The day after New Years, I was planning to have two friends over for a lunch to celibate the new year. So on New Years Day, I was going up and down the aisle of my favorite grocery store, list in hand, getting the items for my lunch menu.

Rule number one, never shop when you are hungry, for seduction waits lurking among those innocuous looking shelves.  I needed crackers. The crackers are on the same aisle as the cookies. I am more or less immune to most store-bought cookies save a certain brand of ginger snaps. So I was heading for the crackers at the end of the aisle when out of the corner of my eye I caught something both familiar and forgotten. I stopped and glanced up: mallomars, now according to the packaging called Pinwheels by Nabisco.

For those of you who have never succumbed to these old fashion delights, they are a combination of a shortbread cookie with a layer of marshmallows on top and then the whole is covered with a dark chocolate hard shell.  The old style, called mallomars, look like a bowler hat with a tiny rim. This modern version comes in the shape of a pinwheel.  The Danish claim to have invented the original two hundred years ago. At that time the cookie was layered with meringue instead of marshmallows. It was call flødebolle (cream bun).  In 1913 the first mallomars were sold in the U.S. in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Today New York City consumes 70% of the mallomars sold in the States.

When I was a kid, which was a millennium ago in the 1950’s, mallomars frequently made their way into my family’s grocery bag for our eight o’clock evening treat of ice cream and cookies in front of the TV. Eventually, as a teenager watching my weight, I drifted away from this treat. Once or twice after I married and had my daughter I bought them.  But they weren’t the same as I remembered, the cookie tasted like cardboard and the chocolate was cheap and without depth.

So desire faded until that fateful glance at the Pinwheel cookie package on the first day of 2012. The packaging is clear so you can feast your eyes on the temptation within. I stood there looking at them, twelve perfect cookies, trying to imagine what they would taste like. They were bigger than the old fashion mallomars. Their shinning chocolate coating glistened in the store lights, enticing me. Would they taste like they did when my parents and I sat in front of the TV, I wondered?  Or would they taste like cardboard as they had when my daughter was young? Finally I put the cookies back on the shelf. I didn’t need them. They would only disappoint me. I pushed my cart to the end of aisle and selected my crackers.

But I could not turn the corner and leave the aisle. The thought of chocolate and marshmallow melting on my tongue made me turnaround and go back for that package of pinwheels. I set them into my basket careful not to crack any of the chocolate.

After I got home and put away my groceries, I poured a glass of cold milk and opened the package of Pinwheels. The scent of dark chocolate greeted me, inviting me to try this new version of a once loved indulgence. I selected one and put it on a plate. I carried the plate and milk into the living room. I set them on the table in front of the sofa. I sat down and turned on the TV.

I picked up the pinwheel, hesitated, and then bit into it. The chocolate shell, marshmallow, and chocolate cookie combined in my mouth. Taste and memory blended. A smile spread across my face.

I took a second bite.