A Good Match(a)

Last Friday, I indulged in a bit of "tea-ceremony" - I ate half of my last self-imported matcha KitKats and had a cup of Japanese green tea.

To be honest, much as I love matcha, I'm not that crazy about the KitKats as these are basically matcha-infused white chocolate and I'm not a big fan of white chocolate at all, finding it much too sweet. On the subject of Japanese KitKats - you can find everything about all the crazy Japanese variations on this blog which I recently discovered.

Speaking of matcha - the Gazelle gave me a small bar of matcha and sesame drinking chocolate by famous Austrian chocolatier Zotter. Now I have a theory about Zotter chocolates: people (myself included) mainly buy these to give away as gifts as they have a certain reputation as being good and upmarket chocolate. With the exception of really yummy chocolate-coated nuts, I have yet to taste a Zotter chocolate I like. The same holds true for other fancy (and very expensive chocolates) with unusual ingredients - I really appreciate good chocolate from the likes of Valrhona and don't bat an eyelid when spending € 5 and more on a bar of chocolate, but I much prefer traditional combinations which definitely don't include vegetables, cheese or other strange ingredients. Plus I absolutely detest candied ginger in my chocolate, which I have often been given by people who know that I'm otherwise crazy about ginger. I drink a ginger and lemon herbal infusion every day, love fresh ginger and always order an extra side dish of pickled ginger when eating sushi, but I really hate the taste of candied ginger.

Well, the matcha hot chocolate was predictably sweet (white chocolate, see above) and had a rather dominant sesame taste, but it was not bad and the Empress rather liked it:

In any case, it was very nice gift, accompanied by a La Durée macaron from Xocolat, one of Vienna's best chocolate shops. They have an absolutely amazing selection and LD macarons on top.