Sweet Potato Kit Kat's さつまいもと紅いもキットカット

Yasu and I are big fans of potato. That includes sweet potato. I often make potato and sweet potato bakes, potato salad, sweet potato chips, and sweet potato mash.

So, when I saw that there were two new Kit Kat's that were sweet potato flavoured, I had to try them.

In Australia we have something that looks like the Okinawan Sweet Potato, the only difference is that it is white in the middle where the beni-imo is purple throughout.

Satsuma-imo, or the regular Japanese sweet potato is very popular, and in winter in Japan they have street vendors that go around the neighbourhood selling baked sweet potato's, so this sweet potato often elicits fond memories of childhood, akin to how Aussie kids think of Mr Whippy. It's also the main ingredient in daigaku-imo (also another Kit Kat of times gone by).

The satsuma-imo Kit Kat has had a few incarnations but this is the first time I will be trying it officially for my blog.


紅いも

It's actually lighter in colour than I thought it would be. On the package there is a picture of what looks like beni-imo piped into a little rosette, the colour is a dark purple so I thought the chocolate would also be that colour. The chocolate on this Kit Kat is a light lilac colour and has a funny texture. I can't really describe it except to say its very soft and crumbly and reminds me of the outside of Ohagi.


The smell is very familiar to me, pretty much the same as a red sweet potato here. The chocolate on the outside is soft and very sweet. The sweet potato flavour comes through immediately. I like the soft texture. The wafers lend abit of saltiness to the flavour which I really like, though it is not the exact flavour of a beni-imo. It is nice though, delicate is the word that comes to mind about this one.


さつまいも

This is a golden yellow colour and has the same Ohagi texture as the beni-imo Kit Kat. It smells quite earthy, a little bit buttery, but nothing really enticing. Like the beni-imo the texture is soft, which I like. The flavour is really hard to pin down, it doesn't have alot of the flavour of a satsumai-mo, I get a flavour that reminds me of white wine, butter, some sweetness, abit of salt, and some creaminess, but nothing really exact. I've had satsuma-imo in Japan and it didn't taste anything like this. Unfortunately for me, I felt this was way off the mark. It really had the texture but unfortunately no real characteristics of the flavour.


Yasu and I both liked the beni-imo the best. We felt that the flavour was very true to the vegetable and the texture made us feel like we were eating a real one. I'm thinking about buying a bag of the beni-imo, and I'd definitely recommend it to you to try.

I wouldn't buy the satsuma-imo again though, that was pretty disappointing. Though some may like it. :)