Candy Kit Review – Pudding

Shoonie got this for me several months ago, as an early birthday present. I’m just getting around to blogging our misadventures surrounding it.

Brand: Kracie

Cost: ask Shoonie

 

Not including the tray, the kit contains the following:

 

Click for RRCherrypie’s tutorial

1. Pudding (not pictured)
2. Caramel Sauce
3. Orange slices
4. Strawberry
5. Whipped cream
6. Candy-coated chocolate decorations
7. Wafer
8. Spoon

 

I appreciate that the packets in this kit contain drawings of their respective items, which made them easier to identify. Maybe the manufacturer is aware that non-Japanese speakers are buying these kits.

 

The pudding mold has a fill line on the inside. According to the instructions, you need to fill the water up to the line. Then, you stir the pudding 60 times.

60 times.

60. Times.

60. TIMES.

Apparently, Shoonie has actually purchased the macaron kit. I left the professional stirring to her, while I took care of the whipped cream.

The orange and strawberry proceeded without incident. The only thing we did differently, was mixing the strawberry directly into the mold. We didn’t see a point in stirring the powder in the well, and then transferring it when it was already big enough.

After 10 minutes, it was time to remove the pudding.

Or so we thought.

Plop.

Hm, wait, this looks familiar…

 

Shoonie was determined, of course. She decided to pop the pudding back in and stir it a bit more. We didn’t count the stirs the first time, so maybe we could to stir it now. We also took some time to question our lives up to this point.

 

Whyyyyyyyy?!

We decided to make do with what we had created: a “western” pudding. (Has a creamy consistency, rather than solid) Shoonie made it into a heart, and Top Hat suggested swirling the caramel sauce on top, like latte art. It actually looked cute!

 

At least the fruits turned out okay.

Here is the final result. Shoonie used the Wafer and whipped cream to make a nice arrow.

 

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: Medium

I wanted to give this kit a “hard” rating, purely for the pudding outcome. But then the pudding turned out cute, so it was forgiven. Once again, this kit had drawings on the packet, so we knew which was which.

 

Taste: 8/10

Despite all our failures, this kit tasted pretty good. Orange-flavoured packets in candy kits tend to have a watered-down, rind taste to them. And sadly, the orange was not exempt.

The pudding tasted like vanilla pudding. I expected egg custard, like my favourite recipe. Whipped cream tasted like whipped cream.

 

Overall verdict: 7/10, how many stirs?!

Looking at RRCherryPie’s tutorial, we were actually supposed to stir the pudding 80 times. Therefore, the kit lost overall points for providing false information.

Thank goodness for creative Shoonies and Top Hats. While browsing the pudding kit, I found one picture in which someone had put the soft pudding into a mini cup, and decorated it like a parfait. Maybe I’ll try that with real custard pudding one day.

Don’t worry, next post is a plushie post. ^_^

How do you like your pudding? Egg, chocolate, yarn? Comment below?

 

Pika, so happy~

Candy Kit Review – Ramen

I bought three candy kits for Shoonie, from Anime North. Here is the first one.

Brand: Kracie

Cost: $8.00 from Vendor’s Alley (Anime North 2017)

 

We were eager to try this kit. After the great hamburger kit of 2014, we couldn’t wait to torture ourselves again, with a kit that tasted like the real thing!

This weekend was Shoonie’s Graduation Weekend. After enjoying home-cooked Japanese-style curry, and Uncle Tetsu’s famous cheesecake for dessert, we settled down to make yet another take on the blooper reel that is our lives.

Click for RRCherrypie’s tutorial

This kit contains:

1. Broth/soup
2. Noodles
3. Filling/garnish
4. Gyoza (dumpling) dough
5. Piping bag
6. Toothpick
7. Tork (Sorry, Shoonie. Maybe next time. 😦 )

 

The plastic tray contains four sections: one section is a stamp/mold for a fish cake (naruto) and boiled egg. (Tamago) Another is a dough press for the gyoza. It looks like the thing we use to make neures. (Sp? They’re like coconut-filled empanadas) The rectangular section is for mixing the noodles, and you can probably tell which one is for serving the ramen. Give up? It’s… the rectangular section.

After cutting all the sections out, we went straight to the gyoza dough. To make the gyoza, you must divide the dough into two sections. Don’t forget to remove some bits to make the egg, and fish cake. How much? Well, however much fits the mold!

Or so we thought… we totally missed the circle guidelines on the piping bag. Luckily we went back with the gyoza and remade them, even if it meant tearing the first one open to dump the fillings.

