Nearly a dozen new green tea treats are coming to 7-Eleven Japan to mark shincha season.
It’s green tea season in Japan! OK, you could say that it’s always green tea season in Japan, what with it being the country’s representative non-alcoholic beverage and a major part of its culture. But right now, the period from late April to early May, is when the first green tea harvest of the year, called shincha in Japanese and prized for its deep flavor and color, comes in.
So to celebrate shincha season, 7-Eleven Japan is rolling out a ton of new green tea sweets, so many that it’s not just calling it a matcha event, but Meccha Matcha (“Tons of Matcha”).
7-Eleven is debuting nearly a dozen new green tea treats, including dessert beverages, this month, with their releases staggered into three stages. All of them use matcha sourced from Kyoto Prefeture’s Uji, Japan’s top matcha-producing town, ground with a traditional stone mill to preserve the freshest flavor. The first bunch, which went on sale May 6, includes the above-pictured Uji Matcha Japanese Parfait (300 yen [US$2.10]). Underneath the topping of matcha sweet bean cream, jiggly matcha green tea warabi mochi, firmer mochi dumplings, and tsubuan sweet red bean paste are layers of whipped cream, smooth matcha mousse, and matcha kanten agar gelatin.
▼ There’s so much tasty stuff that 7-Eleven even made a diagram, which is like a treasure map for matcha lovers.
Arriving alongside the parfait are the Uji Matcha Cheesecake (240 yen), made with matcha-infused cream cheese and white chocolate, with sweet red beans at its base…
…and the Uji Matcha Cream Dorayaki (220 yen), which adds a nice thick layer of matcha cream to its stack of pancake-like cakes and sweet red bean jam.
If you’d rather sip to get your matcha fix, the first group of Meccha Matcha offerings also includes a new Matcha Tea Latte (185 yen) and a Matcha au Lait & Brown Sugar Syrup Jelly Drink (188 yen) flavored with kuromitsu, a molasses-like brown sugar syrup.
All of that should be enough to tide us over until May 11, when the second squad of Meccha Matcha sweets arrive, led by the Uji Matcha Toromochi Warabi (150 yen), a warabi mochi dumpling with a filling of matcha whipped cream and a liquid core of kuromitsu.
Also coming on the 11th is the Uji Matcha Purin/Pudding (300 yen), with an artfully arranged quintet of matcha whipped cream dollops and matcha sauce.
Though officially classified by 7-Eleven as being in the second round of Meccha Matcha items, the following three don’t go on sale until May 13.
▼ Double Whipped Cream Uji Matcha Cream Puff (220 yen), with regular and matcha whipped cream inside
▼ Crispy Matcha Latte Pie (198 yen) with a matcha chocolate coating and white chocolate center
▼ Matcha Milk Whipped Cream Donut (188 yen), which looks to be a bun instead of ring-shaped
And finally, on May 20, the final Meccha Matcha item debuts with the Waffle Cone 7 Premium Gold Rich Uji Matcha Gold Ice Cream (378 yen).
While matcha sweets themselves are enjoyed year-round in Japan, all of these specific items will be available for a limited time only, so it’s going to be a busy couple of weeks, but we’ll do our best to eat as many of them as frequently as we can.
Source, images: PR Times
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