Fujiya Country Ma'am Double Chocolate Crispy Cookies

There was often a confusion in Japan about the difference between "ma'am" and "mom". In terms of how they get translated from English to Japanese, the sounds are very likely indistinguishable. That's my way of saying that I don't know if this brand name is meant to bring to mind an old-fashioned mother in an apron making fresh baked cookies for her brood or if it's meant to elicit a gentile woman who lives in the country and serves her guests, for who she is the quintessential hostess, an array of fine sweets at tea time. Of course, it doesn't matter, but part of what I think about is branding and who it is meant to appeal to. The names of successful products are important and savvy companies know it.

The Country Ma'am line has expanded since its early days of being the soft cookie that you put in the microwave for a fresh-baked experience. Part of that expansion is the "crispy" line. Part of it at present is also a summer offering of cookies that are supposed to be put in the freezer. Whatever your temperature wishes, Country Ma'am appears to have you covered - hot, cold, or room temperature. The crispy line is for those who don't want to fuss with major appliances. I tried one in the microwave and it didn't do anything for it and I'm pretty sure that freezing wouldn't do much for it either.

I picked this up for $1.50 at Daiso Japan. Each bag contains 6 cookies at 46 calories per tiny cookie. One of the things that tends to put me off of the Country Ma'am line is that they are so fatty and rich for such a small morsel. In terms of the calories, they are the Oreo of the Japanese cookie world. I tend to prefer to spend my calories on a meringue cookie or a rice cracker (sembei) instead of two small bites of cookie. This consideration may not matter to most people, but it matters to me.

The point of the crispy cookies is rather obviously to offer a cookie which is crunchy. These do deliver on that front. They are tiny little crispy cookies (a little bigger than a quarter or 100-yen coin) with a deeply rich chocolate flavor. In fact, the flavor is reminiscent of a brownie. They are very similar to something that I recently tried here in the U.S. called "brownie brittle." The main difference is that the brittle is super crispy and these are between a regular cookie and that brittle in texture.

The call on this is hard to make. These are good little cookies with a nice texture, but given the small size, I'd rather blow 50 calories on a slab of brownie brittle (which will give me far more time with the texture and flavor for the same calorie footprint). However, not everyone can get brownie brittle and the comparison isn't quite fair. If I was in Japan and I wanted to have a shelf-stable bite with a nice chocolate punch, I'd buy these. Here in the U.S., with other options, I can't see choosing this again. So, I'm rating this as "indifferent", but that's only because I have other choices which are cheaper, more flavorful, and a better calorie to enjoyment ratio. If I were still in Japan, these would probably get a "happy" rating.

Country Ma'am Banana Bread and Brownie Cookies (product information)

Country Ma'am is releasing two new flavors, one of which is a bit on the unusual side for Japan. The web site mentions that "banana bread" is "like pound cake" in the U.S. That's not quite right, and it actually is irrelevant to the cookies, but the fact that they feel it is necessary to explain that shows just how unusual banana bread is in Japan. It's not strange to find the occasional "banana cake" or muffin, but not "bread". The promotional material tells us that the banana version is made with Philippine bananas and has the smell of wheat. The brownie version boasts California almonds and, again, the promotional material asserts that mixing nuts in brownies is an American thing.

If you've never had Country Ma'am cookies, they're known for being crispy on the outside and a bit soft and fudge-like on the inside. If you pop them in a microwave for a short time, then they heat up as something akin to a fresh-baked cookie... or akin to a freshly baked mass-manufactured shelf-stable cookie. They're actually pretty good and occupy a unique niche in the Japanese market. These two varieties are sold currently in small five-packs. My guess is that they are most easily located in convenience stores and I'm unlikely to encounter either variety at Japanese markets here. If I find one though, I might give it a try.

Country Ma'am Crispy Cookies

Country Ma'am brand cookies have been marketed for their crispy exterior and soft chewy interior since the brand's inception. This makes the appearance of these "crispy" variety rather curious. I guess that the company has run out of bizarre flavor ideas and decided that overcooking their basic chocolate chip cookie until it is super crispy was the new way to go.



