Plus tried-and-true dessert flavors like green tea and cherry blossom.

With Valentine’s Day coming up next week, people in Japan don’t have just their sweethearts on their minds, but sweets as well. It’s customary for Japanese women to give chocolates to loved ones and friends on February 14, and while that particular confectionary may have originated overseas, Tokyo candymaker Edogoshiya is offering an entire line of chocolates with traditional Japanese ingredients.

Cherry blossom and green tea-flavored sweets have become mainstays of the Japanese dessert scene over the past few years, so of course Edogoshiya’s Ikimachi Chocolate series includes Sencha Green Tea Leaf and Sakura Kuromitsu (cherry blossom and brown sugar syrup) chocolates.

Enticing as it may be, Hojicha Kuromame (roasted green tea and sweet black beans) isn’t too startling, nor is Sake with Puffed Rice, since we here at Soranews24 have tried, and loved, sake-infused chocolate before.

But many of the flavors are much more avant-garde, ironically by incorporating some very old-school Japanese culinary elements, like Wasabi Nori (with shredded bits of seaweed mixed into the chocolate) or Miso Fusuma Wheat Bran.

Gold Powder and Yuzu citrus are also ready to provide classy accompaniment to bitter chocolate.

In addition to their ingredients, each variety of Ikimachi Chocolate comes in a package decorated with classic Japanese motifs, such as the maple leaves of the Walnut and Chestnut chocolate, or the hiragana text on the Mitarashi Rice Dumplings and Kinako (roasted soybean flour) bag.

And finally, rounding out the set of 12 available flavors, are Milk Azuki (sweet red beans) and Strawberry with Brown Rice.

The classy ingredients aren’t being shackled with premium pricing, however. Each bag is priced at just 380 yen (US$3.40), meaning that unless your snack budget is extremely limited, you won’t have to limit yourself to trying just one or two of the dozen intriguing flavors. Plus, Ikimachi Chocolates are cheap enough that they make a great choice if you’re carrying on Japan’s long-standing tradition of giving chocolates to coworkers as a thank-you gift on Valentine’s Day.

Source, images: PR Times
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