Family Mart turns tradition on its head with a new take on two well-known Japanese sweets.

Japanese convenience stores are known for serving up great food, but this month Family Mart is stealing the spotlight with a new duo of sweets everyone will want to try. Called “Neo Wagashi“, this new release takes two of Japan’s most well-known wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) and brings them into the 21st century with a whole new look.

The first sweet to be given a modern overhaul is the dorayaki, which usually appears as a flat, round pancake-type sweet, with red bean paste in between the two palm-sized pancake layers. Family Mart has kept the sandwich style but raised it up, calling the new treat the “Extra Thick Dorayaki Burger“.

The huge filling of strawberry mousse and red bean paste certainly makes it look more like a burger than a sandwich, and Family Mart says it was born out of a desire to create a sweet that customers could “bite into and devour like a hamburger”. After researching the typical measurements of a mouth when fully opened, they settled on a thickness of approximately four centimetres (1.6 inches) as the perfect size to achieve this hamburger-esque sensation.

The filling was perfected after 30 repeated trials, resulting in a mousse that’s just firm enough to keep the dorayaki from falling apart, even while biting into it.

The second Neo Wagashi is the Fluffy Nama Daifuku, which differs from regular daifuku (small round mochi rice cakes with a sweet filling) by having a marshmallow-like texture.

The springiness is a result of adding fresh cream to the mochi, with the matcha whipped cream and brown sugar syrup centre providing a melty, fluffy texture to enhance the marshmallow-like mouthfeel.

The new release is all part of Family Mart’s initiative to “make customers happy”, and judging by the look of the sweets, they’ll definitely be putting a smile on everyone’s faces. Released on 19 November, the Dorayaki Burger retails for 268 yen (US$1.73) and the Nama Daifuku retails for 149 yen.

Source, images: Press release
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