The addition of pounded sticky rice makes this new creation taste like a traditional Japanese daifuku sweet.

In Japan, Häagen-Dazs has cornered the ice cream market with their traditional Japanese flavour releases, but now they’ll be looking over their shoulder, following the news that Cold Stone is gathering steam with their own take on traditional sweets.

On sale from 26 December, Cold Stone’s new Japanese Traditional Sweets lineup showcases the flavours of Annou Imo and Sakura Mochi. “Annou Imo” is a sweet potato grown on Tanegashima, an island to the south of Kyushu, and it’s a perfect ice cream ingredient, especially during the colder months when it’s in season, due to its high sugar content and flavourful orange-hued flesh.

▼ The Annou Imo Creation comes with French vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, caramel sauce, and a couple of chunks of sweet baked Annou Imo.

The Sakura Mochi Creation is designed to help celebrate the end of the year, when people around the country gather at “mochitsuki” rice-pounding events and enjoy sticky pounded-rice sweets called “mochi“.

▼ This creation contains Sakura Mochi ice cream, strawberry, adzuki sweet red beans and mochi sauce.

Mochi is well-known for its distinctive “mochi mochi” (chewy and doughy) texture, and for this new release Cold Stone has captured this mouth-feel perfectly, using 100-percent Japanese-grown mochi rice to create both the ice cream and the sauce topping.

By combining the mochi ingredient with strawberry and adzuki red beans, this new creation perfectly replicates the flavours of a strawberry daifuku sweet, making it an even more tantalising concoction.

The new Japanese Traditional Sweets Creations will only be available until the middle of January or when stocks sell out. Each variety will retail for 630 yen (US$5.67).

Insert images: PR Times, Cold Stone Japan
[ Read in Japanese ]