Bourbon Fuwa Maki Milk Cake

I believe that cows, if they were the size of dogs, would be pets, and we wouldn't be eating them. Sure, they go around dropping big cow pies, fart a lot, and they chew their cuds, but cows are cute. They have big, brown eyes and they're not particularly noisy. If one had a cow instead of a dog, neighbors would never complain. All you'd have to do to keep your pet cow in line is set it out for grass eating in the backyard. I'm guessing you could also get your miniature cow to give you enough milk on a daily basis for your coffee or tea. Frankly, I'm surprised no one has started to breed "toy cows" for such purposes.


At any rate, I'm not necessarily big into cuteness, but I like cow motifs. I couldn't resist buying this Bourbon "milk cake" because it not only has a cow motif on the outside, but cow spots on the cake itself. That's just too cool to pass up. These cakes have been around in convenience stores for awhile. They usually sell for 100 yen ($1.10), but I got mine for 89 yen (98 cents) at Okashi no Machioka.

The cake is a bit on the small size at 11 cm x 5 cm (4.3" x 2"). Note that these are designed to last for awhile as the expiration date on mine was 4 months after the purchase date. I ate mine within 3 days of purchase though because I didn't trust that it'd be the same quality after a few months. There are 179 calories in the entire 43.5 gram (1.5 oz.) cake. One might compare this to one of the best known snack cakes with cream in the center, the Twinkie, which weighs in at 150 calories for a similarly sized amount of cake.

The cake mainly smells like sweet vanilla and milk. When you touch the cake, it's texture is slightly sticky and tacky on the outside, and the cake is rather dry. The filling is super creamy, and fatty. I read recently that "fat" is actually detected by the tongue as a taste, and if you're big into fat "flavor", this would be a delight. Note that this isn't made with butter though. It's made with shortening and "creaming powder". It also includes Sorbitol, a sugar alcohol, and maltose.

There is an odd aftertaste associated with these types of cakes made by Bourbon that are supposed to last awhile. It's hard to pin down, but it seems like something that's hiding under all of the sugar. Mostly, this is just sweet and fatty. There isn't much of a "vanilla" flavor so much as a "milk" one, which is no surprise since this is a "milk" cake, but us foreign folks are accustomed to vanilla in white cakes so I figured it was worth mentioning. My husband wasn't fond of this because it didn't taste like much of anything to him. This is despite the fact that he likes sweets (and very sweet things) more than me.

This is good, and reminds me a lot of a slightly off-brand Hostess snack cake clone. If I was in the mood for this type of thing, I'd certainly choose this over any other options. That being said, I rarely eat snack cakes (which is why they don't get reviewed very often). I'm unlikely to buy this again because I imagine that it'll be off the market before my tastes turn toward sponge cake with cream filling again. I'd certainly recommend giving these a try as long as you're not very sensitive to preservatives.