Name: Twin Rabbit Ball Cookie
Origin: Vietnam
Found at: Dong Phuong Tofu, Westminster
Cost: $2.50
Ingredients:
Tapioca Starch, Sugar, Coconut Cream, Vanilla, FD&C Yellow #5, FD&C Blue #1, FD&C Red #40.
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Why I Bought It:
As with a lot of Wacky Snacks here, the name was the attraction. It's literally descriptive as it is snicker-worthy. I mean, that's what they are: cookies…in a ball shape (HAR HAR…I should grow up). Also the promise of the durian, strawberry and pandan flavors was intriguing. This was a Vietnamese cookie equivalent of neapolitan ice cream.
Tasting Notes:
They ate like meringues. Tiny ones. Each little ball is lighter than foam–crunchy before it melts into a slightly chalky mush. The strawberry and pandan flavor is really hard to tell apart. That is, it doesn't taste too much like the real ingredient.
The coloring does its thing to trick your mind that the pink one kind of does taste like strawberry. The durian is distinctly durian, however subtle. But if there's one thing about sulphur-smell of durian-flavored anything, it's that it's never subtle.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.