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December 2007

Main Nibbles / Cookies, Cake & Pastry / Cookies & Brownies

Liz Lovely Cookies

Jumbo Cookies, Organic & Fair Trade Certified

CAPSULE REPORT: Liz Lovely Cookies taste like Vermont, the state in which they are lovingly made. Although these soft, chewy jumbo cookies are not health food, each bite seems wholesome and healthy. But, you’ll feel good giving these organic and Fair Trade Certified cookies to kids, and eating half a cookie (the suggested portion size) yourself. The line is also certified vegan (dairy free, egg free) and is trans fat free and low sodium. The sugar level is relatively low as well. Ready for grab-and-go or lunch boxes, the cookies are packaged two to a bag to “share the love and make a friend.”

• Overview
• Flavors
• Buy Online

You’ve got to feel good about Liz Lovely Cookies. First, they’re a jumbo four inches in diameter; even though we’ve all been warned against the perils of supersizing, they have eye appeal. Second, wrapped in organic, Fair Trade environmental and social causes, Ms. Liz says that she’s “baking a difference.” After sampling her wares, you know that she is. While standing grounded in traditional cookie territory (as opposed to health food or raw food territory), these cookies have a texture and feel-good taste that complement their organic and Fair Trade ingredients (even the water used is “Vermont well water”).

Given all wholesome brand imagery, The only thing we can’t understand is the choice of words in this sentence on the package (italics ours): “... our award-winning bakery meticulously handcrafts each batch of these wickedly decadent cookies where social responsibility rides shotgun with unbridled indulgence.” Does Ms. Liz really want her cookies to be decadent strip club girls giving in to unbridled indulgences, instead of the squeaky-clean Girl Scouts they are? We hope she ditches the purple prose the next time the wrappers are printed, because these are nice cookies that have absolutely nothing to do with wicked decadence or unbridled indulgence* (words that don’t belong in a child’s lunch box).

*String the words together another way and they sounds like a Surgeon General’s decree. WARNING: These wicked, decadent cookies will start you off in childhood obesity, keep you in a life of unbridled indulgence along with 60% of overweight Americans and lead to health problems and unhappiness.

Flavors

There are five flavors of cookies, each equally good. The levels of sugar are low, so you can enjoy individual flavorings and the soft, chewy texture of the cookies without being assaulted by cloying sweetness. Don’t think you can eat the whole, jumbo cookie, though—unless you’re a calorie-burning young ‘un or a five-mile jogger, each has 400 calories. The recommended serving size is half a cookie, and that more than suffices.

Cowboy Cookies are oatmeal chocolate chip with hard chocolate icing piped across the top and totally covering the bottom. It’s a treat, although the name strikes us as not quite right: We’re not sure that cowboys would cotton to all the chocolate frills. Cowgirl Cookies are soft chocolate chip cookies, one step above eating cookie dough.  Calories be damned—we ate the whole thing. Ginger Snapdragons have a moderate amount of ginger spice—enough to appeal to younger and older palates alike. Mochadamia Mountains have the “Cowboy” icing treatment. Inside are crunchy bits of macadamia.  A very pleasing recipe. Peanut Butter Classics have the same striped icing and chocolate bottom, but the peanut halves peeping through the top tell them apart from Mochadamia Mountain.

Peanut Butter Classics, striped with chocolate (the bottoms are iced with chocolate, too).

A “green” gift basket is available: packages of cookies in a galvanized steel bucket, filled with recycled/recyclable shredded paper, reusable ribbon, a recycled/recyclable gift tag and tissue.