Team-up with Kyoto tea merchant is lovely to look at, but looks even better when you see what’s inside.

We’ve always got an extra spring in our step on Friday, but last Friday was especially springy. That’s because it wasn’t just Friday, it was also new donut day!

April 9 was the start of the newest collaboration between Mister Donut, Japan’s favorite donut chain, and Gion Tsujiri, one of Kyoto’s finest green tea merchants. The latest lineup is collectively called the Tsuya Matcha/Glossy Green Tea collection, and they’re not only all beautiful on the outside, but filled with delicious, traditional Japanese flavors on the inside too.

We scooped up all seven sweets as soon as they went on sale, but if you don’t have room to eat all seven in one sitting, here are our impressions to help you choose where to start.

Starting things off is the Fuwamochi Uji Matcha Kuromitsu (180 yen [US$1.75]), the shiniest star of the bunch. Not only does it have an enticing green tea chocolate and kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup) glaze, there’s matcha powder kneaded into the dough of the donut too, as revealed when you take a bite and see the cross section.

If you want even more Japanese accents to the flavor profile, the Fuwamochi Uji Matcha Green Tea and Kinako Whipped Cream (200 yen) has a white chocolate/kuromitsu glaze with a ring of kinako (sweet roasted soybean powder) whipped cream filling inside the green tea dough. Ordinarily, kinako has a powdery, cinnamon-like texture, but here it’s blended into a uniform smoothness with the whipped cream, which is so good we could eat a whole bowl of it with a spoon.

The Fuwamochi Uji Matcha Azuki Mochi (200 yen) looks simple at first glance, but hides one of Japan’s greatest dessert enhancers on the inside…

…azuki (sweet red bean paste), sharing space with a mochi rice cake ring!

▼ This one gets our pick for packing the strongest matcha punch out of the lineup.

One of Mister Donut’s perennial best-sellers is its Pon de Ring, a donut made of eight-interconnected donut-dough spheres. So naturally, there’s a Pon De Ring Uji Matcha (160 yen), with a matcha chocolate glaze. This is the simplest of the set, but that also lets you appreciate the straightforward pleasures of the matcha dough.

But if you crave more variety, you can opt for the Pon de Ring Uji Matcha Kuromitsu Mochi (180 yen), which has all sorts of extras.

With a mochi, matcha whipped cream, and kuromitsu filling, there might actually be too much going on here for pure matcha lovers, as the tea flavors can kind of get lost in the crowd.

▼ Still tastes great, though!

Rounding off the new donuts, we come to the Pon de Ring Uji Matcha Kinako Whipped Cream Azuki (180 yen), which we actually owe an apology to, since we sort of crushed it in our bag on the way home from Mister Donut.

▼ Sorry…

But the aesthetic damage we caused didn’t hurt the flavor, which comes from a mochi sugar dusting and a filling of that amazing kinako whipped cream and azuki.

▼ This is the one to get if you’re all about kinako.

And last, Mister Donut shows it can do pie too with the Uji Matcha Choco Azuki Shiratama Pie (220 yen).

This is the only item in the new Tsujiri team-up that doesn’t mix green tea powder in with the dough, though you still get a swath of matcha chocolate coating. Inside, you’ve got a nice dollop of sweet red bean paste and two shiratama mochi dumplings, making for a satisfyingly filling snack.

All seven items are on sale until mid-May, so there’s no need to eat one a day and get through the whole cycle in a week, but with as good as they all taste, there’s not much reason not to do that either.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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