My husband picked these cookies out at Seiyu supermarket for 178 yen ($1.95) . The portion of cookie is quite small. Each is about 4 cm (1.6 in.) in diameter and there are only 12 of them in the bag. Each cookie is 48 calories. For a plain chocolate chip cookie, as opposed to a chocolate chocolate chip version which was also available, these are very dark. That's the reason that I believe this is their same basic cookie just baked longer.

The cookies smell of coconut and mild cocoa. The flavor is also very strongly coconut-based and has a pretty good chocolate chip flavor on the first bite, but it seems to fade by the second or third bite. They're also on the sweeter side. The texture is, as expected, very crispy. This has none of the nice, soft chewy aspects of the mainstream Country Ma'am cookies. That isn't a bad thing though. They're quite tasty and satisfying.

I'm not a serious fan of cookies in general, but I found these quite likable. I think they'd make a nice tea time snack if you can limit yourself to a few tiny cookies. They also probably would do well dunked in milk or coffee. They are pretty crumbly, but most people can probably dunk and put a whole one in their mouths. If you find yourself craving a Chips Ahoy, these would make a nice higher quality substitute.

Country Ma'am "Morning Toast" Cookies

It seems that a lot of new releases of funky flavors of various foods seem to show up at the same time at convenience stores. I'm sure there's some sort of rhyme or reason to the release scheduling, but I often find that there are "fertile" and "fallow" periods in my snack purchases. Sometimes I'll wander the aisles in boredom... well, the aisles are short so it's more like an extremely brief stroll... and at others I'll buy more than I can review in one week. These cookies showed up at 7-11 during what I consider a "fertile" phase for snack purchasing.

I've reviewed a lot of Country Ma'am cookies, and frankly, I had little intention of buying more in the immediate future. It's not that they aren't good cookies. They're actually pretty nice with their crispy outer shell and chewy interior. They are even more impressive if you warm them a bit in the microwave as the center takes on a quasi-brownie-like somewhat gooey interior. The main reason I was going to stay away from them is that they seem to be shrinking in size with every incarnation. These cookies are minuscule at around 3 cm in diameter (1.18 in.). I think these cookies are like a collapsing star. Some day, I'll open the bag and my hand will enter a black hole.

Generally, tiny treats don't bother me, but they're also 50 calories a pop for something which is two tiny bites at a stretch. You could easily gobble up this whole bag of 5 tiny, wastefully individually wrapped cookies and still have room for more. At least real "butter" is an ingredient in these. That's something they have going for them.

That being said, the promise of chocolate chip cookies that taste like buttered toast lured me in. I couldn't say no when I saw the little white bag on the shelf for a measly 105 yen ($1.14). When I opened the first packet, the smell of the cookies didn't encourage me as it was a bit like some sort of funky, day-old bread. My first taste was of a bit of the crispy shell that broke off in the packet. That part also tasted like weird, stale bread.

The buttery part of this cookie is concentrated in the interior, and the flavor is muted when you eat it cold. If you follow the instructions on the packet and warm it in the microwave (20 seconds is recommended for all of the cookies, but I did only one for about 8 seconds), the cookie's "butter" flavor comes alive and the center's texture is very, satisfying. It's not quite like a fresh-baked cookie, but it comes close. It's buttery, sweet, and nicely chocolate-flavored when warm.

I'm rather torn about these cookies. I liked the novel experience of their flavor combination, and unlike some of the other strange Japanese snack taste marriages that I have sampled, these two flavors ("buttered toast" and "chocolate chip cookie") went together decently. On the other hand, I'm not sure that they're worth repeating as they didn't bowl me over. Frankly, I think other Country Ma'am cookies, particularly the plain chocolate chip, are better. The best thing these have going for them is that they are thicker than average cookies from the Country Ma'am line so the gooey filling is more expansive.

