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Valentine’s Day is inching closer and closer. And people always say the best gifts are ones given from the heart, but nothing says “I love you” better than something from the heart for the stomach.
So in honor of all those lovey-dovey cherubs hovering by, here is my February candy recipe of the month. I call it my Lots-a-Luv Cookies. These babies are sure to wow anyone you present them to because they aren’t the sort of things you would just hand over to anybody.
The only white chocolate bar that has successfully managed to find a niche in mainstream candy aisles is Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme. Yes, I know there are other products out there like Zero, but they are very regional in distribution.
I am not so sure what makes the Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar all that appealing to the masses, since Americans tend to dislike white chocolate, but for some reason, the adding of cookie pieces (and smartly never advertising itself as white chocolate) has allowed this confection to achieve great success.
The candy debuted in 1994, capitalizing on the cookies and cream flavor craze that began in the eighties when the flavor first materialized in ice cream form.
My mom is a baker. Not like a real, wakes up at 4am and wears a big white hat baker, but she makes sweet vittles in the oven more often than your average bear. And in fact, cookies are her specialty. But despite her arsenal of specialty biscotti and her 20-plus holiday varietals, she’s never really embraced the classic chocolate chip cookie. I mean, she’s made them and, as such, I had occasion to sample raw cookie dough in my earliest years, but my affection for this delicacy didn’t really blossom until junior high, when my school introduced its Market Day program. (If you don’t know, Google it.)
Yep, Market Day. And more importantly, Market Day frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls. That’s right, only a greased cookie sheet and 14 to 16 minutes separated you from freshly baked chocolate chip cookies – just like Mom’s! (Or better, as the case may be.) And while that certainly revolutionized the after-school snack in my house, my siblings and I quickly discovered that exactly NOTHING separated us from delicious frozen raw cookie dough, any time we could sneak our greasy mitts to the freezer. And thus began the love affair.
So it was with fond memories of sweet, grainy dough and hard chocolate chips melting between my fingers that I ripped into Taste of Nature’s newest incarnation of my childhood treat: Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites.
Everyone has their comfort candies they return to from their childhood. They are the sort of candies that aren’t gourmet by any means, but something you have enjoyed for so long that life without them would just seem strange. For some that candy is Snickers, Milky Way, or 3 Musketeers; for me, my heart has always belonged to Twix.
There is just something amazing about chocolate and caramel over a cookie. I can’t rationalize my love for this bar. I dislike most popular candy bars thinking they are too sweet or use inferior ingredients; however, as much as I pretend my mouth is a sophisticated tool of discernment, it craves these things.
You can therefore appreciate my excitement when I saw a Twix Minis Mix bag at Target, specially designed for autumn. It featured the classic as well as the Limited Edition Dark Chocolate and Triple Chocolate bars. I hadn’t tasted either of those in years and couldn’t wait to sample them again.
Beware the Destroyer, a strange and powerful being who unleashes unwanted knowledge at unexpected time, often unaware that his or her simple comment has the power to ruin a perfectly good thing for years and years to come.
You may have come across a Destroyer during your lifetime: they often show up around Christmas, or Easter, or whenever one of your teeth falls out after second grade, if you know what I mean. They like to tell you what does or does not exist. They’re also very good at describing the makeup of hot dogs.
I’ve been a Destroyer before, simply by mentioning that I wasn’t a big fan of the cream cheese frosting that lined the top of the carrot cake my very best friend was eating at the time. Horrified at the concept of cream cheese on cake, my friend promptly spit out his dessert and hasn’t had a piece of carrot cake in over 7 years.
I don’t remember who the Destroyer in my life was, but I do remember what they told me: “Eating raw cookie dough will kill you.”
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