The new dessert uses never-before-seen matcha components to celebrate 20 years of green tea ice cream in Japan.
It’s been 20 years since Häagen-Dazs Japan introduced their popular green tea ice creams to the local market and to celebrate they’re bringing out a brand new variety for a limited time in the form of a rich and decadent matcha fondue sandwich.
There’s been a lot of hype about the new product in Japan, where fondues are better known as cheese or chocolate flavoured dipping broths. While there’s a famous teahouse in Kyoto that draws a huge crowd with its unusual eat-in matcha fondue sets, this is supposed to be the first time for a green fondue to be sandwiched between two wafers in the form of a frozen dessert.
▼ Upon opening the package, the sweet looks gorgeous with an enticing green hue.
According to the company, this is the first green tea wafer they’ve ever produced. While they’ve released a green tea sandwich in the past, the flavour was confined to the ice cream filling with plain vanilla wafers.
▼ It seemed almost too pretty to sink our teeth into, so we gave the sweet sandwich a neat dissection to see what lay inside.
The colour was incredibly dense, holding all the promise of a full-bodied green tea hit, while a tiny layer of white chocolate poked through at the bottom, suggesting a hint of sweetness lay in store.
Making the limited-edition dessert extra special, the wafers are actually made from rice flour, instead of the usual wheat flour, as it helps to enhance the matcha flavour and make the green colour more vibrant.
There’s also beauty in its construction, with a crispy matcha and white chocolate blended outer shell helping to keep the soft ice cream encased inside, avoiding spills as the inner filling slowly melts.
If you love hard ice creams, you’ll want to bite into these as soon as they come out from the freezer. If you prefer a softer texture like us, however, a few minutes spent admiring the sweet makes it just about ready to eat, with the ice cream taking on a silky smooth texture similar to fondue.
Biting into this is like a thick and rich explosion of green tea flavour in your mouth. First, the matcha from the crispy wafer hits your tongue, quickly followed by the sweet crunch of the white-chocolate-blended green tea casing, which then all gets soaked up in the oozing creaminess of the full-bodied matcha ice cream. The balance between sweetness and bitterness is incredibly impressive, culminating in a luxurious, freshly ground tea flavour. It’s absolute heaven!
▼ The new wafer also has a noticeable, strong tea flavour, adding a great aroma and soft crunch to the sweet.
The deep, rich-coloured components here taste as deliciously green as they look. And while we don’t recommend it for the mess, if you let the dessert melt even further, you’ll get the true fondue experience. All it needs now is some skewered fruits like bananas and strawberries to soak up that thick liquid!
The delicious Green Tea Fondue Crispy Sandwich is only available for a limited time so be sure to grab one at your local Japanese supermarket or convenience store before they’re gone forever. Priced at 294 yen (US$2.91) each, these are so good we’ll be stocking up on at least a dozen to keep us going through the rest of the summer!
Photos © RocketNews24
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