Suddenly! Ikinari! Dumpling: Sweet Potato Chocolates with Mochi and Bean Fillings

 Weird title? Well, it's literally what the label of the product reads: "Ikinari! Dango". "Ikinari" usually describes sudden and unexpected behaviour... kind of like, "What the hell!" I have no idea how to translate it in this instance, but I shall settle for, "Suddenly! Potato Dumpling".

Ikinari! Dumpling: Sweet Potato Chocolates with Mochi and Bean FillingsIkinari! (Imo) Dango
It turned out to be a sort of sweet potato chocolate with bean and mochi filling... and they didn't even think to include the word "chocolate" in the label. What the hell indeed.

Anyway, it's apparently a specialty from the Kumamoto prefecture... since "kuma" literally means bear, their mascot is this black bear with flushed cheeks... yeap, that gleeful motif you see on each individual chocolate wrapper.

There're two flavours within the same packet - yellow sweet potato chocolate (or satsuma-imo) and purple sweet potato chocolate (or murasaki-imo).
Purple and yellow sweet potato chocolates, individually-wrapped.
Both have a bean and mochi filling. Yes, they actually used purple and yellow sweet potato powders, along with red and white bean powders in these chocolates. And they used glutinous rice flour and starch for the mochi. Exotic huh? It was upon seeing those ingredients on the label that I decided to buy them.

Yellow Sweet Potato (Satsuma-imo) Chocolate 
with Red Bean & Mochi Filling
Yellow sweet potato chocolate with a red bean-looking filling.
At least, I think the filling is red bean, judging from the colour. Taste-wise, it just tasted beany. I thought it was red bean at first, because of the strong beany flavour... but the colour clearly looks like red bean.

I couldn't really taste the yellow sweet potato taste though... it was somewhat overwhelmed by the bean taste, or maybe it blended in with the white chocolate.

Its texture was like normal chocolate on the outside, slightly powdery when you reach the bean filling, and very chewy once you hit the mochi.

It did taste more like a Japanese sweet dumpling instead of a sweet potato snack or chocolate indeed... maybe hence the wisdom in labeling this a "dumpling". 

Purple Sweet Potato (Murasaki-imo) Chocolate 
with White Bean & Mochi Filling
Purple sweet potato chocolate with a white bean-looking filling.
This one tasted a LOT more earthy... it reminded me of coconut and taro. I'd even say it had a stronger red bean flavour than the other one, even though judging by the colour, this one's supposed to be the white bean filling, right? I couldn't tell if it was coming from the purple sweet potato chocolate or from the bean filling though, so maybe it came from the purple sweet potato, which is supposed to taste more earthy.

Strangely, while the other one was yellow on all surfaces, the bottom of this one was white chocolate rather than purple.
The bottom wasn't coated with the purple chocolate.
I bought this from Isetan @ Westgate, Singapore. I love how you can get so many of these funky imported Japanese stuff from this store.

(Updated from original post on 5 Jan 2015.)

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