If you’re not familiar with Popin’ Cookin’, I’ll give you a quick update. Popin’ Cookin’ is a series of “treats” made by the company Kracie. The thing that makes these unique is you have to actually make the treats yourself. The thing that makes these a little weird is that you often make the treats using various powders and chemicals, not things that look or feel like ingredients. Some might call the process of making these amazing, other’s might call it a horrible combination of chemicals. I fall somewhere down the middle. The amazing thing is how much the treats and foods actually often resemble what they’re supposed to represent, sometimes in both taste and texture. If you want an example of someone making one of these kits, we actually made a video of us making one a while ago (note, it’s not this particular one).

When I review these kits, I look at two factors. The first factor is how similar it is to the original treat. I’m very familiar with three of these treats from this kit, having sampled them in Japan on my various visits, the taiyaki (the fish shaped cake), the dango (the three balls covered in sauce) and the ramune soda (the blue pop). The strawberry thing is new to me, however it’s apparently supposed to be some kind of mochi stuffed with strawberry. I’ve actually had mochi a few times, so I have an idea where this is going.

As far as how well these treats match the original, I’d say that the is the dango is the closest, in fact I thought it was really spot on for dongo. The taiyaki was fairly close, but normally taiyaki is filled with cream and not just a sandwich. The strawberry mochi treat had a really weird texture that didn’t make me feel like I was eating anything natural at all, and the ramune was kind of soapy. Having said that, the ramune was actually fizzy, so that’s kind of cook.

As for my favourites, I would have to go with the taiyaki. It had a nice spongy cake (note, I actually had to bake it in my microwave), and the chocolate cream was tasty. Probably next was the strawberry mochi, it tasted good and also had a glob of that chocolate cream. The ramune and dongo were my least favourite oddly enough. The big problem here is that I’m not a huge fan of dango, so because it tasted almost exactly like dongo, I wasn’t really a fan. The ramune was a cute idea, but I would have preferred a different dessert instead of a drink.

Every time I pick up one of these kits, I forget how long it takes to make them. This one took about 30 or 40 minutes to create. I’m also always astounded at how they work and how well they work. One word of warning, the package is all in Japanese. Because of this, I leaned pretty heavy on Allison (she speaks Japanese) to help out.