Limited-edition pink dessert seems unseasonal at this time of year, but all will be forgiven if it meets our high standards. 

Every time spring rolls around in Japan, McDonald’s releases a seasonal dessert pie, often with a pink hue to celebrate sakura cherry blossom season. Now, following on from last year’s Strawberry Daifuku Pie, the chain is giving us a new limited-edition flavour: strawberry shortcake.

A McDonald’s Strawberry Shortcake Pie sounds like a weirdly delicious dessert, but we had a few reservations about it when we picked one up for a taste test when it was released on 11 March.

Firstly, we’re more used to seeing Japanese-style menu items like the Sakura Mochi Pie and the Matcha Kuromitsu Warabi Mochi Pie at McDonald’s at this time of year, due to seasonal events like graduation ceremonies, Girls’ Day, and sakura season being a time for get-togethers and traditional food. This year marks a significant departure from this trend at the golden arches, with strawberry shortcake being a very Western-style ingredient. Making things even more unusual is the fact that strawberry shortcakes are widely associated with Christmas in Japan, where the red-and-white colour combination has it being commonly enjoyed during the festive season.

▼ The packaging is slightly Christmassy ​​too, with the sakura flowers easily mistaken for snowflakes from a distance.

It’s certainly a bold move by McDonald’s to attempt to market the shortcake, with all its Christmas connotations, as a springtime flavour. Still, pushing these concerns aside, we decided all would be forgiven if the taste held up to our expectations.

▼ Prising it apart, we blinked in surprise at what seemed to be… a mound of cake.

We’ve never eaten a McDonald’s pie with cake inside it before, and looking closer we could see it was accompanied by a layer of strawberry jam and a layer of milk cream.

All the ingredients for a good shortcake were definitely present, raising our already high expectations even further. However, as we closed the pie up for a proper bite, we stopped for a moment as we realised another thing – we’d never eaten a hot strawberry shortcake before.

▼ With this hot pie filling really work?

Now slightly dubious about the weird combination of McDonald’s pie and hot strawberry shortcake, we bit into it…and were pleasantly surprised. The flavours are easily recognised by the taste buds, despite the heat, and as for the question of whether or not sponge cake is a viable ingredient for a pie, the answer is: it works perfectly.

▼ With all conventional rules out the window, we didn’t feel bad about eating some of the filling with a spoon.

Spoonfuls of filling made it seem like we were actually eating a shortcake, and the strawberry component acted as a nice bridge between cake and pie, giving us enough jammy richness to keep the palate from feeling dry. While the crust is crispy, it’s also airy and tender so every mouthful feels cake-like, especially with the sponge cake working to enhance the overall flavour and texture.

The double punch of pie and sponge cake blows the mind in a fantastic way, as the distinctive taste of McDonald’s dances with the flavour of strawberry shortcake. If you’ve been in Japan long enough, the flavour will make you think it’s Christmastime, but that’s something we’re happy to overlook because the taste is that good.

It’s a pie we highly recommend trying if you can, but it’ll only be on the menu while stocks last until early April, priced at 220 yen (US$1.38).

Photos ©SoraNews24
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