Konbini Kinyoubi: Sweets from Daily Yamazaki

Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious.

This week marked the three-year anniversary of when Eriko and I got engaged. To celebrate, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try some more treats from our new konbini sweetheart, Daily Yamazaki. (To be clear, I also made a couple fancy dinners, so please don’t think my only way of commemorating a special occasion is with konbini treats.)

I couldn’t decide on what to get, so I got three things, juuuuuuuust enough to make us feel a little sick after finishing them all.

First up, an eclair. We’ve been watching the Paul Hollywood bakery show on YouTube in preparation for our France trip that may one day occur if we can ever get the vaccine in Japan, so I looked at this guy with a discerning eye. I may not have had a lot of fancy eclairs, but I’ve seen them on TV, and this didn’t look like one. It was big and oddly-shaped, and I didn’t expect much from it.

One bite, and YOWZERS was I impressed. The chocolate was delicious, the pastry was soft and not too crunchy, and the cream - oh, the cream! The filling was fantastic. This thing was a knockout. Yamazaki does eclairs goooooooood. Once I’d tasted it, I was very happy it was so big, because Eriko and I were fighting over the rest of it.

Next: Mont Blanc! If you’ve read our previous posts, you may recall that I love Mont Blanc in all its forms. Unfortunately, this one was not exactly gourmet-quality. The cream wasn’t super flavorful, and the bottom was soft and thick, more of a cake consistency as opposed to the crisp bottom of the classic Mont Blanc. I was very disappointed. Eriko thought it was good, and confessed she didn’t remember the other Mont Blancs we’ve had having a different base or that they were absolutely not yellow in color. “I cannot remember because I like all sweets,” she said.

After skimming some random recipes and articles online, it appears this is a Japanese version of the Mont Blanc, which traditionally has a sponge base and is yellow in color. Sorry, Japan, but France’s version is better.

Finally, we finished off our decadent celebration by engaging in Daily Yamazaki’s Double Cheesecake. What is double cheesecake, you ask? Good question. We don’t know. It’s not cheesecake. That’s all I can tell you for sure.

It was more of a whipped cheesecake-flavored pudding, with a slightly crunchy top and a really airy filling. It was like if you took a cheesecake, folded in whipped cream, and whipped the entire thing together like a mousse. It was okay, but the problem wasn’t in what it was, but what it was not: cheesecake. I elected to buy this over cheesecake, thinking it’d be a fun thing to try, but all I really wanted after eating it was a slice of cheesecake.

The texture aside, the flavor was also a bit lacking. It had a sort of aftertaste that was almost like lemon custard. The result was a light cheesecake flavor mixed with the unmistakable aura of a lemon Yoplait. Those things didn’t go together horribly, but they didn’t knock our socks off, either.

The clear winner here was the eclair. I will 100% be getting another one from Daily Yamazaki in the future. We had a satisfying treat fest, and spent the rest of the evening lying like lumps on the couch because being married is awesome.