Kracie Popin Cookin Japanese Festival

After going through the large box of Kracie kits I had, I found another one. Guess this calls for a celebration! Thankfully this kit has everything I need to do that. Four different components here being french fries, candy apples, chocolate bananas, and corn on the cob, so it's sure to be involved but no short on fun.

I expected a lot of components in this kit, and that's exactly what I got. Three different mats, 5 packets of powder, some yellow soft candy, sprinkles, toothpicks, and a shovel-spoon (my favorite!). The cutting board mat in particular seems rather excessive, but I guess it's nice to create the mood.

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.

Kracie DIY - Colorful Peace

This one might be one of the cutest Kracie kits I've seen! But also one of the most intimidating. After all there are so many options! Does this make me actually have to be good at sculpting things? I hope not, I'm better at making and eating delicious things than making good looking things. But there seem to be a lot of options here and some easy-make molds shown on the back. So hopefully like all Kracie kits this'll be fun to make, but also relatively simple, and of course, delicious.

This kit seems to be open ended like I thought, a few templates to work off of and five candies, and the bag has instructions for a number of things. I guess as I'm not feeling creative I will try those ones. There are also sprinkles and a makeshift rolling pin. And I see that the candy is supposed to combine to make different colors! That's certainly unique.

I ended up picking a few of the designs on the bag to make, and because I'm a hungry wolf, I couldn't do any more of these before my mouth started watering. It was a bit difficult to mix the colors as expected, since the candy is very sturdy, but after time they do combine colors quite well. The rolling pin was also a little stickier than I would have liked.

As for the taste, the blue and white candies are tangy (in that generic Japanese fruit flavor way) and the rest are a sweeter generic fruit flavor. They do blend quite well this way in taste, it's quite delicious to eat, though I would've liked a little more fruity variety, as every one of these creations tasted exactly the same. The sprinkles also seem limited use here. The only design on the box that even has them is the donut and well... I already made those. But I mingled the sprinkles with the rest of the candies, and while the crunch is nicely appreciated, I had the feeling they didn't belong here. This kit will probably inspire the artsy types to make great things, but I'm more of a musical pup when it comes to creativity (check out my howling symphony!). The taste however is pleasant but has a lot to be desired, it is an alright kit but could be much better.

Rating: 5 - Ruff!

Kracie Popin Cookin Cake Shop

Many kinds of cakes here, and they all look so yummy! And rather difficult with all the shapes, but Kracie sure has a way of making it accessible to anyone. I'm interested to see how the solid components are done. There's also ice cream. Everything here looks so fun, and a bright pink color, which I assume is strawberry.

To my surprise, all the solid components are premade. That's a little disappointing, but hey, I guess it just means I'll get to eat everything quicker! That makes this one of the easier DIYs, with only two powders, a pastry bag, and sprinkles to work with. The bags I assume, are the strawberry frosting and the vanilla icing that is shown on the ice cream and wafers.

Kracie Popin Cookin Takoyaki

One of the Popin Cookin kits more focused on Japanese food, this one makes takoyaki, which are fried octopus balls. And it uses the microwave! Judging by how simple this one looks compared to the others, I think they will be going for accurate flavor recreation here, but I could always be wrong. Also like the ramen kit, it comes in a bag, not a box, so no serving mat, but not a problem because the circular mold can almost serve as that.

One thing that I haven't shown so far is the molds after I cut them, and I happened to cut them first this time, so here they are. It's cool that Kracie puts perforations in the molds to do this, stops everything from accidentally mixing together. Also only 4 packets this time, and one utensil, as well as the toothpick for eating.

Kracie Popin Cookin Burger

Meat! AWRUFF! Okay so it's not actually meat, and thankfully I've already eaten dinner so it won't get my mouth watering like it is, but this DIY kit still looks mighty tasty. The bun could use a little more brown, but two patties on one of the burger, plus the fries look nice and potato-ey! My tail is wagging, telling me to dig in, but first I gotta make it.

As usual, we got packets, placemats, a molds, and two utensils! How exciting, not having to do everything with just a spoon or pick. Surprisingly low number of molds too, I see the hamburger buns, the cola, a stripey one for the fries, and a deeper one. Guess it does help that every component of a hamburger is round except for the cheese.

Kracie Popin Cookin Sushi

Next in line in the Kracie kits is this one, promising different types of sushi. There's probably no way to emulate the fish flavors with candy powder in this case, so I'm expecting some delightful fruit-flavored sushi instead. Would prefer meat flavored, but that's just my nature... maybe I should start making sushi out of the pack's hunts? Anyways one cool feature of this will be the "roe", which seems to be formed by dropping bubbles into the water. And there's even a fake soy sauce!

The pack once again has a mat that can be cut out from the bag, and I quite like the look of this one, has a fancy feel. There's also the standard array of packets, a solid piece of brown candy (which will likely be the nori?) and the utensils, which are a spoon and squeeze bottle.

Kracie Popin Cookin Donuts

Time for some more DIY fun! Everything Kracie has made so far has been delicious and more fun than any chew toy, so I already have high hopes. This one instead of Japanese food is donuts, so there won't be much manipulation of flavors here. I expect it to taste pretty close to the source material. Also look how cute that bear donut is!

Kracie Popin Cookin Taiyaki

These look like quite the varied batch of snacks to make! The star of it of course is the taiyaki, a fish shaped pastry kinda like a waffle, with the filling of your choice (in this case chocolate). From there other Japanese desserts seem to be included: strawberry daifuku, a cup of ramune, and mitarashi dango, which appears to be soy sauced glazed mochi. And it uses the microwave, which is different. Not sure if that's because the products are meant to be eaten hot or because the microwave cooks the various powder/water mixtures.

Kracie Popin Cookin Ramen

I've long been a fan of these DIY kits even from seeing the package, they're so cute! Making candy disguised as mini food is such a neat idea, and although I'd often rather have the bigger food, it makes up for it with the fun of making everything myself, and no dishes! I love ramen too, and although it doesn't usually come with dumplings, this one does. The more food the merrier!