Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?

Not me. Probably the manufacturer

If you like a certain brand or type of cookie, I advise you not to get me hooked on it. If you do, the odds are the company will cease production of that flavor or go out of business all together.

Cases in point: when I was in single digits, my favorite cookies were Nabisco Chocolate Chips in the long green box and Sunshine Biscuits (little) Chocolate Nuggets that came in a sealed thin cardboard tray. The green box chocolate chips were consumed mostly at Mom mom Minnie’s house and were standard chocolate chip fare, although I remember them being crunchier than their subsequent version, Choco Chip, and today’s closest facsimile, Chips Ahoy. The Sunshine cookies were egg-washed and incorporated with nut fragments. My Uncle Arthur ate them by the packageful—or the boxful when the packaging was changed.

I blame Keebler Company for the latter’s demise.

Keebler acquired Sunshine in 1996. Despite the cookie being praised for its flavor, Nuggets were discontinued, along with several other Sunshine icons. Hydrox cookies, which predated their competitor Oreos by four years, were replaced with Droxies and nowhere near as tasty. I preferred the less-sweet, slightly cakier Hydrox to Oreos, not that it matters now. Other popular Sunshine brands Keebler stopped making include Pecan Sandies, Rainbow Chips Deluxe, Magic Middles, and Lemon Coolers.

I also liked what I believe were called Toy Cookies. I think they also were a Sunshine product. Toy Cookies came in a small blue box with a string, much like Nabisco’s animal crackers in the circus-themed box. Instead of lions and bears, Toy cookies were baked to look like a pocket watch face and other play-related items. They had a slightly cinnamon or brown sugary taste. I preferred Toys to Animals. Gone.

During my one-year stint as a Brownie, the annual Girl Scout cookie campaign featured a cinnamon cookie, kind of a Trefoil but cinnamon sugar-coated. Like my Girl Scout days, the cinnamon cookie availability was short-lived. For the past few years, I’ve enjoyed Girl Scout Toast Yays, shaped to resemble French toast and lightly flavored with cinnamon (I guess by now you’ve realized I like cinnamon. Also see Cinnamon Crisps). Toast Yays are done as of this year, along with Smores cookies (I also love marshmallow). Are you sensing a pattern? I’m afraid to admit I like Trefoils lest they also be discontinued.

Another favorite that bit the cookie dust is Pepperidge Farms Brownie Chocolate Nut (I think I have that right), a crunchy chocolate cookie infused with chocolate chips and pieces of nuts. I believe there now is a soft version, but I am not a fan. The closest in taste but much thinner is Sheila G’s Brownie Brittle.

One of my all-time favorites was Nabisco Brown Edge Wafers, a thin, crispy vanilla cookie with what looked like a slightly burnt perimeter. They were somewhat fragile; you had to accept that many cookies would be broken when you opened the box. Never bothered me. I made an (unwritten) rule: I had to eat all the broken ones before I ate the whole ones. Ironically, like several other cookies I loved, Brown Edge Wafers were discontinued in 1996, even without a Keebler takeover. I guess 1996 was just a bad year for my cookiedom.

Nabisco also used to sell what it called its Famous Cookie Assortment. The selection included Sugar Wafers (the highly sweet, crispy little cream-filled waffles), Cameo cookies (elongated vanilla Oreos), Lorna Dunes (shortbread), Oreos, slightly cinnamony Kettle Cookies (imprinted with a fireplace), and Butter Cookies—plain vanilla and shaped like a scallop-edged flower with a hole in the middle. I would put a finger through the hole and eat around the cookie. People stacked them on their fingers. I bet you can determine the order in which I ate this collection. These days, the best I can do as far as store-bought cookie assortments are the Royal Dansk Danish cookies. They are basically all butter cookies, each with its own barely different taste. Rob’s boys also like them.

As you are probably gathering, I tend to like my cookies on the plainer side, crispy as opposed to chewy. Chinese fortune cookies fit that mold; a good fortune is a bonus. Chocolate is okay (I had an interlude with Keebler’s Fudge Stripes), but the only dipped in chocolate cookies I now like (mostly because of the marshmallow) are Mallomars. But after all, according to Harry Burns of … When Harry Met Sally, they are the world’s greatest cookie.

I also should mention that I grew up not far from the Nabisco plant on Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia. Driving by, you were often treated to the fragrance of chocolate chip cookies wafting from the factory. A cookie lover’s delight. The factory has been demolished. Sigh.

I am not much of a cookie baker. I dabbled in cookie baking for a short time many years ago, using from-scratch recipes for sugar and peanut butter cookies from my junior-senior high School District of Philadelphia-issued green cookbook. I’ve also baked “homemade” chocolate chip cookies from refrigerated cookie dough. I’ve since passed the torch to our very capable daughters, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, who bake cookies for winter holiday enjoyment.

But for holiday cookie baking, the prize must go to Dolores Thomas, one of Bruce’s former employees. She was a cookie-making machine, baking and then filling five-gallon tins (think popcorn gifts) for weeks in preparation for/anticipation of Christmas. Sugar cookies, with sprinkles or with colored sugar. Chocolate chips. These elongated, orange-flavored butter cookies dipped in chocolate and chopped nuts on each end. Those white Christmas balls. Oh my god, her cookies were absolutely to die for. I literally rationed how many I would eat each day to make her annual gift tray to us last as long as possible (I do the same with Rochelle’s kamish bread). Dolores died several years ago. She and her cookies are sorely missed.

Some of Dolores’ cookies were improved versions of what you can get at old-fashioned bakeries—the establishments that sell cookies by the pound and send them home in white boxes tied with string dispensed from contraptions hanging from the ceiling. I love bakery cookies, especially butter cookies with sprinkles or the ones striped with thin bands of chocolate or the ones with the dried cherry on top. If there is a plus side to sitting shiva when someone dies, it is definitely getting boxes and boxes of bakery cookies. My friend Sharon says her son has named one particular bakery cookie—the flat, iced, waffle-looking one—the funeral cookie because of its frequent inclusion on cookie trays for shiva.

My favorite bakery cookies are bow ties— twisted, dry, sugar-coated, make a crumbly mess bow tie cookies. Someone thoughtfully brought them to the hospital when Ali was born. I tried to eat them over the tray table, but I was brushing their remnants off my bed for the length of my stay. I don’t see them offered much anymore.

None of the new cookie franchises—Crumbl Cookies, Insomnia, Cookies by Design—does anything for me. The cookies are too much like cakes. They are too rich for casual snacking. And they are ridiculously expensive. Give me some Nilla Wafers or iced animal crackers or a few blue-tin butter cookies to accompany my before-bed meds. Then I will drift off to sleep with a happy belly and the sweet memories of cookies I have loved and lost.

My Mom mom Minnie’s cookie jar. It was the only item I asked for when she died. It never held cookies—in her day or mine—but sparked my collecting frenzy of Red Wing Chef Pierre cookie jars. I have them in many colors and have gifted them to family. Bruce is no longer allowed near any of them. He has a tendency to accidentally lop off their heads, especially the yellow ones.