Sweetness From Malaysia

One thing I've noticed since I moved to Japan and started this blog is that I sometimes get friend requests on Facebook from people in other parts of the world that I've never met before.

Normally I'm a little bit mistrustful of such requests, but one caught my eye. This was from a girl that many call "Sweetie", from Malaysia. She said she was traveling in Japan, and how much she loved it. 'It's like another planet out here' was what she said. I can relate to this, I had much the same feeling in 2005. So I befriended her on Facebook and sometimes we swap e-mails about Japan.

Well, one time we were chatting, and she said she wanted to send me a gift. I was a bit surprised but I thought 'sure, why not?' So she sent me some biscuits from Malaysia.

It took a while for the package to arrive (I guess the Japanese post office wanted to make sure there really is a Jonathan McDougall that lives here before they deliver the package), but eventually the package did arrive safe and sound!
Inside the package was a box that took some fandangling to get open (it was impeccably well-packed with tape and everything), but eventually I pried the side of the box open and I was able to slide these out.
So I opened one of the packages and this is what I got. The shell is quite firm and the outside flakes off like a pastry. Only thing left now is to take a bite!
Sorry this pic is a bit out of focus, I guess the camera was more focused on the bag than on the biscuit ^_^ Anyway, it was very delicious, but the taste is kind of hard to describe. It was sweet, but not a sickly, sugary sweet.. something much more palatable. Which I find is common with a lot of Asian desserts. I guess I'd put the taste as somewhere between a Chinese sesame dessert and a Canadian butter tart. Let's take a look at the ingredients:

Wheat Flour, Sugar, Maltose, Sesame, Onion, Margarine, Salt, and Water.

I'm surprised to see onion in the list, since I don't really taste any onion, and I have no idea what maltose is, but the rest all makes sense.

Anyway, these will be very good to have around! I don't like to keep a lot of extra food at my place, and so sometimes I find myself in need of something to eat but nothing around to prepare. Also, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep until I put something in my stomach, so these should fit the bill just fine!

One thing I noticed though, is that I really should eat these over a plate or something. Because the flaky outer shell can make a bit of a mess! But it's OK, the envelope that they were packed in also doubled as a great 'flake collector'.


I just used my hand to sweep them all away!

So what can I say? I thought that this girl from Malaysia was called "Sweetie" because it was a variation on her first name. But now I'm not so sure.. I wonder if maybe she is called "Sweetie" because of her acts of kindness, like this one.

Thanks Sweetie, and please visit me when you come back to Japan!