Kracie Popin Cookin Bento

Alas, this is the final Kracie product that I ordered from a box on the internet... for now. I'm sure there will be more, but for now it's been a fun journey, wading through all the powders, generic fruit flavored chewy candy, triangle cups, weird utensils, bags, molds... they've really made something special with all of these, where anyone can play with their food and eat it too. And speaking of playing with your food, I've always had an appreciation for bento. It shares a lot of the same concepts, so in a way this is a meta-DIY kit of sorta, and even has some of the cuteness that bento is known for with that panda face!

This one, as expected from the large number of items on the picture, is quite heavy in components: a whopping 7 packets, a bag, fork, lots of molds, and some guides. Unfortunately the bowl shown on the box is looking a little flat and that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.

The first steps as usual for Kracie kits, is to pour in some powders and mix them with water, in this case we have eggroll, broccoli, octopus sausage, and rice. The first three are gummies, each with lemon, lime, and strawberry flavors respectively. The last is a bit different, though nothing that I haven't seen in these kits before. The rice is the standard tangy candy flavor and has a fluffier texture, although it soaks up water quite fast! I did these all at once and the water was gone once I got to it, so I had to add a little more. No loss here though, the rice still looks fluffy as ever.

Next is to mold the rice to the shapes on one of the sections of the package, meaning the panda and onigiri shapes. I still had about half the rice leftover after this, seems like an oversight. Or maybe it qas caused by the extra water? I quite like the method used next to make the black "sesame" markings, which is to pour the sesame into the shallow marking containers, and the rest (and the spillage) into the deeper oval container. From licking my paws the sesame has a very sweet candy taste, likely to complement the tangy rice.

Then rice shapes are pressed into the rectangle and face shapes, and it works pretty well! I'll have to remember this method if I ever make my own bento. The ears were covered by rolling them into the leftover sesame, and at this point they did end up uneven, but it all tastes the same right?

The fried chicken is a bit of a strange component in how it's made, after all I just mixed the powder and water then divided it into two pieces, no molds required. After all though, fried chicken can be any shape. This one has an orange flavor, which actually seems the most realistic since it brings back memories of Panda Express orange chicken. Mmm...

The noodles employ the typical pastry bag method, and they have a buttery taste. As usual I'm awful getting the "dough" into the bag and keeping it there when trying to squeeze it out. I wish they would make this a bit easier.

All in all this is the finished presentation. The most mangled by far was the noodles because I over-cut, I think 1cm here is a little bit large for what the size should be. They ended up looking more like the ginger that comes with sushi than actual noodles. The gummies turned out excellently though, retaining all their texture!

As for the taste, everything tasted about as expected. The gummies were all pleasant sweet fruity flavors, the fried chicken was great because of those orange chicken memories. The noodles, despite turning out a mess were soft buttery goodness. And the rice snacks were probably the best thing here, blending together tangy and sweet with a nice chewy texture. This was a lot of fun to make, although the end components all ended up being one-note. I'm not sure how they would fix this, but a little more intermingling of flavors could be nice. Or maybe I was supposed to do that myself?

Rating: 7 - Aroof!