Tirol Chocolate – Yokan Sweet Agar

Summers in Japan can get pretty crazy, so it’s always surprised me how many cool, interesting summer snacks they have to deal with it. Also, they have some real sticky snacks. Not relevant to this particular dessert, but just a bias observation on my part. Of course, it could also be entirely possible that I’m just bad with their snacks and they end up sticky even when they aren’t supposed to. I’m not perfect.

I don’t have any experience with the actual dessert in question, but from my understanding it’s a jelly that’s made of agar and some other ingredient, usually red bean or in this case sweet potato. While I haven’t had the Japanese equivalent, we have something very similar in Chinese cuisine, and we usually use various filings, my favourite being Osmanthus flower jelly. It really is one of those things that has to be tried to truly appreciate. If you’ve ever had the ever popular Asian chrysanthemum drink (that yellow box with a flower on it), then you’ll probably know how that tastes.

Back on the topic of the yokan though, this is a combination of agar, sugar and sweet potato. That leads me to believe the texture is going to be vastly different from a simple jelly, just due to the nature of sweet potato and the mushy texture it often has. By now I think I’ve written ad nauseum how I don’t really enjoy sweet potato as a flavour, but I know it’s a very popular one so I do need to give it it’s due. Begrudging respect, if you will. I’m mostly trying this for the texture than anything else.

I’m pretty sure the filling is marshmallow, but for whatever reason the whole piece comes together like a piece of fudge. Like a sweet, sickly, almost dense feeling fudge. Is dense the right word? Or am I thinking of rich? Maybe both. Actually now that I think about it, maybe it’s not marshmallow. It feels denser, and less light or fluffy. So maybe it is a marshmallow. Either way, the fudgy feeling makes me think that the actual dessert is more fudgy in texture, and kind of makes me want to try the OG dessert.

As far as flavour goes, it’s got an almost maple syrup like flavour to it, which isn’t surprising. If you like that sort of thing, this is great. I find it a bit one note, but I still enjoy it for what it is. Like maple syrup, there is an actual flavour to the sweetness, rather than just plain, straight up sugar so it’s not completely boring.

This was an interesting experience. I’m sure if I enjoyed the maple sugar profile I would enjoy this much more. The texture is not a common one and I do enjoy the fudge like experience it emulates. All that being said, I would still consider getting this again, depending on what else rotates in with the summer seasonal flavours.