If you have a chance to sample these, I recommend picking up a bag, but I also strongly advise warming them up rather than eating them as is. I think that the "toast" part is too strong when cold and the butter part is really brought out when heated. Though I can say they're worth trying, I can also say that one bag with 5 cookies is going to be "enough" for me and I wouldn't buy them again. It's not because I didn't enjoy them, but because they are too small and fattening for repeated consumption and just not significantly better than a classic chocolate chip cookie.

Country Ma'am Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

My husband and I have adopted a weekend habit of walking along the long and winding shopping street near our home. This is always a pleasant way to spend some time getting some exercise and doing some necessary shopping. Unfortunately, it has also brought along a less useful habit of checking out snack shops and buying up whatever catches our fancy. My buffer of posts is growing bigger and bigger, as is my stash of uneaten snack foods.

During one such stroll, we went to Okashi no Machioka and came across some bargains. We bought some KitKat mini flavors we'd been ignoring at their original price of 300-400 yen, but were now on offer at a discount. We also picked up some new items including these strawberry cookies. My husband being an aficionado of all things strawberry (and banana) snapped them up for about 280 yen ($3.10). Note that we sampled one strawberry cookie in this brand as part of a variety pack before, but it was a different cookie than these ones.


The package contains 16 small individually-wrapped cookies. Each is 4 cm in diameter (1.6 in.) and 49 calories. The front of the bag says that these are made with "tsubu tsubu" or "pebbly" strawberries. That is a reference to the fact that little bumpy bits of strawberry can be seen in the coating on the top of the cookie.

Like all Country Ma'am cookies, these are slightly crispy on the outside and tender and chewy on the inside. They also are better when heated in the microwave or toaster oven. I've got no issues with these cookies on the texture front. The problem I have with them is the taste. At first, the strawberry hits you rather mildly and pleasantly, then you get to the chocolate chip cookie flavor in the center. By the end, when the somewhat sour and tangy strawberry flavor starts to flower in your mouth, the combination tastes discordant. I think the strawberry flavor which worked pretty well in the previous non-pebbly variety isn't working so well here. Perhaps the little bits of fruit make the tart strawberry flavor a bit too intense such that it doesn't make a nice pairing with the chocolate chip cookie.

My husband would give these an indifferent rating. He'll finish the bag, but wouldn't buy them again. I would be tossing the rest of them out because I just found them unpleasant.

Country Ma'am Chocolate Banana Cookies

Raise your hand if you have never eaten banana bread. Okay, now keep in mind that you are sitting in front of your computer and no one can see if you've actually raised your hand and leave me a comment instead. Anyone who has ever eaten a real banana or a baked good made with them knows what they should taste like. I'm guessing that the makers of most banana-flavored mass-produced snack foods either don't know or don't care because they never taste right.


The fact that banana-flavored items almost always fail is one of the reasons I never buy them for sampling. My husband, on the other hand, is more open-minded and is willing to subject himself to such things. He purchased these Country Ma'am cookies at New Days convenience store for around 120 yen (about $1.20) for 5 half-dollar-coin-sized (100-yen-coin-sized) cookies. Each cookie is 51 calories.


They smell like fake banana oil or esters, but the ingredients list claims they're flavored with banana juice and banana puree. Of course, they're also flavored with "cheese", which is exceptionally weird. The package says they're "the American traditional homemade country cookie", but I'm pretty sure we're not putting cheese in our banana cookies back home.


Like all Country Ma'am cookies, they have a somewhat crispy cookie shell and tender, chewy interior. They're good on the texture front (as always), but the taste is so overwhelmingly strong in terms of the banana flavor that I find them pretty unbearable. My husband, who has a weaker sense of taste and smell than I and likes banana-flavored things, said he thought they were good, but did taste like they had fake flavoring. I have to give Fujiya credit for managing to make these taste like they have fake flavoring even when they have real flavoring. It's quite an achievement. My husband says he'd buy them again. Personally, I ate one half of one cookie and that was all I needed. I've certainly had worse than this, but I won't be fighting him for the rest of the bag.

