to it, which I think is supposed to make it taste more like strawberry. As a whole, I didn’t completely dislike it, but I wasn’t a big fan of this one either. I thought the flavours were a little too strong.
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Kabaya – Sakusaku Panda: Double Chocolate
Price: ±€2
The double chocolate Sakupan were strong in flavour as well, but not as sweet as the strawberry ones. They had a bit of a bitter flavour to them, which I didn’t dislike. The milk chocolate was less bitter than the dark chocolate, which is logical, but did still have some bitter taste to it.
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Photographs by MuchMunchies
Both the strawberry and double chocolate Sakupan had a creamy chocolate layer and the same biscuit underneath. The biscuit didn’t have a lot of sweetness to it, was crunchy and was a nice neutral base for the chocolate, but did add to the flavour and texture.
