Yaokin Butter Cream Roll Cake

Yaokin! Good to have you back. This Japanese brand has already shown me the wonders of pudding and marshmallows, so I have high hopes for this treat. This is the first Japanese pastry-type snack I've had, and I love me some pastries. Trust me, it took a huge amount of self control to not pounce on the matcha cake rolls at my Japanese market. This particular one though is butter cream flavor, and it looks like it has a wonderful yellow filling. Which suggests lemon, but I guess not. Yellow butter can be a thing.

It's hard not to have a little disappointment upon opening the bag because the pastry doesn't take up the full length of the bag! Oh no, this'll be torture if this roll ends up being good. I love the smell coming out of it though. It's definitely a nice buttery pancake-like smell, mmm. And there are some blemishes on the roll where the outer cooked layer of the pastry is not quite there, but that's okay, isn't it? Just makes it more realistic. Although if it was realistic in my case, it would be a crumble, just like when I failed to make pumpkin rolls and got pumpkin and cream mush. Still good, my tastebuds don't know any different! But none of that here, the roll is uniform as expected. Not quite as much of a yellow cream color as advertised though.

Tasting it, I definitely get that smell that came through from the package which I believe is the cream layer. It's definitely more cream than butter. Feels like there's something missing here. The roll maybe doesn't have enough texture for me, and it has the same flavor as the cream so the whole thing ends up being a little one-note. Nothing to balance out the overarching sweetness and creaminess. Still quite good, don't get me wrong, you can't go wrong with butter and cream and cake.

The cream shines through more than it let on from my outside viewing. It's some good stuff, but I don't think the cake does much else for it. Perhaps a different flavor or texture would be welcome here. It seems like the cake was also baked with a lot of butter, and I love butter, but it needs some friends to really shine. Nevertheless, it brought back memories of many a squishy sweet pasty, so I come away with a good taste left in my mouth.

Rating: 5 - Ruff!