In Praise of Mallomars
There are Cookies, and Then There are Mallomars.
There are cookies, and then there are Mallomars. I LOVE Mallomars! I don’t mean I vaguely prefer them to some other cookies. I mean I have an actual affection for Mallomars, the kind I usually reserve for old friends, a favorite sweater, my comfortable old sneakers. A Mallomar is a serious construction: a small round graham cracker topped with a lavish puff of marshmallow, and covered completely in delicious dark chocolate. It actually looks rather elegant, considering that its chief purpose is to be eaten in approximately three bites.
A bit of history: They been around since 1913. Nabisco first sold them in Hoboken, New Jersey, and for years they were famously seasonable because their chocolate coating didn’t do well in hot weather. So they disappeared during the warmer months, and returned when temperatures dropped, and refrigerated trucks appeared. And that gave them something most cookies lack, an entrance. And a certain charm.
There is something delicious about that - not just the cookie, but the waiting. Strawberries have a season. Corn has a season. So do Mallowmars. They always return in September, when the weather starts to cool, and the world is once again safe for chocolate-covered marshmallow.
They belong to an older, less relentlessly ”improved” world.
(I say that as someone who is on a path towards reclaiming a more analog life.) They haven’t been reinvented as Mallomar Bites, or Mallomar Snax or Mallowmar Protein Snacks. They’re still what they have always been: cracker, marshmallow, chocolate - nothing pretending to be something else. I appreciate that in a cookie. Come to think of it, I appreciate it in people, too.
