June 6 was Roll Cake Day in Japan, and while we’ve never needed an excuse to stuff ourselves full of cake, we took full advantage of the occasion anyway by sampling TEN convenience store roll cakes!

Even though Japan has a low obesity rate, you wouldn’t think it from browsing the aisles of any convenience store here. The shelves practically groan under the weight of a huge variety of buttery, sugary, creamy treats, and one of the most popular of these is the beloved Roll Cake. Either sold as a log or in individual slices, and usually heavily filled with cream, these calorie bombs are a favourite of little kids and adults alike.

June 6 was “Roll Cake Day” in Japan, and in the name of hard-hitting journalism we decided to buy a bunch of convenience store roll cakes and eat them. Check out the RocketNews24 staff’s thoughts to find out which roll cake to buy when you’ve got the munchies in Japan!

First up, let’s describe the challengers. For our mission, we hit up five convenience stores: Family Mart,  7-11, Lawson, Daily Yamazaki and Mini Stop.

At Lawson, we purchased (clockwise from top left):

Premium Ise Tea Roll Cake (195 yen [Note: 100 yen is roughly US$1.00.])
Premium Roll Cake (150 yen)
White Rose Milk Whip Squidgy Taste Roll (295 yen)

At 7-11, we purchased:

Cut Strawberry Roll Cake (140 yen)
Fluffy Bliss Roll (180 yen)

At Family Mart, we purchased:

Roll Cake Vanilla Cream (135 yen)

At Daily Yamazaki, we purchased: (clockwise from top left)

Fresh Cream Roll (148 yen)
Double Roll (130 yen)
Cut 5 Ways Roll Cake Strawberry (108 yen)

And, at Mini Stop, we purchased:

Fluffy Squidgy Roll Cake Salt Whip Cream (280 yen)

We won’t go into detail on every cake of course, mainly because what with all the munching, crumb spraying and cream-squirting going on, it was hard to get a coherent quote from any of our writers. Just look at them stuffing their happy faces!

▼ Our beardiest writer, Preston, eating cake with a fork like a proper grown-up.

▼ Meg is an authority on sweets – have you read her ice cream reviews?

Eventually, they whittled it down to two MUST-BUY roll cakes! Drumroll please…

▼ Lawson’s Premium Roll Cake

▼ Daily Yamazaki’s Double Roll

While all of the cakes were of course delicious in different ways, the creaminess of the Lawson’s Premium Roll Cake’s cream and the chocolatey hit of the Daily Yamazaki’s Double Roll won our writers’ seal of approval. So next time you can’t decide what dessert to get, why not give one of these two a try?

And if you’re more a fan of milk and cookies than roll cake, don’t miss the tiniest cookie shot we’ve ever seen!

All images © RocketNews24
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