Fujiya Country Ma'am Vanilla Ice Cream / 不二家カントリーマアム（バニラアイス）

Fujiya Country Ma'am Vanilla Ice Cream /
不二家カントリーマアム（バニラアイス）

Fujiya (a nationwide chain of confectionery stores and restaurants in Japan) and Akagi Nyugyo (a practical ice cream maker in Sitama perf., Japan) collaborated and launched this "Fujiya Country Ma'am Vanilla Ice Cream" September 25, 2012.



Country Ma'am is a cookie name of Fujiya and it's been brought out in July, 1984 and the very first batch was sold in Hokkaido, then this product gradually spread out all over Japan.




To those who are not familiar with Fujiya Country Ma'am, here're some history and its characteristics from the HP.

<History>
A model for Country Ma'am was American fresh-baked cookies which appeared in 1970s to 1980s.
Back in those days, mothers' handmade cookie was in rage and a large numbers of cookie shops opened in towns.
This wave surely came to Japan and some shops started cookie shops went hand-in-hand with big brands from the states.
A wide variety of cookies was available; nuts, dried fruits, and chocolate chips. 
Fujya's goal was to have "crispy outside, soft inside," but needless to say it couldn't be done in whim and even to explain the interesting texture to customers was hard.

<Cookies>
This cookie was created with a lot of Kodawari, which means carefulness and meticulousness.
1. Cookie Dough: They created 2 types of dough to provide its famous "crispy outside, soft inside" cookie.
2. Chocolate Chips: They chose chocolate for exclusive use for Country Ma'am to give rich flavor to each bite.
3. Baking: They spend longer time to bake the cookies with low heat. With the lower heat, outside of cookie is crispy but the inside of the cookie stays moist. This also evokes chocolate flavor.
4. Constant Improvement: To make more and more tasty cookies, they prototype every day little by little. And it's more than 40 times since they launched this product and they would continue this preproduction operation.

This is a brief video (only in Japanese).
http://www.fujiya-peko.co.jp/countrymaam/about/make.html

Ok, here comes details of Country Ma'am Vanilla Ice Cream.

This vanilla ice cream contains crushed Country Ma'am, so basically it tasted like cookie and cream ice cream.
However, Country Ma'am has its distinguished rich flavor and that made the ice cream much different from the regular, well-known, or so typical cookie and cream ice cream.

Dark dots were chocolate and light brown dices were soft-but-crunchy cookie dough.

Though, Country Ma'am isn't only sweet but also has slightly salty taste in it.
The hint of saltiness gave this smooth and sweet ice cream little accent and.

An interesting aspect is that this ice cream contains Shiro-an, which is white azuki beans.
"An" (a.k.a. azuki beans, sweet red beans) is usually used in Wagashi, Japanese-style confectioneries and not in Western ones.

*On the label, it says Shiro-an but in the parentheses it says kidney beans, sugar, and starch syrup so it means they call it Shiro-an but technically they're not using any An made from azuki beans.
But as I didn't really notice any of those flavor, it wasn't something shocking to me.

To find this ice cream, I literally went to 10 conbini near my house and office on the launching day.
I finally found one of the conbini chain called Mini Stop and so happy to get this.
When I was at the cashier, I said, "None had this ice cream except here!" and then the clerk said she's surprised and some of the shops might have lost all the stocks.
Phew, lucky and so glad to try this ice cream.

If you wanna try this but can't find it, I'm sure if you crash Country Ma'am cookies and mix with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, it'd be pretty much the same but cost-efficient.

Content : 121 ml
Calories: 231 kcal
Protein : 2.9 gm
Fat: 11.2 gm
Carbs: 29.9 gm
Natrium: 71mg

Price: 126 JPY

Allergic component: wheat, milk, and egg

Available at conbini and supermarket