R.I.P. taste buds, it was nice knowing you.
As the weather begins to warm up in Japan, the culinary landscape is also making a seasonal transition, bringing us light and refreshing flavours designed to keep us cool and satiated during the hottest months of the year.
Over at Mister Donut, they’re offering a new series of doughnuts called the “Angel Fruit” series, which uses locally sourced fruit to lift their long-selling Angel Cream doughnut to a heavenly dimension.
There are a total of four flavours in the series: Hokkaido melon, Setouchi lemon, Fukuoka Amaou Strawberry and Osaka Delaware Grape. However, the Osaka Delaware doughnut, which is 20-yen (US$0.15) more expensive than the others, is exclusive to the Kansai region in and around Osaka, so our Tokyo-based reporter Tasuku Egawa was only able to grab three for a tasting when they were released on 1 June.
▼ Left to right: Hokkaido Melon, Fukuoka Amaou Strawberry, and Setouchi Lemon, priced at 180 yen each.
While the new doughnuts feature the same powdered-sugar topping as the chain’s regular Angel Cream doughnut, each one has now been sliced in two to showcase the cream filling, which is usually piped into the closed doughnut.
▼ This is a great decision, as the cream is topped with a colourful fruit jam that makes them irresistible to the eye.
They sure look beautiful, but what do they taste like? Let’s begin the tasting, starting with the Angel Fruit Hokkaido Melon.
This was a seriously tasty combination, with the familiar angel cream taken to a new level of deliciousness with the addition of the melon, which had a texture somewhere between jam and jelly. The melon flavour was wonderfully pronounced, with the cream and dough working to reign in the fruity notes while a scattering of pistachios provided a fantastic textural contrast.
▼ Next up is the Angel Fruit Fukuoka Amaou Strawberry.
▼ This doughnut also has a beautifully bright and fruity filling.
Tasuku was pleased to see the pistachios were also present here, and when he took his first bite, he found the fruit jelly was noticeably more tart than the melon. Tasuku loves the tart sweetness of strawberries, and that’s exactly what this doughnut delivered, making the melon variety taste far sweeter by comparison.
▼ Finally, we have the Angel Fruit Setouchi Lemon.
▼ Another beautiful display of fruit and cream inside.
This golden, almost transparent jelly glistened beautifully in the light. As for the flavour, it was deliciously tart in a different way to the strawberry, which displayed more sweetness.
For Tasuku, the Setouchi Lemon was the best doughnut of the bunch, as it was jam-packed with the perfect type of lemon refreshment that taste buds tend to yearn for on a hot summer’s day.
Still, you can’t go wrong with any of the Angel Fruit doughnuts, as each one is angelic in its own right.
In fact, these three were so good that Tasuku might even make the trip down to Kansai to try the elusive Delaware variety, and book a night in the board game hotel while he’s there.
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