Country Ma'am Black Sugar Cookies

You never see molasses for sale in Japan. In fact, it's actually rather difficult to explain the concept of molasses to students. Gingerbread doesn't exist in Japanese culture (as far as I've seen). Commonly available Japanese brown sugar is also really light in color and weak in flavor, so you get the feeling the native's don't have a taste for strong molasses flavor.


These cookies are called "black sugar" cookies, but what they actually are are molasses chocolate chip cookies. The goop pictured on the front of the bag even looks like molasses, though the web site calls it something like "black sugar nectar". So, maybe Fujiya is trying to cultivate a taste for molasses, or just coming up with yet another flavor of Country Ma'am cookies.


There are five tiny cookies in the pack and it costs about 150 yen ($1.60). Each cookie is 3.5 cm (1.4 in.) in diameter (10.5 g./.34 oz.) and they're 48 calories per cookie.


Unsurprisingly, the cookies smell like dark brown sugar or weak molasses. The texture is perfect. They're crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. There are generous amounts of chocolate chips in them, so you can taste the chocolate very well and the sweetness level is about right. The flavor, however, is a matter of taste. My husband liked these, but I couldn't get on board with the combination of chocolate and molasses. To me, it was just not a good mix.

I think someone who likes chocolate chips in their gingerbread would love these and though I certainly wouldn't buy them again, I can't fault anything about the cookie. It's just a matter of my tastes.

Country Ma'am 5 Flavor Cookie Assortment

Back when I first moved to Japan, there was a "Fujiya" cake shop close to the train station nearest my apartment. The shop sold elaborate freshly made cakes for a pretty hefty price as well as packaged sweets. The shop featured a "life size" (about the size of a 6 year-old child) statue of the company's lip-licking mascot, Peko-chan. Fans of Peko-chan can join a fan club on Fujiya's web site and get their hands on a variety of junk bearing her likeness.

The Fujiya cake shop closed up some time ago, but I still run across their mass-produced sweets on occasion. They make a ubiquitous milk fondant filled chocolate with Peko-chan on the cover and Country Ma'am cookies. As I mentioned in a previous review, Country Ma'am are a soft, chewy cookie with a crispy exterior which are even better when microwaved.


This box of assorted cookies includes the usual cocoa chocolate chip and vanilla as well as three new flavors: cream cheese, strawberry, and "delicious chocolate". There are two of each kind of cookie in the box, but I'm only going to review the three new flavors since I already reviewed the vanilla and cocoa in the aforementioned review. Ten small cookies are sold for about 200 yen ($2.18). Since the big bag of cocoa and vanilla cookies alone is about 400 yen ($4.36) and contains 24 cookies, you're paying a slight premium for the new flavors.

From left: strawberry, cream cheese, delicious chocolate
(Click this image for a more detailed, larger one.)

All of the cookies have the same basic texture. The outside is crispy and the inside is moist and chewy. The strawberry one seems a little strange though since it seems like pinkish dough was applied to the outside of a vanilla cookie. The interior is not pink.

• strawberry: This smells pleasantly of real strawberries. The taste is slightly tart, with a nice real strawberry flavor and it is mildly sweet. There was exactly one white chocolate chip on the edge of this.
• cream cheese: This one smelled very faintly of cream cheese and had a nice tangy cream cheese flavor. Like the strawberry, there was exactly one white chocolate chip stuck in the top.
• delicious chocolate: They smelled nicely chocolatey and the taste as compared to the regular "cocoa" flavor was of deeper chocolate. I'd say it was marginally better than the cocoa version. There also appeared to be a few tiny fragments of nuts in this, but you can't taste them because they're too small. The ingredients list for this cookie mentioned almond paste, but I couldn't detect any of it in the taste.

The packaging is rather misleading and I think that it has been digitally constructed to make you think that all of the cookies are full of chocolate chips. The cream cheese and strawberry seem like they were made by having a machine drop just one chip on the corner as that was all that was in each of them. I get the feeling that that chip is simply there to add the slightest bit of credibility to the "choco chip" claim written on the packages. That being said, I don't think the cookies suffer at all for their lack of chips. They probably would be too sweet with more of them.

