Ruskology 102 - The Castella Edition

This is a follow on to my earlier post on rusk. In this "episode", I feature two from Minamoto Kitchoan at the Takashimaya basement in Singapore.

Butter Castella Rusk

For today's features, instead of using bread as the base pastry for the rusk, butter castella was used. For some strange reason, contrary to my earlier post on castella, this one used butter. *scratch head* Oh well, I guess there're non-traditional variants on castella.
Individually wrapped butter castella rusk.It had a pleasing yellow hue to it.
Anyway, this one had a nice, buttery flavour.

However, the texture was a tad crumbly, and the crunch was not impressive at all. I speculate that this is because the cake texture just turns out differently when turned into rusk, compared to bread, which Gateau Festa Harada uses.

The presentation was also not impressive.

Overall, I think this is a decent snack to try, but I wouldn't buy it frequently or as a gift.

Matcha Castella Rusk

Next up is matcha rusk!
Matcha castella rusk wrapped in weird metallic green. O_o
Although there was no "castella" label on the packaging, the ingredients looked a lot like those of the one above. It also tasted like castella, so I took the liberty to add in the castella label.
It wasn't too appealing visually either.The matcha flavouring was only coated on the surface of the rusk.
I was disappointed as the matcha flavouring was only on the surface of the rusk, compared to Gateau Festa Harada's Sommelier rusk, which was fully permeated with its savoury flavour.

The green tea flavour was also not very "matcha" (which is the really thick Japanese green tea powder used for tea ceremonies). It tasted more like the thin sencha green tea flavour.

I also felt it was a tad too sweet.

Finally, the texture was kinda dry and crumbly. Possibly to the same reason as for the castella one above.

Overall, these two were unimpressive. I wouldn't recommend the matcha flavour at all. Maybe it's not that castella rusk is worse than bread rusk... it could just be the quality of the product.

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