The gyoza dough was nice and soft, unlike the seaweed from the sushi kit. Perhaps it’s because I bought this one fresh?

It was fun to watch Shoonie pipe the noodles. And the final product didn’t look too bad, either.

 

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: Easy

Aside from the mini-measuring derps, this was an easy kit. The inclusion of pictures on the packets helped, as well.

Taste: 7/10

The broth doesn’t taste like real broth at all. In fact, it tastes like grape…very sweet grape. It wasn’t a great idea to sip on the leftover broth. XP The noodles and gyoza dough taste like Ramune soda, or “candy sprite” as Peck Peck calls it.

The gyoza filling tasted like cola. The only thing I didn’t like was the texture: I expected popping candy, yet this stuff…. melted in your mouth, and left a cold feeling on your tongue. If I recall, that’s usually a sign of artificial sweeteners being used. We discarded the remaining filling.

 

Overall verdict: 7/10 Beware the cola.

I was pleasantly surprised that the soup and noodles tasted like candy, rather than grape noodles in actual broth. It appears only the original kit used real broth. However, the broth is now incredibly sweet, and a bit thick.

Candy ramen isn’t enough to sate cravings, so keep a pack of 40 cent Mr. Noodles handy!

Would you try this kit? Have you tried the original ramen kit? What do you think the other two candy kits are? Comment below!

Pika, so happy~

Candy Kit Review – Pizza

Now that that obligatory Doctor Who clip is out of the way, we’re making candy kit pizza.

 

Poppin’ Cookin’ Pizza

Brand: Kracie

Price: $8.00 from a booth at Anime North 2015

Yes, this is the mystery kit I bought for Shoonie, from Anime North. At $8.00, it’s also the most expensive kit.

Holy moly, I found the English instructions.

Click for RRCherryPie’s tutorial

This is yet another kit with a lot of things inside. You get the following packages, identified by colour:

1. Pizza dough
2. Cheese
3. Tomato sauce
4. Pepperoni (sausage?)
5. French fries
6. Grape soda
7. Toppings

You also get a cup for the drink, and Shoonie’s favourite….

SHOOOOOON!

Oh dear… this was yet another kit that required the use of a microwave. And we all know what that means…

So let’s begin, shall we?

Once again, the bag contains a cute box to cut out. We didn’t make this box because we were more interested in torturing ourselves with the you-know-what. You do need to use the circle guide in the center, in order to form the pizza crusts.

First, we made the emoji fries. Our kit came with (^_^), ( >o< ), :D, and jack-o-lantern faces. Surprisingly, after nuking them in the microwave, they didn’t smell like *eeeeee.* They shrank and became very dry in texture. Can you still see their faces?

The pizzas were another story. Everything went fairly well, until we got to the sausage. It looked and smelled kinda gross. The closest thing I can think of is… beef stock? Dog food?

“Sausage”

Kitty would have terrible deja vu if he saw how we made the sausage toppings. Once you mix the powder, you need to seal the bag and cut a corner to squeeze out the sausage. It looks really gross. ;w;

The cheese became a Play-doh that we had to shred. It smelled like mild Parmesan cheese.

Did you know that it’s a thing, to put peas and corn on pizza? It doesn’t sound gross at all. I’m currently a mushroom head, myself.

Before microwaving

By the time we finished assembling the pizzas, they looked pretty appetizing! Someone with a lot of time and patience could make actual mini pizzas like these.

After microwaving

It’s too bad the cheese melted all over, ruining Shoonie’s decorating efforts. I’m not sure if our microwave was too strong, or we put too much cheese. This happens a lot with actual microwave pizzas, as well.

This kit came with grape soda drink mix. It fizzes up as soon as you add water, although the head doesn’t last very long. If beer and alcohol wasn’t so taboo, I bet this kit would be cute as an apple juice flavoured champagne kit. Maybe it could work as an adult-themed kit. Why not, it seems the majority of people who test these kits out on YouTube are teenagers, and people in their 20’s. Kracie, you can have that idea. Dou-itashimashite.

 

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: 3/10

Once again, we had yet another easy kit. Really, it’s pizza. You can’t go wrong with it.

Taste: 3.5/10

Yeah… no. These pizzas tasted strange; they were savoury, yet sweet. The fries were dry and crumbly, though they did taste like actual fries. This kit gets a 3.5 solely because of its best part: the grape soda. “Japanese” style grape flavour is tasty, unlike the grape flavoured candies we get in Canada, which are too sweet.

