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Japanese convenience store’s new “phantom” cream doughnuts are sinfully good

Oona McGee Dec 10, 2021
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They’re marketed as doughnuts but they actually taste like something else.

Our Japanese-language reporter Go Hatori is aways in and out of convenience stores, picking up snacks and drinks before and after work and in between visits to his beloved Daiso.

This means he’s always on the ball when it comes to new releases, even those that aren’t widely advertised, and that’s why this week he was lucky enough to stumble across an elusive new product called the Cream Doughnut at his local 7-Eleven.

▼ The poster reads: “Meltyyy! Crispy! Cream Doughnuts baked in-store. Limited region. Limited time.”

Go had never seen anything like this being offered at any convenience store chain, let alone his local 7-Eleven, and the fact that it was a limited-time product only available in his region made him even more curious to try it.

So he strode over to the counter and ordered one for 138 yen (US$1.21), and when the clerk asked if he’d like it warmed up for him, the answer was “Ohhhh, yes.”

After a short walk home, Go peeled off the 7-Eleven sticky tape and opened his package to reveal the doughnut. Upon seeing it for the first time, his initial reaction was…

▼ ...”It looks like agepan!”

Agepan, or deep-fried bread, is a popular sweet snack in Japan, commonly served as part of school lunches, where they usually appear as long buns. While this agepan was round, the fried bread aroma that emanated from it took Go right back to the school lunches he ate as a child, which certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but it just wasn’t what he was expecting when he’d ordered a “Cream Doughnut”.

▼ Slicing it in two confirmed to Go that it should be classified as a fried cream bun rather than a doughnut.

Still, Go didn’t particularly mind how it was marketed, because all he cared about was how it tasted. So he lifted one half of the doughnut-bun hybrid to his mouth, and the moment he bit into it, he knew this was a dangerous flavour.

It was hot…crispy…creamy…chewy…sinful…sweet…and downright delicious. It tasted far more like agepan than a Western-style doughnut, but that’s actually what made it sooooo good.

It was sinfully good, and Go was so inspired by its sweet, comforting, nostalgic flavour that he penned three lines as an ode to it:

“Piping hot crispness

Juicy fried bread

Scalding hot cream that’s a little gooey”

Ah, Go. Better stick to Daiso and eating sweets than writing poetry! The Cream Doughnut that so inspired Go will only be available for a limited time, though, earning it the name “phantom doughnut”, seeing as staff told him it will only be available in certain parts of Tokyo and it won’t be available past this week.

Also, staff told him it was only a test sale, and there are no plans to expand it nationwide. So keep an eye out for it during your 7-Eleven runs this week, and while you’re there you may just run into Go, because he plans to buy a bun a day in the hope that they’ll reconsider the test sale and roll it out permanently at stores across the nation!

Images: ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]