Country Ma'am Hokkaido Kinako Cookies 北海道きなこ

Kinako is only just a recent discovery for my tastebuds, but it's one I surprisingly enjoy. Kinako is soybean flour which is made by toasting soybeans and grinding them into flour.

I picked up this bag in Seria for 100 yen or around $1. It contains 5 individually wrapped cookies, each about 3.5cm in diameter.


They are a golden brown colour, mainly due to the fact that theire is caramel colour included in the ingredients.

Breaking the cookie in half it is crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside. There are noticeable white chocolate chips in the middle, I had four chips in mine.

The flavour is unlike other kinako I have tasted. The first taste offers up a slightly burnt flavour, not unlike burnt caramel. Its only at the very end that I get to the slight peanut like flavour that kinako often has. The white chocolate chips don't really add alot to this cookie, mainly because the burnt caramel flavour is the major player here and the white chocolate are mere bits that only provide a burst of flavour if I bite directly on it. It doesn't enhance the flavour though, just detracts from the main theme.


I would have preferred this without the white chocolate chips. They weren't really sweet but they just took away from it flavour wise. If the chips weren't there I could have concentrated more on the actual flavour of the kinako.

I've never tasted Hokkaido kinako before, so I wasn't sure if it was true to the flavour, but asking Yasu who is from Hokkaido, he said it's very much Hokkaido kinako, so obviously it's just me who really prefers the regular non-Hokkaido kinako.

These were ok, but I wouldn't buy them again. Yasu said they were just okay, which doesn't inspire much confidence in me. They're ok for a buck, and the good thing is if you don't like them they're individually wrapped so you can give them away to unassuming people. :)