These were all nice cookies with good flavor and excellent texture, but they carry the tiniest hint of an artificial flavor which I connect with the preservatives or the packaging. The texture is unique among the various cookies you can buy in Japan and is about as close to homemade that you can get from packaged cookies. That is not to say they are anywhere near as good as a home-baked chewy cookie, but they're nice in a pinch.

Country Ma'am Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Translations are a tricky thing. Take the word "kaboucha", for instance. In Japanese, it means pumpkin. In English, the concept of a pumpkin is usually that of a big, round orange thing which you scoop the guts out of and carve weird faces in or make a pie from. In Japan, it's a small green thing that tastes like squash and you use it in stews or eat it as a vegetable side dish. It doesn't taste the same as an American pumpkin, yet it is nearly as versatile. Mainly, it just has a more potent hit of squash taste which tends to shine through more strongly when you use it in things like cookies and cakes.


If you buy any sweets with pumpkin included, you have to learn to expect that squash flavor. You also have to forget about any notion of spices being added to cut through the vegetable nature. There will be no cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger included.

There 16 individually wrapped cookies in the bag. Each cookie is 50 calories and quite small at 4 cm in diameter (1.6 in.). They are made with "pumpkin paste" and pumpkin-flavored chocolate chips. All of the chips are yellow to reflect this fact.


Country Ma'am cookies have a signature texture combination which you will find in every single cookie produced under that brand name. They are crunchy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. It's a very gratifying cookie on that front and lends itself to being heated in the microwave. There are instructions on the side of the bag advising you how long to heat them in the microwave or toaster oven.

These smell very faintly of squash and mostly just smell like a basic cookie. They are quite sweet, but not over the top. The balance of sugar with the vegetable taste of the pumpkin is well-matched. The chips are much sweeter than the cookie itself.

These are enjoyable, but a bit of an acquired taste. I think they slightly challenge the palate and that they won't be as tasty to people who have no experience with similar foods. Surprisingly, my husband liked these even though he doesn't like kaboucha (Japanese pumpkin). I wouldn't buy these again, but we'll finish the bag and I certainly don't regret having had a chance to sample them.

Country Ma'am Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Mini Cookies

Sometimes it amazes me how the weight of the packaging can weigh as much as the actual product contained within it. These Country Ma'am cookies are a good example of that sort of thing happening. There are five tiny individually wrapped cookies inside of an over-sized plastic package. The cookies are a little less than 4 cm (about 1.5 inches) in diameter. If I could compare the volume of plastic to the volume of cookie, I'm guessing the plastic would win by a nose.


These cookies are a limited edition and classified as a "premium" variety. They cost 158 yen ($1.71) which is very pricey for so few cookies. My guess is that they will vanish by the end of spring as sweet potato treats are largely confined to winter consumption. However, Fujiya doesn't mention when they will be withdrawn on their web site. The packaging, which is not represented very well in my photos, is purple and resembles the flesh of a sweet potato.


Each cookie has the trademark textural elements of the Country Ma'am brand. They have a crispy external shell and a moist, chewy interior. The cookies are so tiny though that you don't get much of a sense of their chewiness. They smell like a regular chocolate chip cookie with only the faintest hint of sweet potato.


The taste hits you in two waves. First, you get a general chocolate chip cookie flavor, but a wave of super strong sweet potato flavor washes over you after it. I love sweet potato, but this was way too much even for me. It's insanely concentrated and overbearing. It's as if you're eating powdered sweet potato in the cookie. The ingredients do include "sweet potato paste", so there may indeed be some sort of heavily processed and concentrated sweet potato. The chocolate chip flavor is bold and bordering on bittersweet. It does nothing to enhance the taste and is a poor match of flavors. White chocolate chips would have been better.

