Posted by on Apr 25, 2012 in Peanut Butter | 2 comments

Serious Business Pastries

Available at Food Front Co-op and various farmers’ markets – Portland (check website)

$1.99

This won’t be the first time I’ll have likened a cookie to a hamburger, but I don’t believe ever as aptly as in this instance. In other words, this is the burger of the burger cookies.

Okay, so my main issues with peanut butter cookies in general is that they are too flat-tasting. That is to say, there is nothing to act as a foil against the heavy, oily, one-note flavor of the peanut butter. They are often not salty enough to begin with, but even with salt, I am always wishing for some sort of tang or sharpness to counteract all that peanutiness.

Sure, I’ve seen a peanut butter and jelly cookie before, but never on this scale.  As you can (sort of) see in the photo, it is a sandwich cookie: two pliable, buttery, salty peanut butter cookies  filled generously with one layer of peanut butter cream and another layer of jam made from local, Oregon berries.

Naturally, I enlisted my favorite cookie co-scout Heather (who happens to adore p.b. cookies way more than I do so I was particular eager to get her two cents) for the tasting session yesterday. I’d say that her verdict was basically thumbs up, but we were both so distracted by both the size of this beast AND the self serve fro-yo that we were filling our mouths with at the time, that we plum forgot to take a damn photo until the thing was 3/4 eaten and gone. Whoops. A sense of scale is somewhat lost in the picture, but let me assure you that is not small: apx 3 and a half-4″ in circumference. Maybe not actually burger-sized, but definitely much bigger than a slider.

*I was told by a clerk at Food Front that the co-op is the only retail supplier of Serious Business cookies other than the various farmers’ markets. I’m looking forward to trying some of their other varieties, including a chocolate chip cookie laced with white pepper and a snickerdoodle containing all natural cinnamon chips. Stay tuned for my thoughts on those; I’m confident that they will be finding their way into my mouth soon.