Oshidori Milk "Cake"

When is a cake not a cake? Well, it's not a cake when it's a slab of hardened condensed milk. I have been intrigued by this product for quite some time. It has been in what I call the "Granny's snacks" section of Peacock Supermarket for over a year. I don't believe this is actually a snack for oldsters though. In fact, I think it is specifically designed for children but is in the section with old-fashioned treats.

For those who don't remember, "Granny's snacks" are what I call groups of unglamorous looking treats which are made by smaller companies. I call them that because they are the types of things which I think grandparents keep shoved in the back of a cabinet for months and dole out when grandchildren clamor for treats. I don't know that that is what happens when these are purchased. I just know that they are exiled to a different snack area than the more glamorous chocolates, Pocky, gum, and other items made by bit ticket companies like Lotte, Meiji, and Morinaga.

A package of 10 sticks of this milk candy cost 210 yen ($2.30). Each stick is 8 cm x 2 cm x. 4 cm (3.1" x .8" x .15") in size, and is 25 calories. They are made by a company called Takahata, which has a lot of the common ecological claptrap that many companies like to mention as part of their PR. The company makes handmade cheeses as well as a variety of these milk candies. I've only ever seen this "milk" variety, but they also have other types like chocolate, strawberry, yogurt and green tea.

I have had enough experience with "milk" flavored foods in Japan to know that these were going to taste like condensed milk. The point that I was most interested in understanding was the texture and the sweetness. The first ingredient is milk, followed by sugar. These are fortified with Vitamin E and the packaging advertises the fact that these are rich in Calcium. Each stick boasts 31 mg. of Calcium. To give you some perspective on the relative value of this food, I can tell you that an average adult needs 1000 mg. a day. Eating one of these is a drop in the bucket.

These sticks are hard, even though they look like they might be brittle. Breaking one in half with your hands isn't trivial, and biting into one feels a little like trying to shatter a hard candy with your teeth. I thought perhaps that one was supposed to suck on one like a hard candy, but that didn't seem to work. Not only don't they melt in your mouth very well, but they are the wrong shape. Maybe they're designed for young children to slobber over for a long period of time and take a long time to eat. The way in which they are sold doesn't seem to indicate that though. The multi-packs on the web site for this product look like souvenir packs for adults.

I actually liked these, despite the fact that I'm not over the moon about condensed milk flavor. They were lightly sweet and the flavor seemed relatively mild compared to other "milk" treats. I liked the texture and how they broke up when I bit into them, though frankly I was a little worried about what they'd do to my teeth. I can't recommend these for everyone. I think they're an acquired taste, but if you like condensed milk, they're definitely worth a sampling.

Kabaya Jersey Milk Candy

I grew up around cows, and I always thought they were cute. To this day, seeing the image of a cow warms my heart a little bit. I just realized that, if I were a former farm boy instead of a woman, that last line would seem mighty creepy. Trust me when I say that I never had an inappropriate relationships with a bovine, unless you consider the one my family had as a pet until my parents sent her off to become a freezer full of steaks and burgers. (Yes, I cried.)


There are a lot of "milk" flavor treats in Japan. I'm never sure what they're supposed to taste like, and some of them don't seem to taste like anything, but when I unwrapped one of these candies, I knew by the color what it was going to taste like. The candy tastes like sweetened condensed milk. It isn't creamy, chewy, or silky despite having cream powder and cream cheese and boasting a content of 8.5% milk. It is nice hard candy though which you can suck on for awhile and fill your mouth with the flavor of the type of sweet condensed milk that you can buy in tubes in Japanese markets and squeeze on strawberries.

There are 26 candies (at 20 calories per candy) in the bag and I found it for 98 yen (about a dollar). In fact, the price was one of the biggest reasons that I decided to sample these. Normally, I'm not really drawn to this sort of thing, but I thought "what the heck" when I noticed how cheap it was. I was really on the fence with my rating on this, but not because it isn't well-made or enjoyable. "Happy" ratings are reserved for things which I think I'll buy again, and I'm not sure I'd buy this again because I'm just not a huge fan of condensed milk. However, if I were, I'd certainly get these again.

Sweetened Condensed Milk Cake

Back home (that'd be the U.S. for me), condensed milk is associated with baking, particularly in certain fudge and candy recipes. Very few people ever consider condensed milk as something that you consume directly on other foods like fruit or cake. In Japan, tubes of sweetened condensed milk are often sold next to strawberries because it is used like a condiment or dessert topping.


Personally, I find the taste of pure condensed milk a bit funky, though I know a lot of people (both foreign and Japanese) who really like it. One of my former coworkers, a British lady, loved to eat the stuff she bought in Japan right out of the tube. It was ambrosia to her. It is so suited to tastes in Japan that Krispy Kreme has made a "cream cheese" donut which is actually full of tangy sweetened condensed milk. I've had it, and I didn't care for it.

These were made by snack food powerhouse Morinaga. The web site listed on the box points you to their biscuits web site, but these cakes are not listed in the products section of the site they direct you to. I did find a generic listing on their main site, but it didn't provide much information. I can't track the history of this product, but I think these cakes are an old-fashioned product for them and I'm pretty sure that I have seen them around since I first came to Japan nearly two decades ago. I think this is one of those things which appeals to older folks with a sense of nostalgia rather than to the younger market in Japan. The box design, with an old-fashioned picture of a bastardized version of Elsie the Borden cow supports this idea if nothing else.


My husband picked up this box of 6 sandwich cakes at a discount sweets shop. Each is about 5 cm./2 in. in diameter. The cake on the outside is called しっとりケーキ (shittori cake) which is a sort of moist, soft cake. There are recipes for these types of cakes as well as cookies on the web. The main components are "soft flour", margarine, and sugar. These cakes are made with shortening instead of margarine and also include tapioca. The cake is a bit dense, but very soft and moist.


The cakes smell vaguely of a bakery. It's a nondescript smell you associate with baked goods rather than a particular flavor. The filling is creamy, lightly sweetened and tastes of milk. It doesn't carry much of a condensed milk flavor, but that is a bit of a plus in my opinion. The ratio of cake to filling is pretty well-balanced. The texture is very good and I liked these quite a bit. My husband, on the other hand, felt that they were fine, but that they were too bland for him and that the calorie to pleasure ratio didn't justify eating them. Keep in mind that he likes things sweeter than I and texture weighs more heavily in how much I like something than flavor. This is a good type of treat to enjoy if you aren't a fan of super sweet things. Each cake is a relatively modest 135 calories per cake and a box of 6 costs about 200 yen ($2.23).

This is the sort of thing I'd pick up on a whim if I was seriously in the mood for a cream filled cake. I'd also welcome being given one as a gift at the office if someone was doling out tea-time treats. I imagine a box of these would also be nice to keep on hand if you frequently encountered unexpected guests and wanted cakes that weren't going to go stale if they were stored for a long time to serve with tea or coffee on hand. The expiration date on these was about 4 months from when they were purchased.