The Cook’s Kitchen

I know that this is going to qualify me as a bona fide nerd, but I have to confess it. I enjoy grocery shopping. I do. I really do! I love wandering up and down the aisles, imagining all of the mouthwatering dishes I can make, while loading up my cart with goodies. It’s kind of therapeutic. Sometimes, the food just calls out to me.“Hey you! Over here! Pick me! PICK ME!!!” or “Hey, baby! Want some company? I’ll make a mean casserole for you!”

I especially love it when I discover a new product that I’ve never tried before. Sometimes, it will turn out to be a dud, but sometimes, it will be something worth talking about. I found one such worthy product the other day in the form of Late July Organic Sandwich Cookies, from Late July Organic Snacks of Massachusetts.

Late July Organic Snacks was started up in 2004 by the the Bernard family, founders of the Cape Cod Potato Chips Company. According to Nicole Bernard Dawes, Late July’s President and COO, the company’s mission is to “produce snacks that kids and parents think taste great using simple, responsible, high quality, organic ingredients”. The company takes traditional snack favorites and makes them organic and trans-fat free. Initial products offered by the company included organic cheddar cheese crackers, saltines and rich crackers made without trans-fats, hydrogenated oils, preservatives, and artificial flavors or colors. They subsequently introduced peanut butter sandwich crackers to their product line, made with their classic rich and chedder cheese crackers. All of their crackers are made with organic red winter wheat and organic palm oil. and contain no highly refined sweeteners, like corn syrup.

The newest kids on Late July’s block are their organic sandwich cookies, launched late last Summer. They come in two varieties - Dark Chocolate and Vanilla Bean with Green Tea. According to the company’s web site, these cookies “are like the sandwich cookies you remember as a kid, but all grown up”. While on the surface, the cookies look suspiciously like Oreos, upon closer inspection they are vastly different! Like the other members of Late July’s family of snacks, these cookies are also made without trans-fats, hydrogenated oils, preservatives or artificial anything, instead relying on whole grains, real Madagascar vanilla beans, rich dark chocolate, and other organic ingredients. Just for the record, however, the nutritional label on the Oreo package does also claim that there are no trans fats used in the product.

Okay, you say. That is all well and good, but, how do they taste? To find out, I put together a panel of taste-testers consisting of five adults, two teenagers and two five year-olds, all of whom are Oreo afficionados. To make it interesting, I made it a blind taste test, keeping the cookies in unmarked containers. To really keep it fair, I also offered the “other” sandwich cookie for comparison.

I have to be honest here or else, what would be the point? I don’t think that Nabisco has anything to worry about. When presented with a side-by-side comparison, several of my taste-testers did prefer the Oreo cookies. Surprisingly, it was the adults who chose the Oreos, while the teens liked the Late July cookies better. The five year-olds loved them both. I think they were just so happy to get to eat all those cookies!

The deal breaker seemed to be the actual cookie itself. Most felt that the Oreo cookie was crunchier and had more of a chocolate flavor. Even though Late July’s cookies boast organic dark cocoa powder, it is number six on the ingredient list (compared with number eight on Oreo’s list), so I don’t know how much is actually used. That being said, everyone also really enjoyed the Late July cookies too. Their creamy centers got very high marks from all the tasters.

The results were not surprising to me. Most of us grew up on Oreo cookies. The brand has been around for a long, long time. Oreos are comfortable and familiar, often evoking warm and happy childhood memories. As a newcomer on the cookie scene, Late July hasn’t yet had the opportunity to develop that kind of consumer loyalty. I think the company is off to a good start, though. They have an excellent product that addresses the health concerns of discriminating moms everywhere. After all, the moms are the ones buying most of the snacks. If they’re happy, everybody’s happy. Right?

What did I think about the cookies? Well, I must admit, I do really love Oreos, but I thought that Late July’s cookies were delicious. My favorite was the Vanilla Bean with Green Tea. That filling was wonderful! It was rich and creamy with a burst of true vanilla flavor. You could tell that there was nothing artificial in them. I feel certain that Late July’s popularity will only grow with time.

Late July Organic Sandwich Cookies are available nationally in natural foods stores, gourmet stores and supermarkets. While I have seen Late July’s products in stores like Whole Foods for some time now, I had never seen them in a traditional supermarket until recently. Hopefully, this is a trend that will continue.

For a complete list of retailers, visit www.latejuly.com.