Tohato All Osatsu Cookies

If you're a kid and offered a choice of cupcakes, you will always take the chocolate one. The coconut one is probably your last choice, though raisin may trail behind even coconut. One thing about growing up is different sorts of food gets you worked up. It's not that chocolate isn't great, but you've spent your whole life gobbling chocolate and it's lost some of its luster.

I realize that the previous paragraph is likely heresy to some people, but if I were offered the choice of a chocolate chip cookie or a sweet potato cookie, I'd take the sweet potato one hands down. For the record, I'd also take a pumpkin or chestnut one over chocolate. I love chocolate, but it's pretty predictable and I'd like my calories to carry a bit more interest. I know that I risk dozens of chocolate lovers (possibly hundreds) wanting to beat me to death with Hershey bars, but there the truth is in its vegetable-preferring honesty.


In my quest to track down and sample all of the "All (insert flavor here)" brand of cookies, I was delighted to come across these sweet potato ones. Previously, I favorably reviewed the All Cranberry VEPlus ones. These cookies are similar in construction, though different in size. The cranberry ones were mini cookies and these are full-size at about 5 cm. square (about 2 in.). Each cookie is 28 calories and there are 14 in the bag. I bought these on sale for 98 yen (about $1) at a local supermarket.

The cookies taste pretty much like sweetened sweet potato mixed with a relatively bland biscuit-like cookie. The cookies are made like a flat bar cookie with a 2 layers of cookie dough sandwiching in some dried sweet potato. They're slightly chewy because of the sweet potato (which is like a mashed raisin after drying) and not too sweet. The texture of the cookie is between a cracker and bread. It sounds bad, but it's actually pretty nice. They look dry, but are tender.

I really liked these and think they'd make a great cookie to have with tea as an early evening snack. At 112 calories for 4 cookies, you could have quite a few without eating too much and I think they're likely better for you despite being a cookie. Besides being a sucker for sweet potato, I also love varying textures and these are unique in a pleasurable way. I'd definitely buy them again, but I think some people might feel they aren't decadent enough to be a real treat.