Halloween is officially behind us, Mariah Carey has been defrosted for another year, and we’re now in the early days of winter holiday snacking season. And since Santa’s not the only one who likes cookies for Christmas, now’s as good a time as any to start scouting the supermarkets for special seasonal appearances.
Case in point, these Limited Edition Leclerc Celebration Mint Truffle Butter Cookies, spotted at my local Safeway next to a couple of other holiday cookies from Leclerc.
Maybe it’s all the candy canes and After Eights that have conditioned me, but the cooling taste of peppermint reminds me of the holidays. Add dark chocolate and a butter-cookie base, and it’s decadent all the way down.
The look of the season
The package itself screams festive, with deep reds and greens speckled with snowflakes, and a strange line of white goop behind the cookie illustration that looks like it came from a tube of toothpaste. And of course, in keeping with Leclerc’s roots (and their branding), the chocolate cookies (as illustrated) feature Québec City’s historic Château Frontenac, a landmark associated with the city. (It’s even more gorgeous in person than it is in chocolate form.)
Not to go too far down a philosophical rabbit hole, but cookies like this lead me to question what is means to be a cookie vs. what it means to be a chocolate. In this case, these cookies are less like a cookie topped with a layer of chocolate, and more like a chocolate placed atop a cracker-thin layer of cookie. Arts degree for the win?
Regardless, they’re pretty to look at, and if I saw these on a plate at a holiday shindig with other cookies and crackers, I’d absolutely snap one up.
What’s it taste like?
First impression is that these have a lot more cookie base than was apparent on first glance. The cookie itself is hard and crunchy, and when I bit into it, it left a pile of crumbs on the plate below. So there’s unmistakably cookie involved here, even though the cookie layer isn’t all that interesting on its own. What it contributes is both a crunchy texture and the baked taste that comes from a cookie that’s spent enough time in the oven to fully brown.
The chocolate (which the packaging says is dark chocolate containing 45% cocoa) is good, and there’s enough that it’s obviously not an afterthought. (Chocolate is expensive right now, so it would have been easy to cheap out on this, but they didn’t.) The tricky bit is keeping the chocolate thick enough around the mint filling that it contains the filling without allowing it to escape, and also doesn’t let the filling saturate the cookie below, which would turn it mushy. Leclerc gets it right, so kudos.
The last detail is the mint filling contained in the dark chocolate shell, which is a thin, creamy paste. While it doesn’t taste like it (thank goodness), it does have the consistency of toothpaste. It’s soft and slick and almost whipped, not grainy or sticky or oozy. It’s the warming kind of peppermint, with enough mint taste that you notice it, but not so much that it lingers in your mouth more than a minute or two.
Not bad, Leclerc. Not bad at all.
The Details
Price: $4 (on sale) for a 240-gram package of cookies at Safeway in Edmonton, Canada.
Value for Money: Fine and dandy.
Availability: Found on an end display with other seasonal snacks at my local Safeway, so look beyond the standard cookie aisle if you want to find them. “Limited Edition Limitée” means snap them up while you can. My package has an expiry date of June 18, 2027, so if you want to put some down in the cellar for a taste of Christmas in the summer months, fill you Santa Claus boots.
Proudly prepared in Canada?: That’s what the package says. Ho, ho, ho!
Nutrition: 150 calories per two cookies (32 grams). That’s in line with a lot of 355 mL cans of pop.
Verdict: Worthy of a holiday snack tray, no prob. Decent value, too.