Overall verdict: 4/10 would barely recommend. Fun to make, not so much to eat.

It’s a shame… I do love pizza. What really put me off had to be the pizza crust. It’s as though it can’t decide if it wants to taste realistic, or like a candy. But at least it didn’t smell like farts. ;w;

Kits like these make me consider looking up recipes for DIY kits. At least it’s fun to watch each other reacting to it. I think we’re getting better at this candy kit business. ^_^

Have you tried this kit? What do you like on your pizza? Comment below!

Pika, so happy~

Candy Kit Review – Ice Cream

When I got the free birthday gift from Sephora, the cashier wrapped it up in this cute little bag. And I realized the bag was the perfect size to hold…

 

Kracie Poppin’ Cookin’ Ice Cream Parlor

Brand: Kracie

Price: $5.00 at T&T Food Market

Click for RRCherryPie’s Tutorial

Now that summer is in full swing, let’s have some ice cream! In this kit, you get 2 ice cream flavour packets: 1 strawberry and 1 vanilla. You also get two ice cream cones, a waffle bowl, two unflavoured wafers, sprinkles, a piping bag, and a…..

SHOOOOOON!

The box has special perforations, so you can make holders for your ice cream creations. But until you punch the holes, the box can be…

…a hat.

So let’s begin, shall we?

This is probably the most resourceful kit we’ve tried to date. Not only does the box make a cute stand, but the plastic wrapping comes with cut-out pieces you can use to decorate your cones. Now you can pretend you have a real ice cream shop!

Making the ice cream was easy…

…putting the cream into the piping bag was not. From video demonstrations, I expected a small partition inside the bag, to keep the colours separate until it was time to pipe. We ended up winging the placement, squishing the cream into place. It was very messy. This is the best we could manage. Luckily, it didn’t look too bad once piped out.

We made two little ice cream cones. They look cute as is.

The box showed some other options, including an ice cream sandwich. These required us to break the wafers on their corrugated lines. (One side had diagonal lines, the other had checkered lines) Shoony was a bit better at this than me.

 

She made an ice cream sandwich…

and I made an ice cream boat.

As we were rearranging, we realized that water had fallen into one of the divets, making the bottom of a cone all soggy. Eww…

But that didn’t stop us from assembling this lovely display.

Finished!

 

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: 8/10

Although this kit wasn’t as intensive as the cake kit, our general incompetence made it difficult to keep the creams separate. Not recommended if you’re anal about keeping colours separate. And watch out for accidental water drippage, or you’re gonna have a bad time with soggy cones.

Taste: 8/10

Very tasty! The vanilla bits too! The cones taste and feel like real cones, but the wafers were a bit stale.

Overall verdict: 8/10 would recommend, as long as you’re not derp.

Ice cream kit is very cute and fun to decorate. But again, you often end up following the box for “creative” designs. This kit came with cute heart-shaped sprinkles, and it’s a lot of fun if you like decorating cakes with frosting.

Have you tried this kit? What did you think? What other kits would you recommend? Comment below!

Pika, so happy~

Candy Kit Review – Cake

I nearly forgot about this segment. Since this week was spent wrapping up final assignments, this will work until I actually make more plushies.

Here’s another candy kit: cake!

Kracie Poppin’ Cookin’ Cake

Brand: Kracie

Price: $7.00 at Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium

The name is pretty self explanatory. In this kit, you get 5 different packets: 2 for the cake, (it’s a two-layer cake) one for white icing, one for the strawberry icing, and one for the strawberry jellies. You also get chocolate (…I think…) covered rice krispie balls and a piping bag, for decorating. No shoons or torks, just a plain spoon. Oh well…

Click for tutorial

 

Directions for box kits are a little more complicated than the plastic bag kits. I think it’s due to the fact that you can open the package without ripping it in half. *cough* So first, you have to prepare the cake. This required microwaving… yay, microwave plastic. I put it in for 30 seconds at first, since our microwave is pretty strong. It still wasn’t set though, so I put it in for 20 more seconds.

Shoonie and Peck Peck were downstairs while I was microwaving, so they were lucky they weren’t exposed to this. (I’m such a good cousin and sister) Oh man, not only did the cakes shrink, but when I opened the microwave door they smelled like…

*eeeeeee* Censored!

The icing and jelly prep were pretty easy, and it’s all shown in the video so I won’t go through it here. I will say, however, that our finished product looked rather cute.

