Morozoff – Arcadia
This was a gift from a family friend, and I was intrigued by the packaging, so I dug right into it. It looks fancy enough, and upon further research, it seems these are indeed, confirmed to be fancy.
Morozoff is a well established brand started in Kobe back in 1931, and since then they’ve been known for cookies and chocolates. The particular product today is known as Arcadia, which is a little cookie made through using egg whites and baked with loads of nuts inside for a supposedly light, aromatic cookie. In this tin there are 6 individually packed “squares” for lack of a better term. There are a total of four different flavours here – cashew nut, chocolate, almond and mixed nuts. There are two of almond and mixed nuts, so I assume those are the more popular ones.
Starting off with cashew, the cookie is the size of a dollar coin, and each square pack has at least 8 to 10 cookies, if I were to guess. In addition to be topped with a cashew, the cookies themselves have chopped cashews strewn about the cookie. The flavour of roasted cashew is ever present, and combined with the light, buttery flavour of the cookie itself, you end up with a a nice pleasant biscuit that I imagine would pair well with a coffee or a tea. It sort of reminds me of a biscotti type snack in that way.
The chocolate is interesting, because not only is the cookie chocolate and there are bits of chocolate baked in, there’s also tiny almond bits to give it added texture. The cookie ends up reminding me a bit of an oatmeal cookie in texture, but the chocolate and the almonds work really well with the backdrop of an otherwise straight forward buttery biscuit.
Next up we have almond – this one feels like a classic to me only because almond cookie were such a common thing growing up in a Chinese family. Make no mistake though, these are different. They may be light in texture like those, but these have more substantial feel to them because they also use a generous amount of almond bits in the cookie. Along with the well roasted almond topping the cookie, this one is an interested mashup of what is a classic to me, while also being slightly foreign. I can see why this would be one of the more popular flavours. Something about the flavour of almond is very pleasing and distinct when compared to other nuts. A versatile nut indeed.
Mixed nuts is the final one, and because I can’t read ingredient labels in Japanese, I have no clue what I’m eating. What I can taste is almond and coconut in the flavour. It is very coconut forward, and the other flavours sort of take a back seat. I assume there’s cashew and almond by visual appearance and texture, but I can’t be 100% sure. Thankfully Google exists and I later discovered that this flavour is comprised of macadamia, cashew, and almond. I guessed cashew and almond, but I didn’t figure how macadamia fed into the ingredients. Maybe for a slightly softer texture? Either way, never would have guessed that one.
Something I appreciate about these is that they are small, and each one is packaged individually so it’s easy to share these and they are fairly low commitment. Plus, the packaging makes this a wonderful gift too, as everything is nice and neat. I’m not really sure how I would get a hold of this outside of Japan, but if it was available I might be persuaded to get it again, depending on how costly it is.