I'm surprised at how unlikeable this cookie is. I expected to enjoy it and ended up finding it unpleasant due to the strength of the sweet potato. It borders on tasting like what a near rotting sweet potato might taste, and I certainly wouldn't buy these again.

Chocochip Cookies — Country Ma'am vs TopValu

There's an intriguing web site called "Second Rate Snacks" which places big brand name snacks head-to-head with knock-offs. This is a concept which is especially useful in America where knock-offs are plentiful. In Japan, there aren't quite so many of these though there are a few, particularly of things like Pocky and Pretz.

While it may seem like I'm ripping off someone's cool concept, the incentive for this post actually came from my husband who saw both of these bags of similar cookies and thought it would be interesting to see if there was a qualitative difference. I can guarantee that this sort of comparison won't be happening very often. It's too much work and more junk food than I want to have around. My hat goes off to the folks at Second Rate Snacks who manage to do this regularly (and do it so well).

The way in which both of these packages are designed clearly shows that TopValu, maker of cut-rate food and goods all over Japan and Asia, was attempting to copy Country Ma'am. Country Ma'am, which is a brand offered by mega confectioner Fujiya, has been around for quite awhile and sells a variety of versions of it's semi-soft cookies. They're supposed to be especially good if you pop them in the microwave to make them softer.



The TopValu brand is about 150 yen ($1.50 USD) cheaper than Country Ma'am and contains 2 more cookies in the bag. All of the cookies come in individually wrapped packets. This is the sort of excessive packaging that Japan excels at and is often criticized for, though it does make it easy to keep the cookies around for a long time once the main package has been opened.

Country Ma'am on top, TopValu on the bottom

The cookies in both brands are the same weight, 10.5 grams (.37 oz.), but the TopValu cookies are smaller. It's difficult to tell from the picture, but they are also duller, paler and drier looking. They all carry essentially the same calorie counts at 50 calories per tiny cookie.

Country Ma'am chocolate, TopValu chocolate, Country Ma'am vanilla, TopValu vanilla (click to see a much bigger version)

If you look at the cookies when they are cut open, you can see that there is more moisture in the center of the Country Ma'am cookies. Both bags have the same claims on the front of their packages. They say their cookies are crispy on the outside and moist inside, but Country Ma'am clearly lives up to this claim much better than TopValu.

The proof is in the taste and texture, however, so here is what I thought:

• Chocolate TopValu: Crumbly outside and slightly chewy inside with a nice chocolate flavor
• Chocolate Country Ma'am: Crunchy outside, softer interior with a nice texture, good chocolate flavor which is richer and deeper than the TopValu chocolate cookie
• Vanilla TopValu: Crumbly outside, slightly chewy interior, bittersweet chips with a much heavier note of bitter than usual for this kind of cookie
• Vanilla Country Ma'am: Crunchy outside, soft interior, a bit of a pleasant cookie dough flavor inside, nice milk chocolate chips
  

Country Ma'am is, unsurprisingly, a better cookie. In particular, the vanilla cookies are far better than the TopValu vanilla ones which border on unpleasant with the heavy bitter aftertaste of the chips in their cookies. The main difference between the chocolate ones is in texture. TopValu's cookies are so dry on the outside that they nearly crumble into a powder in your mouth. Country Ma'am's crispy exterior is more like a crispy shell which cleaves cleanly. The TopValu cookies fail rather badly if you plan to microwave them a bit to warm them up. At that point, the dryness of the cookies becomes a serious liability whereas Country Ma'am holds up well.

A look at the ingredients list reveals that both cookies use similar components, but sugar is higher on the list on the Country Ma'am cookies. Since sugar adds moisture, crispness and softness to baked goods, this suits the differences between the texture of the Country Ma'am cookies and TopValu.

I consume Country Ma'am cookies very infrequently because I'm much more inclined to bake my own if I'm in a cookie mood. However, if I were inclined to pick up some chocolate chip cookies or have a bag to share with others, I'd pay the extra money, take a few fewer cookies, and go for the Country Ma'am cookies over the TopValu ones.