Making melon bread, and curry bread, just got a whole lot easier. 

When you’re looking to stock your pantry with exciting products from abroad, or equally exciting products from Japan, popular chainstore Kaldi is the place to go. Previously, they’ve given us delights such as Sea Urchin butter and matcha curry and now, they’re treating us to a super easy way to enjoy the sweet taste of melon pan (“melon bread”) at home.

The new product is called “Nutte Yaitara Melon Pan” (“Spread It, Bake It, and It Turns Into Melon Bread“), and though it looks like a regular spread, it doesn’t taste like any other spread on the market, as it tastes like musk melon.

▼ Not a bad deal for 306 yen (US$2.34).

This new flavour is a follow-up to the chain’s “Nutte yaitara Curry Pan” (“Spread It, Bake It, and It Turns Into Curry Bread“), which debuted in 2020 and quickly sold out due to popularity.

As the names suggest, all you have to do with a spread like this is spread it on a slice of bread, pop the slice under the grill, and once it’s done, your toast will be transformed into a culinary delight with a very Japanese flavour!

We couldn’t wait to try the new spreadable melon bread as soon as it became available on 26 April, so we immediately headed out to our nearest Kaldi, where we found the store had placed a two-per-customer purchase limit on the product to stop it from selling out immediately.

Happy to get our hands on one of the tubs, we took it home to try it out, and when we spread the paste on a slice of bread, we found it glided on effortlessly, smooth and soft as cream.

▼ Yes, we use the back of a teaspoon to spread our spreads – easier to lick off the reminder afterwards!

According to the instructions, the trick is to not use too much of it, so that it doesn’t burn or catch fire under the grill, and it’s suggested that you use a chopstick to draw a chequered pattern on it before grilling it, to give it the same look as a real melon pan, like the one seen on the packaging.

We weren’t so fussed with achieving a spectacular look, though, so we decided to just spread it on and forego any further decoration to see what it would look like on an ordinary morning when we’re rushing to get breakfast ready.

▼ After grilling it in the toaster oven for a few minutes, this was the tasty looking result.

Not only did it look fantastic, it smelled glorious too. With our kitchen now filled with the scent of sweet melon bread, we tore our slice apart, and found that the texture on the outside was now crispy and sticky, while the inside remained soft and light.

Taking a bite, we crunched through the different textures, and yep — this was undoubtedly the flavour of melon pan. The distinct taste of musk melon stood out in the flavour profile, and it was sugary sweet, just like the melon breads you can buy at specialty stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores.

It was a truly decadent toast experience, and after eating the entire slice, we started craving something salty to counter all the sweetness we’d just consumed. That’s when we came up with the brilliant idea of satiating our desire for sweetness with…a dash of spreadable Curry Bread.

Now this was a game changer. Spreading one half of our bread with the melon-flavoured spread and the other half with the curry-flavoured spread gave us the best of both worlds — sweet and salty together on one delicious slice of toast.

This two-in-one style might look extra indulgent, but it actually contains less calories, as the curry pan spread is less calorie-rich than the melon variety. You’ll just have to make sure you exercise some self-restraint, though, because you might just be tempted to keep spreading and eating slice after slice after slice…

There’s never been an easier way to enjoy the taste of melon bread at home, so if you’d like to transform your toast into a decadent treat, be sure to pop by Kaldi and pick up a tub before they sell out. And if you’d like to add even more melon bread into your everyday routine, you can always try your hand at turning it into an edible mask, like these Japanese students did last year!

Related: Kaldi/Nutte Yaitara Melon Pan
Photos © SoraNews24
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