***½~ (3.5/5)

One of the things I must get at the Tokyo airport is the Shiroi Koibito or so I call them ‘White Lover’ Cookies. It was right at the very top of my shopping list at the Tokyo airport. Unfortunately, to my surprise AND disappointment, they didn’t have them at the shops of the terminal I was at! I was so bummed out, and while walking through the shops I came across the Shiroi Koibito look alike cookies, called Shiroi Mori No Harmony.

The No Harmony cookies looks almost identical to the White Lovers. They were displayed in a section with other products that were also made from Hokkaido. Since both No Harmony and White Lovers are from Hokkaido, I thought, the No Harmony should be pretty good too, and it was also my next best bet.  Something is better than nothing right?

No Harmony cookies are squared sandwich cookies with 2 thin vanilla cookies with a slice of white chocolate in between; just like the White Lovers. At first glace, it looks exactly like a White Lover cookie. When I first opened one, I thought, wow, this is a lot smaller than I imagined. And also these were a lot more rough looking that White Lovers.  The cookies were smaller, and not as thin. When I bit into one, I could tell the difference right away. While it tasted nice, but it was just not as smooth as the White Lovers. The cookies were thicker. There were also less vanilla flavor, but the white chocolate was pretty nice.

No Harmony is the knock off version of the White Lovers. It is a good snack, but the quality is just not up to par with the White Lovers.

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Shiroi Mori No Harmony

***** (5/5)

I loved these Shiroi Koibito Cookies ever since my friend introduced me to them over 4 years ago. Shiroi Koibito is one of the products under ISHIYA. Shiroi Koibito in English, or at least on the package, says White Lover. Literally. I’ve been calling them the White Lover Cookies.

I think the White, stand for white chocolate. Shiroi Boibito is basically a square cookie sandwich with 2 very thin crispy cookies with a slice of soft white chocolate in between. The white chocolate kind of looks like cheese.

These cookies are really yummy. The thin crispy cookies has a strong vanilla flavor. The chocolate inside is always soft, smooth, and it’s just melts in your mouth. The cookies looks very simple, and it looks like how it would taste. It’s pretty brilliant.

So where can you get these cookies? They are available at the Tokyo International Airport. Yup, when I visited Japan a few years ago, I ran all over, and only found my luck at the airport before my departure.

This time, my sister brought 2 boxes back from her trip to Japan. It’s been about 3 years since I had one of these, and they still taste the same. I’ve already finish 1 box, they’re so good.

If you are visiting Japan in the future, make sure to bring a couple boxes of these back at the airport. If you are not going Japan anytime soon, they have opened up online ordering, so you can order from their online store. They also have the same cookies, but with milk chocolate, and not as good as the white chocolate ones.

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Shiroi Koibito
http://www.ishiya.co.jp/item/shiroi/

****½ (4.5/5)

I used to eat these Butter Coconut Cookies a lot when I was a kid, in Taiwan. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have never seen these cookies being sold at regular supermarkets. So when I was on a mission to go find ghetto fermented tofu at an Asian supermarket, I came across these on the shelves, and brought a pack home.

These cookies have a really distinctive packaging, as you can see it is silver. There wasn’t a cookie tray to hold the cookies when you open the package, they were just cookies neatly and snugly stacked.

These cookies are absolutely delicious. They are the crunchy type of cookies. They were thin and had a nice glossy coat of sugar on the surface. The texture was a little flaky, just a tiny bit. They were sweet, a little buttery. The coconut flavor wasn’t very strong in these cookies, but you can still taste it. I haven’t had one of these in maybe 10 years, they tasted just as I remembered. Eat them together with a cup of tea, or a glass of milk, so yummy.

If you like cookies, and feel a little adventurous, stop by your local Asian supermarket, and grab a pack home for under $3.00 dollars.

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Butter Coconut Cookies
Local Asian Supermarket

****~ (4/5)

We came across JBD Cookies on Twitter. After checking out their website we knew we needed to get our hands on those delicious looking cookies. So last Sunday, we placed orders on their Pecan Pie Pleasure, and Raspberry Linzers cookies.

These cookies were so yummy! I could not have enough of the Pecan Pie Pleasure. The size of these cookies were perfect, there were delicious pecan fillings with the soft and chewy dough on every single bite. I liked these a lot.

The Raspberry Linzer heart cookies were a lot bigger than we thought they would be, and didn’t look exactly the same as the pictures from the website. On their website, there were powdered sugar on top of them, but the cookies we got didn’t have any, I guess they got melted during the shipping process. Looks aside, they did taste really yummy! I really liked the raspberry jam on it. Mmm is it bad that I’m eating them as I’m blogging?

There was one really nice surprise I found about these cookies. It was that these did not taste or look artificial. They are definitely home made, and they gave me a comforting feeling as I ate them. It felt like it was made by a next door neighbor or a friend, I actually didn’t mind the tiny imperfections on the looks of these cookies, it made them taste real, and that’s a pretty cool thing considering it was shipped from a store in Toronto.

Picking 2 out of 9 kinds of cookies wasn’t easy because they all looked really good. We decided on the Raspberry Linzers because we wanted to do some reviews for Valentine’s day, and Pecan Pie Pleasure because we love pecans. An order of cookies consisted of 15 cookies  and the Raspberry Linzers, they came in 12, we think it’s because they were bigger cookies.

An order of cookies was $32 dollars USD. $32 dollars for 15 cookies?! Yes, we thought it was expensive too, but after eating them we found how the price can be justified. Shipping was included, and it was xpress post, it came with a little bag that was presented like a gift, and most importantly, these cookies were delicious. These are prefect gifts to send for your friends, family, your valentine this year, or to yourself if you simply just want to indulge the yummy-ness of these cookies.

I’m already thinking about my next order for their other cookies, get your hands on JBD Cookies too!

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JBD Cookies
http://www.jbdcookies.com/
twitter.com/jbdcookies
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