bigapple

You Don’t Know What You’re Missing

If you live in New York or New Jersey, then you understand the title of this post. If not, read on and see what you’re missing. In October, we New Yorkers (and the lucky people in a few other parts of the country) know that means one thing: Mallomar season.

Even though Mallomars are very nearly impossible to describe, many writers have nevertheless tried.

The New York Times once devoted a feature story to Mallomars - “The Cookie That Comes Out in the Cold.” And King Kaufman of Salon, in an article titled “Mallomar Memories,” paid homage to the chocolate cookie this way:

“Mallomars. Say it with me: Mallomars. They sound exactly like they taste. Sweet, soft in the middle Mallomars, rolling on the Mallomars tongue Mallomars. All rounded corners and smooth glass brown chocolate Mallomars. Yes I said yes I will Yes Mallomars. Mmmm. Allomars.”

A Brief Shelf Life

Mallomars appear magically each October and almost exclusively in New York. In fact, 70 percent of the Mallomars distributed by Nabisco end up in New York, because the cookie originated in the New York-New Jersey area. The yellow cellophane boxes begin appearing on the end-of-aisle displays in my neighborhood grocery store, piled high and setting my tummy aflutter and reminding me to make room in my freezer. My husband hoards them to get him (and me) through the long winter and even into spring.

Although the cookie was seasonal back in the early 1900s for good reason — the chocolate would melt in transit during warmer weather — modern-day manufacturing makes it possible for most chocolate items to stay on the shelf at any time of the year without melting. So what gives?

In a recent item celebrating the return of Mallomars, Newsday’s “Pet Rock: The Pop Culture Blog,” asked the same question, wondering out loud if the disppearance and reappearance of Mallomars is “a sneaky Nabisco marketing ploy — ratcheting up demand like a street dealer holding out on the goods until we return in September, scratching and drooling and oblivious to personal hygiene.”

How to Munch on a Mallomar

In case you haven’t met one, Mallomars are about the size of a silver dollar, and are made up of a small marshmallow on top of a round graham cracker. Then the marshmallow and graham cracker are covered in a hard chocolate coating. Mallomars come 18 to a box (not enough, if you ask me), and each serving of two Mallomars has 110 calories, five grams of fat, and 12 grams of sugar. And they haven’t changed since 1913.

Mallomars lovers differ in how they eat the cookies. Mr. Kaufman of Salon wrote that there are only three “officially sanctioned” ways to eat Mallomars: “biting off the marshmallow part and saving the graham cracker for last (superior method); biting off the graham cracker and saving the marshmallow part for last (dorsal method); and biting into the cookie like regular food (lateral, or standard, method).”

An American Icon

Even though they’re not available everywhere, Mallomars are an important part of our culture. Among other things, they’re featured in Wally Lamb’s novel, “She’s Come Undone,” and in the Nora Ephron film “When Harry Met Sally.” Mallomars have also made appearances in episodes of “The Gilmore Girls”, “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons”. And who can forget the scene in “The Sopranos”, when mafia Don Tony Soprano scares the daylights out of friend Paulie after thinking he’s stolen from his box of Mallomars?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS