My Second Favorite Cookie

For a self-proclaimed cookie hater, I seem to be writing about cookies a lot lately. But, 'tis the season. Christmas you say? Oh no, a far better season: Mallomar season.


Mallomars are something I never ate growing up, or even saw in the grocery store, but I feel like I heard about them alot from my grandparents, who are originally from upstate New York, and my mom, who spent a very brief time in upstate New York as a child before my grandparents decamped for greener pastures (i.e. Southern California...warmer pastures I guess, not so much greener).


But the first year I lived in New York, as the weather began to cool, I saw these wonderfully retro packages of Mallomars popping up in stores.



They seemed to be from a different time, I simply had to have them. And what did I find? A little slice of heaven, that's what. Some sort of round graham cracker type cookie topped with a fluff of marshmallow covered in a dark chocolate shell. Yum.

I'm usually annoyingly snotty about packaged foods. I think this comes from growing up thinking that only very silly, unhealthy people ate them...I remember being absolutely horrified to find, in the second grade, a friend of mine whose father was a doctor eating a Hostess cupcake at lunch one day. I ran home that afternoon to tell my mom, who I think may have been equally horrified.

But in this case I say go forth, eat the industrially produced food! And quickly. They disappear from the shelves as the weather gets warm. Apparently Nabisco isn't able to ship them in hot weather without the chocolate shell melting so they are only produced October-April. I think I love them even more because of this.

First, because it means they are using actual chocolate in the shell (not particularly easy to find anything real in packaged foods these days, much less real chocolate), and second because it feels like a bit of a treat. Like fruits and vegetables, Mallomars have a season, and are meant to be enjoyed only during that season. And given that 70% of the Mallomar sales are in New York, I suppose that if you live here, indulging in Mallomars could be considered a locavore, seasonal eating move. So you can feel morally superior as you chomp on your sweets. If only Nabisco wasn't a multi-national conglomerate, you'd be all set for the soapbox.