I lost my cookies. And I forgot about them. But then I found them again. In FudgeTown.

Some months ago my daughter asked me why we never have Oreo cookies in the house and I thought, “You little ingrate.” Then I went and wrote a few hundred words on the subject, and made a plan for Chanukkah. I have since executed this plan. The plan was, Have boxed, storebought cookies make up a significant portion, if not all, of my daughter’s Chanukkah gifts this year.

In the end, it’s about 60% cookies, 40% other stuff (the Big Present being, She got her ears pierced), but every time she pulled out a box of cookies, she was thrilled. The biggest hit was the Mallomars. (Not that there were complaints about any of the other cookies.) I said “These cookies are, like, these are not normal, everyday, box cookies.” My husband piped up, “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never had a Mallomar.” “You HAVEN’T?” I asked, astonished. It’s not like I grew up with stacks of boxes of Mallomars in the house, in fact I don’t think my parents ever bought them at all, but I’ve certainly consumed them, sometime in my 46 years. I said, “Well, now’s your chance.” That night, our daughter opened the package, shoved one into her mouth, declared it the best cooky ever, and handed the box to my husband. He gingerly pulled one Mallomar from the plastic packaging and considered it; then he bit in. “These are good,” he said. “These are really good.” I threw my hands in the air: “Of course they’re good!”

“I could eat a whole package of these,” my husband said thoughtfully, reaching for a second one.

Talking about Mallomars led to my Googling Mallomars, and reading an extensive Wikipedia entry on the subject of chocolate-covered-marshmallow cookies. It was here that I read the name of a cooky company, Burry, that I swear to God I had not thought of in probably thirty years. And yet I was immediately thrown back to the kitchen where we kept cookies on this one long shelf, boxes and boxes of cookies (and also variety pak boxes of Fritos, Doritos, and Cheetos, and tall boxes of cold cereal). Burry brand cookies were a major part of my childhood, along with some Nabisco classics (Oreos), some Keebler classics (chocolate covered graham crackers), and — the best — Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies (Freihofer’s a close second).

So how on earth had I forgotten about them?

It wasn’t that they were so great. They were, in fact, kind of schlocky. But I loved them. I could not, at first remember what the specific cooky was that we used to get; but we live in the era of Google search, and specifically Google Image search. And this is how I had my Moment of Cooky Memory, The Cooky I’d Lost and Unexpectedly Found: the Fudge Town cooky.

Burry’s Fudge Town cookies. Which came in two varieties: “vanilla” with a “chocolate creme filling,” and “chocolate” with a “chocolate creme filling.” They were awesome. They were kind of flower-shaped, with a hole in the middle of the cookies and you could take your finger and pop the blob of filling in the middle right up and eat it separately.

A Google search for Burry’s Fudgetown Cookies results in an appallingly low number of hits: 1230. Even if you spell “Fudge Town” as two separate words, you only get about 15,000 hits. Compare this to “Oreos”(more than 22 million hits). Statistically speaking, almost no one loves these cookies. But I loved them, and though I’d forgotten about them, I will never forget them again. It turns out that I am not the only person who fondly remembered plowing through cellophane sleeves of these things, but I am the only person in my household who remembers them at all. I also remember Mr. Chips, which I think my brother liked, and the Burry’s Best bagged cookies, which were kind of competition for the Pepperidge Farm bagged cookies (like Milanos and others). We never had the Gauchos, the peanut butter cookies — oddly, though my mother and I both love peanut butter, we never ever had peanut butter cookies — but I bet they were really good.

The lost cookies of my packaged-snack childhood will no longer be forgotten. I may use the recipe linked to above to try to recreate them. Maybe not for a while. We’ve not even started the Keebler Deluxe Grahams, or the Oreos, yet, because since I’ve discovered how to make Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies… well: I am easily distracted. My family even more so. Last night we watched a DVD of Two Fat Ladies in which the ladies made a raspberry-strawberry shortcake that caused my daughter to croon at the tv, “I need that.”

If I can find a source for double cream….