Nanju Miyazaki Mango Langue de Chat Cookies

Mango cream between two langue de chat biscuits, and the mango is the whole argument.

Nanju Seika uses fruit grown in Miyazaki, which in Japan is not a neutral statement — Miyazaki mangoes are the benchmark, sold at prices that make international news, ripened on the tree until they drop into nets rather than being picked.

The prefecture sits on the sunny southeastern coast of Kyushu, and the warmth it gets is why the crop works there and almost nowhere else in Japan.

What that produces in a biscuit is a cream that tastes tropical rather than merely sweet — the fruit’s own perfume, and the slight resinous edge real mango carries, which generic mango flavouring never reproduces.

The langue de chat around it is light and dry, built on egg white so it crumbles and then melts rather than snapping cleanly, which lets the cream do the work.

Nanju Seika has been refining the recipe for the better part of two decades and now states 70 million biscuits sold, with a Monde Selection gold award on the box.

Langue de chat means cat’s tongue in French, for the thin oval shape the batter takes in the oven, and the format has become one of Japan’s standard vehicles for regional souvenir sweets.

This is Miyazaki’s. The pieces are individually wrapped, which is what makes a box of them work as a gift, and Nanju Seika sells them through the prefecture’s airports, stations and expressway service areas rather than nationally — a genuinely local product rather than a national brand wearing a regional label.

About this item
Item Name : Miyazaki Mango Langue de Chat
Brand : Nanju Seika
Item Form : Cookie & Biscuit
Number of Items : 10 Counts, 30 Counts (Box of 1)