It’s sweets over flowers this sakura season.

If you love trying Japan-exclusive items at McDonald’s, you’ll want to pop in this month to try one of their most Japanese items ever — the Strawberry Daifuku Pie.

▼ Strawberry daifuku (pictured beneath the new pie below) are tremendously popular sweets in Japan.

This brand new offering takes the humble McDonald’s apple pie casing and adds a dash of strawberry to give it a pink hue that matches the sakura, which are just beginning to bloom in Japan right now.

Inside, the pie is filled with the same ingredients you’d find in a strawberry daifuku — mochi sticky rice, red bean paste, and, of course, strawberry. McDonald’s says it was difficult to nail the correct combination of flavours and textures to replicate the famous sweet, but they believe they’ve risen to the challenge by blending strawberry into the mochi, and serving it alongside just the right amount of bean paste to create the perfect balance of tart and sweet notes.

A sweet this carefully designed deserves to be eaten in a beautiful environment for maximum enjoyment, and McDonald’s is showing us just how great the pie looks amongst the cherry blossoms, in the new T.V. commercial being broadcast nationwide to promote the new release.

It’s a clever way to encourage people to share photos of themselves with the new pie on social media. The only problem is choosing which photos to share!

One thing you won’t want to share, though, is the pie, which will be on the menu for a limited time from 22 March to mid-April, priced at 160 yen (US$1.20).

Source, images: Press release
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!