The taste test was another story… You know that feeling when something smells so strong, that it gets stuck in your nose and you can almost taste it? Well that describes the cake pretty well. ;w;

I met someone a few days later. The first picture he saw on my Facebook wall, was a picture of me saying the cake smelled like farts. *puts on music* I’m so classy~ (8)

 

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: 5/10

This kit was a lot more involved, and I liked how you had to actually “bake” the cake in the microwave. I think this was meant for slightly older kids who have more time and patience to follow instructions. Not much in the way of creativity, except for decorating the cake. And even that is nothing special; as much as they left it open for you to get creative and try your own patterns, in the end you pretty much end up imitating the box.

Taste: 4/10

I was very generous, but only because the white icing tasted like whipped topping and the strawberry gummies were tasty. Together, they tasted like strawberry trio treat. The rice krispie things were okay, but as I’ve said in the picture mentioned above, Japan needs to step up its chocolate game. For a country that gets so creative with its KitKat bars, even I expected a bit better. The krispies were a small part of the kit, so I’ll be nice.

Overall verdict: 5/10 would recommend, as long as you don’t mind turning your microwave into a non-literal dutch oven.

This was definitely fun to make, and it’s fun to watch your friends reacting to the taste of the cake. Problem is, you might not enjoy eating it yourself… or smelling it. ;w;

And that’s that for this kit review. I’ll leave this picture here as a hint for a possible future post.

Have you tried this kit? What did you think? What other kits would you recommend? Comment below!

Pika, so happy~

Candy Kit Review – Oekaki Gummies

Happy New Year!

On Thursday, I woke up to a flood of “new year, new me” Facebook statuses, among other flooding things. You know, because it’s that time of the month where you start fresh. Those statuses Midol be the same concept, but they get annoying fast. I didn’t bother posting a status, because I think my uterine lining already did that. Okay, I’ll stop now. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU TOO, BODY. ;w;

Instead of taking a selfie, let’s have a new section of kit reviews. It’s good to take a break once in a while, where you don’t have to stress over writing down patterns. I didn’t take enough of my own pictures, so click on pictures to see their original source. The finished gummy pics are mine.

You’ve probably heard of Japanese candy kits. They’re DIY kits that come with powders you mix, mold, and decorate to look like real food. I first saw VenusAngelic do the candy bento kit, and have since been determined to find and try some kits for myself. The obstacle: the language barrier. The instructions are entirely in Japanese, and our only guides (besides the tutorials on YouTube) are the diagrams on the box. Joining me on this journey are real life Peck Peck and Shoonie. (My baby bro and baby cousin, respectively) We’ll start with a simple kit: Oekaki Gummy Land.

Oekaki Gummy Land

Brand: Kracie

Price: $6.00 at Sweet Tooth Candy Emporium

As the name implies, this kit lets you create your own gummy shapes. You get four random cookie cutter shapes, (we got a whale, dolphin, sailboat, and music note) three colour powder packets, a large packet of gelatin base, a water dropper, and a fork.

The fork has 3 prongs. If a fork is called a fork because it has FOUR prongs, does this make 3 prongs a “Tork?”

Click for tutorial

Directions for the kit are simple: place your desired cookie cutter into the base, and use the dropper to drip the colours. You can also mix colours together in the smaller channels of the tray. It didn’t take much time for our gummies to dry.

They tasted pretty good, too!

And then Shoonie got bored, and didn’t want to waste the rest of the colours….

OMGWTF ASDFGHJKL KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

Overall Verdict

Difficulty: 1/10

Fun to do, though mixing the colours wasn’t as fun. The green turned out swampy, and the other colours looked too dark. This was redeemed, since they actually looked better once you drip them onto the base.

Taste: 8/10

Red tasted like grape, blue tasted like Ramune soda, yellow tasted like lemon. Grape and soda seem to be popular candy flavours in Japan. I like their grape flavour; it’s a bit tart like real grapes, unlike the artificial grape we often get here in Canada. I was kind of hoping to get new flavours by mixing colours, as shown on the package. Then again, those flavours weren’t far from unique. (See image)

Overall verdict: 8/10 would recommend

This was simple and tasted like you’d expect candy to taste. They were very sticky and felt like homemade sourpatch. If you find this kit, give it a try!

And that’s all for the first post of 2015. How’s this for a sweet start to the new year?

Tired of the puns yet? Whale then, have a look at what I sent Tay for New Year:

What big changes are you making for the new year? Comment below!

Pika, so happy~