Salt and Butter Caramel: Morinaga’s Masterpiece Raises The Japanese Caramel Bar Tenfold

The Morinaga Salt and Butter Caramel (森永塩バターキャラメル） was first released in a limited edition on March 6th 2012, and quickly became legendary amongst Japan’s obsessive caramel fans known as キャラメルマン*. While Morinaga has created some classic caramels in its time, such as the 珈琲キャラメル (coffee caramel) which contains real coffee and emulates a deep brewed cup of tasty Indonesian Java, or the サツマイモキャラメル, which regrettably has no sweet potato but does have essence of sweet potato scent—they’ve truly outdone themselves with the Salt and Butter Caramel. Not only does this scrumptious culinary treat contain real butter, it uses only 100% France imported rock salt. How does it taste?

It’s hard to describe. If it was possible to lick the sweat off the God Venus herself, it might come close to the subtle, sweet, salty, and rich taste of this culinary delight. The French salt accents the butter flavoring, which is warmly met by the finely refined condensed milk and sugar blended together into a “hi-soft” rectangular caramel. At 25 calories per caramel, each tiny morsel exceeds the standard Morinaga caramel by 5 calories, but it makes a 100% difference in the taste. Once you’ve let one of these babies turn your tongue into French Toast soaked in Grade A Maple Syrup, the standard Morinaga Milk Caramel may never satisfy you again.

(*kyrameru-man aka caramel man. “man” can have a plural meaning in Japanese. Actually, I don’t think there’s a word in Japanese for people obsessed with caramels but we thought there should be such a word, so we made it up.)