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Taste-testing the new-recipe Tsukimi Pie<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n According to Japanese cultural traditions, autumn is the time for tsukimi<\/strong>, or moon-viewing, parties, and it\u2019s also become the season for tsukimi burgers, which feature fried eggs roundly reminiscent of a full moon. McDonald\u2019s Japan<\/strong>, naturally, has tsukimi burgers<\/a>, but each fall they also bring out a Tsukimi Pie<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Since fried eggs don\u2019t work nearly as well as a topping for desserts as they do for burgers, the Tsukimi Pie instead takes its culinary cues from Japanese folktales about rabbits living on the moon and making mochi<\/strong> (rice cakes) up there. So the Tsukimi Pie, since its debut in 2019, has always had mochi inside, plus anko<\/strong> (sweet red bean paste). Last year, though, McDonald\u2019s switched things up for the first time by also adding kinoko, roasted soybean powder that tastes a little something like cinnamon.\u00a0As a lover of the original version of the Tsukimi Pie, our Japanese-language reporter Maro\u2019s heart wasn\u2019t broken, but it was wounded, as the addition of the kinoko felt like figurative noise<\/a> that was getting in the way of the interplay of sweetness and saltiness the older Tsukimi Pie had had.<\/p>\n So when word came that the kinoko was gone for 2025, Maro didn\u2019t shed a tear. McDonald\u2019s wasn\u2019t going back to the original recipe either, though, and this year\u2019s Tsukimi Pies, which have just started showing up at McDonald\u2019s branches, have a new guest-star ingredient: butter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u25bc The Tsukimi Pie covers have some nice lunar-themed artwork to admire, in case there\u2019s not an actual full moon in the sky while you\u2019re munching on yours.<\/p>\n Combining anko, the most quintessential indigenous Japanese dessert element, and butter, something that no traditional Japanese recipes call for, might seem like an odd, ill-advised idea. However, anko butter sweets have become a trendy food item in Japan over the last year or two<\/strong>, so this is more a case of McDonald\u2019s keeping up with developments in the Japanese dessert sphere, not them pushing a concept no one has shown any interest in.<\/p>\n Ordinarily, McDonald\u2019s pies are meant to be eaten by simply biting into the top and making your way down. As dessert journalists, though, we felt a more thorough visual examination was in order first, so we opened it up for a look under the proverbial\/edible hood<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Right away, Maro was happy to see that this year\u2019s Tsukimi Pie doesn\u2019t go quite as crazy on the amount of butter as last year\u2019s did with the kinako.<\/p>\n \u25bc This year\u2019s Tsukimi Pie with mochi, anko, and butter<\/p>\n \u25bc Last year\u2019s Tsukimi Pie with mochi, anko, and kinako<\/p>\n However, while it may only look like a modest dab of butter, it makes a significant impact in the taste<\/strong>, Maro found out after taking a bite.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a pie with a hint of butter flavor, or a subtle, buttery essence. Nope, this lights up as BUTTER on your taste receptors<\/strong>, and though the Tsukimi Pie has always been a mix of Japanese and Western elements, this year\u2019s feels like it leaning harder towards the Western-sweets side of the balance.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a complaint, though. As mentioned above, anko and butter has become a popular flavor mix in Japan, and between the sweetness of the anko, the richness of the butter, and the slight saltiness of McDonald\u2019s pie crust, Maro found a lot to like here<\/strong>. However, the extra richness from the butter does make this noticeably heavier-feeling than the previous Tsukimi Pies, which could be a negative if you\u2019re planning to enjoy one extra late at night when the moon is shining its brightest.<\/p>\n In a perfect world, McDonald\u2019s would offer the new Tsukimi Pie alongside the original, butter-less version. Judged entirely on its own merits, though, Maro thinks the 2025 Tsukimi Pie good stuff, and with a price of just 190 yen (US$1.30), it\u2019s a great value too, and plans to eat at least three more of them during their limited but undefined period of availability. And if the cravings for the original Tsukimi Pie get too strong to resist, we can always try making our own again<\/a>.<\/p>\n Photos \u00a9SoraNews24<\/em> Taste-testing the new-recipe Tsukimi Pie. According to Japanese cultural traditions, autumn is the time for tsukimi, or moon-viewing, parties, and it\u2019s also become the season for tsukimi burgers, which feature…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/tp-2.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"