Tirol Chocolate – School Lunch Dessert Mix

School lunches were pretty basic when I was a kid. And by basic I mean depressing. To be fair, our school was so small we couldn’t afford a cafeteria, so the “eat in” option was to buy food from a food truck that would stop by everyday at 12, and eat in a tiny lunch room or wherever you could find space on campus. I guess I never really got the typical Northern school cafe experience, with kids playing politics with the dynamic of social hierarchy and what have you. It’s also why I was so surprised when I learned that many schools in Japan had standardized meal systems, and there were certain staples.

Apparently school lunches for elementary students in Japan come with desserts, and today’s mix is Tirol’s take on two traditional ones – frozen oranges and fried kinako bread. Not to sound conceited or anything, but even though I can’t say I’ve ever had either of these two, based on my prior culinary experiences, I think I can do a pretty good job judging whether the chocolate meets my expectations or not.

First up is the frozen orange. The piece looks very….orange. Apparently the inside has orange syrup and pieces of candied orange. It certainly smells that way. But not in the orange juice way. More like the orange “drink” way, where it’s sweet smelling with a hint of orange, as opposed to the other way around.

Surprisingly, the orange flavour on this is strong, and tastes like if you were just chewing on candied orange rinds. The candied oranges are definitely very present, and carry across that rind flavour quite well. The syrup is kind of overpowered by the candied rinds, so it doesn’t add a whole lot. Overall, the piece in it’s entirety reminds me a lot of the bitter orange flavour I reviewed previously, except it doesn’t have the dark chocolate to balance things out. All in all, has a strong orange flavour but is a tad on the sweet side. Not nearly as sweet as you would expect based on the Sunny D smell it gives off.

Next up is the fried kinako bread. For those who aren’t familiar, kinako is roasted soy powder. It has a very nutty flavour which is very reminiscent of peanut butter. It’s often added to desserts and confections to give it some extra flavour, and it’s really quite tasty, especially on mochi.

For this piece, I was curious how they would recreate the experience of eating fried bread with kinako. I just assumed they would do a biscuit with some kinako powder. What they actually did was recreate the starchiness of bread, with some kinako flavour. What you end up with is something similar to the sweet potato flavours in texture, but with the kinako flavour to give it that nutty taste. There’s also a bit of crunch to it, like they added some granulated sugar. It’s an interesting combination, but I’m not too sure it recreates bread exactly. But working with what’s available, I’d say it’s a good try. It certainly works better as a snack than the orange flavour, which is kind of one-note.

Both of these flavours are quite pleasant and do a good job of capturing what I imagine the actual desserts taste like. That being said, I don’t think the flavour or desserts themselves are something that appeal to me. It could be that the product just isn’t targeted at someone like me, and is targeted more towards kids who can relate to the flavours. Either that or appeal to nostalgia for adults who went to elementary school in Japan and want to relieve part of that childhood magic. Either way, I do think it’s worth a try, but I probably wouldn’t go back to this flavour. The kinako bread flavour is at least worth one try, to see how creative they got. If you had something similar as a kid, this would probably have the nostalgia factor going for it, which I can see being a big plus.