If you've ever been to Japan, you'll know that there are a lot of seasonal snacks. Many convenience stores and supermarkets have shelves of products with seasonal flavors.

For example, one of the most famous fall flavors is sweet potato!

At my neighborhood 7-Eleven, I found a delicious sweet potato-flavored cookie called kantorī māmu marude yakiimo aji カントリーマアムまるで焼きいも味, which means “Country Ma'am just like baked sweet potatoes.” I bought it right away!

Yakiimo 焼き芋 means Asian-style baked sweet potatoes, usually sold from wagons.

When you break one open, it looks like this:

How can you express such a baked sweet potato in a cookie?

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Country Ma'am “Just Like a Baked Sweet Potato” Flavor

If you've seen Country Ma'am cookies before, you'll notice that the package of this yakiimo-flavored version is clearly different from the regular ones. It has a hand-drawn style illustration of a baked sweet potato, a banner just like the ones you'll sometimes see on vending wagons that says “baked sweet potato,” and a cross-sectional view of the cookie printed on it. To be honest, the first reason I decided to buy these cookies was that I was attracted to the cute package.

When I opened it, I found that the cookies were individually wrapped in small purple packets. One bag contains 9 cookies. I quickly opened one of them to reveal a pale purple cookie that resembled the skin of a sweet potato!

I broke it in half and found that the inside was yellow. It really looked like a baked sweet potato.

First, I tried it as it was. The sweetness was more subdued than I expected, and the taste was so good that I could easily eat several pieces.

On the back of the bag, there was a recommendation to heat it up in the microwave. They claim that if you heat it up in the microwave, it will taste like it was freshly baked. A freshly baked sweet potato-flavor Country Ma'am must be absolutely delicious. I just had to try it!

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Microwave time

So I laid out three pieces on a plate according to the instructions and heated them in the microwave for 20 seconds at 500W without using cling wrap.

As soon as I tried them, they were completely different from before I heated them up!

First, the sweetness. Before I warmed it up, the sweetness was moderate as I mentioned earlier, but after warming it up, the sweetness and sweet potato taste became much stronger.

Next was the texture. Originally, Country Ma'am is a soft cookie, but after microwaving it, it was much softer. The strength of the sweetness, the taste of the baked sweet potato, and the increased softness made it a perfect baked sweet potato. The name of the product says, "It tastes like baked sweet potatoes," but to be honest, I think it was a perfect reproduction of a baked sweet potato. It tasted good before heating it up, but it tasted even better afterward. When you eat them, I recommend heating them up first.

It was so delicious that I ate all three pieces in no time at all. If you find them, please enjoy the taste of autumn!

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More about Country Ma'am cookies

Country Ma'am (Kantorī māmu カントリーマアム) is a popular snack from Fujiya, one of Japan's most famous snack manufacturers, and has been sold since 1984. It comes in various flavors, some of which are area-limited. For example, the Aomori apple flavor is sold in the Tohoku area, where Aomori Prefecture is famous for its apples. Green tea is a well-known product of Kyoto, so a green tea flavor Kantorī māmu is circulated there.

This website is about a Kantorī māmu event being held at Tokyo Station from September 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021.

This event is for a special version of Kantorī māmu which is completely coated with chocolate!

I love this flavor too. For more information, you can also check out the website for Tokyo Okashi Land 東京おかしランド !

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Information

• Country Ma'am official website
• Note: You may need to use a proxy shopping service such as Buyee or White Rabbit Express if you'd like to have it shipped internationally