#35 Irish Coffee Crunchies 1977

Sandwich cookies with more oats than Irish.

What makes an Irish coffee cookie? Coffee, Irish whiskey and cream would be my guess. They are all ingredients in this cookie's sandwich layers and in the filling. Sounds like the start of a creamy-smooth coffee dessert with a kick, right?

You'd be wrong. This was the '70's, remember. Back to nature. Granola reached the mainstream. Whole grains were worshiped. These cookies were victims of the era.

The first problem is the heavy dough. It contains twice as much oats as flour. Doesn't that take you back? I really should have stopped right there, thrown in some raisins and nuts, and let them be the oatmeal cookies they longed to be. But no, I trudged on.

Is it dough or continental drift? Oh, there go Iceland and
Greenland. Or is that Australia and New Zealand?

I dutifully rolled out the dough. It became a lesson in continental drift on my counter. I massaged it back together and tried to cut entertaining shapes, but this dough was not amenable to stars or scallops. The edges did not cut cleanly, and I returned to circles, as instructed.

But even the dough surface did not hit the mark. I might as well have cut out circles of my textured kitchen wall. The resulting disks looked as though they were good for you. Quel disappointment!

Edges of fancy shapes do not cut cleanly.

After baking, I spread them with the filling, containing more coffee, more whiskey and more cream. What could possibly go wrong?

The flavors do not go nearly far enough, that's what. Much too subtle, the flavors get absorbed by the oatmeal.

Just no twinkle to those raggedy-edged stars.

Subtle flavors are not all bad. In fact, these blended so gently together, most of my taste-testers had trouble identifying the flavors. Maple was the most common guess; some others said "honey." Only one friend detected the coffee.

These cookies are interesting in their own right. But as Irish Coffee cookies? They don't live up to their name.

The recipe is here and here (a review similar to mine).

Comments

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