This Lotte Choco Pie Pablo Japanese Cheesecake is the second in a series of choco pies in collaboration with Pablo. This one has the taste of Kyōto and is inspired by their Matcha Cheese Tart.
It looks like a standard choco pie from the outside: two small round layers of cake sandwiching a cheesecake filling and enrobed in chocolate. The filling, however, uses 1.3 x the usual amount of cream as well as matcha from Uji, Kyōto, contained 1.4% cheese with kuromitsu syrup. Whereas the original Matcha Cheese Tart contained tsubuan red bean paste and shiratama dango, this rendition replaces them with kuromitsu, another quintessentially Japanese flavour.
The choco pie smells of chocolate and the kuromitsu. Upon tasting, though, the choco pie has a mellow sweetness from the kuromitsu with the vegetal notes of the matcha coming through prominently in the body ahead of the chocolate coming back briefly in the finish before the leaving a slightly bitter and vegetal aftertaste from the matcha. As with the Premium Cheesecake, the matcha cheesecake centre melts to a rich and creamy texture as a result of the use of additional cream and complements well with the drier cake layers, and overall, creates the sensation of eating a matcha tiramisu.
This Lotte Choco Pie Pablo Japanese Cheesecake contained 38 g. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Ōsaka, Japan in 2018.