This Guan Yun Zhai Black Sesame Crisp is a specialty of Suzhou, a city in Jiangsu Province in Eastern China. There’s a surprising dearth of information relating to it online (in English at least).

Each box contained four sets of three cookies wrapped in plastic. The plastic is loose and not sealed.

Each cookie is rectangular, about 4 x 3 x 1 cm in size with a white centre and a grey coloured and black speckled surround.

The cookie has a sweet aroma with a faint hint of black sesame. Biting through the grey section, the cookie falls apart with a prominent floury and oily mouthfeel that releases a pleasant nutty black sesame flavour with a gentle sweetness. On reaching the white centre, though, the sweetness and oiliness are amplified, tasting much like icing sugar mixed with lard.

The overall flavour and mouthfeel are offputting. That said, the black sesame section is apparently meant to have a sugar crisp mouthfeel, so it’s possible that the cookies may have absorbed too much moisture from the high humidity lately, as the cookies are not sealed.

This Guan Yun Zhai Black Sesame Crisp contained 300 g. It was produced in China and received as a gift from an acquaintance visiting China in 2019.