BOTW #7: Fox's Cookie Bars

Today's BOTW is actually a purchase from last week during my weekend trip to Dingle (more information on that should be coming soon-ish). Hope the review isn't too....stale! (Bwahahaha!)

Name: Cookie Bars
Producer: Fox’s Biscuits

Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but what’s the deal with all the hard crunchy biscuits? Huh? What’s the deal, Ireland? As the week’s pass, I begin to miss more and more the soft moist cookies of my youth (and of a couple of months ago!). What I wouldn’t give for a luscious oatmeal cookie right now!* For some reason, the Irish just don’t believe in soft cookies. (I would hazard that it has something to do with the general Irish dislike for anything even vaguely undercooked…don’t believe me? Try coming to Ireland and ordering a steak. You wouldn’t have believed it was possible to make steak so dry and tough and unappetizing without first burying it in a pit of hot ashes.)

Unfortunately, Fox’s Cookie Bars failed to be the exception to the rule I was looking for. The packaging lead me to believe that a large cakelike chocolate chip cookie delight was waiting for me. Instead I found this:


It is indeed chocolate chip. It is indeed a cookie (although more along the lines of biscotti than American-style chocolate chip). It is indeed a bar. *sigh* It tasted good, don’t get me wrong, and it was perfect for dunking BUT it wasn’t what I wanted and that makes all the difference.

That said, the cookie has a good “bite” or crunch to it. The chocolate chips are distinct and add quite a bit of flavor to the basic shortbread-like base. One taste surprise here is the presence of desiccated coconut in the bar. The coconut was probably added mostly as a sweetening agent, but the coconut flavor is definitely present (the coconut is not advertised on the package and it’s only because of the distinct taste of it that I even bothered looking at the ingredient list). While tasty (and I’m normally a huge fan of coconut), the coconut was just another element jarring my geared-for-American-style-chocolate-chip-cookie-goodness mindset.


So all-in-all, Fox’s Cookie Bars are a decent biscuit that are good for tea-dunking and have just enough of a touch of chocolate and coconut to keep things interesting. However they’ve fallen prey to my prejudices against all things overbaked and suffer from crushed expectations. I am afraid I face the biscuit world more jaded than before…won’t somebiscuit save me from the dry crunchy oblivion I currently face? (I dream tonight of snickerdoodles, warm oatmeal cookies, and macaroons).

* - In fact, at the quick stop coffee shop/convenience store in the student center last week I picked up a cookie on the counter billed as an “Oatmeal, fruit, and nut cookie” thinking that surely an oatmeal cookie would be moist and delicious with my cuppa hot coffee…No! That sucker was dryer than the Mojave and harder than a block of concrete! So my disillusionment continues…