Thanks to our status as foodies and my growing up as a total weeaboo dork, Meg and I have developed quite a fondness for Japanese food. Lately we’ve been hitting up Asian markets like crazy in search of exotic snacks. Most of these have been good, but nothing particularly impressive; that is, until we came upon an awesome Summer treat in the form of these mofos:

So if you’re not familiar with Japanese cuisine, mochi are little candy-like treats made from a flavor paste covered in a sugary coating made from glutinous rice flour. In practice, they’re kind of like a cross between gummies and marshmallows. Those are just regular mochi however. This Snack Report focuses on a variant on them, which are ice cream mochi. With these, the paste on the inside is replaced by ice cream. It sounds simple, but it’s really unique and tastes awesome. To add to the already exotic nature of this treat, we got the green tea flavored ice cream variety.

The package comes with six mochi in the box. Obviously they’re frozen, but you can remove each individually from the package. Each piece is fairly small, but they’re bonbons, so they’re not meant to be huge and filling. You can eat them by hand, consequently submitting yourself to the agony of biting straight into ice cream, or forgo that by eating with a spoon.

As far as how they taste, there’s two things to consider here. First, this is green tea ice cream. If you’ve never had green tea ice cream before, just know that it tastes pretty close to what it sounds like. It’s a light ice cream, reminiscent of vanilla, but it definitely has green tea flavor to it. The other aspect of these, is that they are mochi, so in other words they have the sweet rice flour coating. Like regular mochi, the outside is chewy like a gummy. But the inside meanwhile is ice cream. This makes for a neat little dynamic between the two textures of jelly and creamy. Interestingly enough, the outer coating, from being frozen, almost is a little icy, which works well actually since it’s sugary and forms a sweet ice.

It is worth noting however, these aren’t exactly cheap per se. They’re not expensive, but considering you’re paying a few bucks for only six bonbons, you do need to eat them conservatively, which makes sense that they are pretty exotic. I mean, it shouldn’t be a big surprise… they’re bonbons. You don’t just pop them in your mouth like nothing. That said, they’re definitely a nice little treat that offers some variety from the normal Summer fare (especially considering you can get them in fun flavors!).

Should you eat ice cream mochi?

Yes