I had been impressed by previous attempts trying Luckin's desserts, namely their cheesecakes and strawberry daifuku, due to the relatively pure ingredients (few artificial additives or preservatives), low price, convenience and great taste balance. So when they launched a new red and green flavor for Christmas - Matcha Adzuki Daifuku, I thought I'd try it along with the remaining untried flavour, Tiramisu Daifuku.
First off, the matcha one. Actually, the green tea flavor wasn't really matcha, as real Japanese matcha is more grassy. It's more like the Chinese jasmine woody green tea type of tea flavor.
The azuki was firm and Japanese style (light woody fragrance) as opposed to Southeast Asian style (which has more of a thick dark, nutty and toasty fragrance).
I didn't particularly like this dull bitter green tea and sweet shallow azuki combination, so the flavors weren't nice.
But as with the other flavors, the daifuku skin was extremely soft and stretchy, like freshly made authentic Kyoto yatsuhashi mochi.
The major disappointment for me was that the cream was quite fake, unlike the other flavors. As you can see from the ingredients list below (hopefully you can read the small text after the automatic image compression), they used non-dairy cream. As a result, it was too heavy, a bit stiff and greasy. Not nice at all. (I already felt something was off before reading the ingredients list, so I don't think it's a cognitive bias.)
In contrast, the tiramisu flavor was excellent and saved the day. Besides using real fluffy whipping cream which has the natural light fragrance of milk, they also used rum and real cheese. Comparable to top notch restaurant desserts in taste and quality. I know in real tiramisu they use kahlua, and I couldn't taste the rum much, but if you ignore the name, the overall taste and experience was really good IMO.
The cocoa and coffee powders blended perfectly for a flavourful daifuku skin.
It also has the super soft stretchy yatsuhashi mochi-like quality.
And check out the ingredients list - pure cheese and whipping cream was used. And the list is much shorter than the matcha version above.
This one was an exceptional treat for the price. If you have parties you could buy these en masse for a great experience.
Verdict: The tiramisu daifuku is top notch and comparable to top restaurants' or patisseries' quality in taste. The new matcha one isn't worth trying IMO. I hope the matcha one is an exception and that Luckin doesn't lower their quality standards with new offerings.
Also, check out these reviews of Luckin's Christmas drinks, the Little Butter Latte and Toffee Hazelnut Oat Latte.
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