Kinako is roasted soybean flour that has a sweet, nutty taste and powdery texture. It’s commonly used as both an ingredient and a topping for Japanese desserts, from dango, all kinds of mochi and even shaved ice.
Now, there’s Nestlé KitKat Special Green Tea Kinako, a limited edition available only at the numerous Kitkat Chocolatory stores in major Japanese cities.
This KitKat smells like white chocolate, without a hint of kinako or green tea. Biting into it, though, you encounter sweetness, and then as the chocolate melts, you taste the nuttiness of the kinako and feel the slightly powdery texture. This is followed by the grassy bitterness characteristic of green tea that lingered until the end before leaving a nutty flavour aftertaste. It’s a sweeter, nuttier, more complex green tea KitKat.
The box of Nestlé KitKat Special Green Tea Kinako contained 4 mini bars. It is a special edition for the KitKat Chocolatory and was sourced in Tōkyō, Japan in 2013.