09.01.07
Mini Crisp Wafer Roll (strawberry)
I feel like I’m doing the eastern tour of snack foods lately but look what I picked up from Singapore by way of Taiwan (from right here in town!)…flute cookies! Not only flute cookies but check out the packaging – swank individual wrappers. We were all very impressed (and a bit surprised) with that. Unfortunately, the wrappers are a bit of a trick to get into, at least without fear of mashing the cookie to bits. Little rolled up wafer cookies aren’t the hardiest of things and these are sealed in wrappers designed to resist fire, flood and hurricane damage up to a class four storm.
Scissors or patience and a bit of wrapper coaxing are your friend here. When we finally got into the cookies, we were also surprised and quite pleased with the exuberant strawberry smell that wafted out of the package. MmmmMmm! Plus pea points for delicious olfactory strawberry. Flute cookies from Taiwan are a tad bigger in diameter than flute cookies from China or Thailand and also here…which may very well be Japan but could also be China again. Taiwanese flute cookies are also about half the size, like a finger sandwich versions of the other flute cookies. Heh.
The construction is basically the same in all cookies: A thin (THIN!) flat crispy cookie is rolled up and stuffed with goo. The Taiwanese cookie was perhaps a tad thicker and not rolled up as often but still crunchy. It also tasted like a flat sugar cone. Mmmm.
The goo, however, was quite a bit different. Whereas all the previous flute cookies have had some sort of soft white chocolatesque or stiff frosting like goo inside, these have almost a fluffy, airy filling. It’s not unlike the cream whatsit you might find in a long john donut (those white stuff filled chocolate frosted deelies). Can you combine frosting with whipped cream? Well that’s the texture here and it’s a novel idea in theory because the light fun creamy goo is a nice contrast to the crispity crunch. In practice, however, it’s kinda greasy. Also…the goo is lacking any strong taste, which is always a pea deduction given such a delicious olfactory promise.
My Guinea Pigs weren’t overly impressed with the cookies themselves, although they all thought the individual wrappers were the bomb. One Pig sad that he rather liked the cookies (giving them a 3) but another Pig told me to take that rating with a grain of salt. Apparently the 3 pea Pig was on a restricted sugar diet so anything sweet tasted better since he wasn’t allowed to have any of that sort of stuff anymore. All the other pigs voted for a 2 to 2.5 rating and I’d have to say that the Taiwanese flute cookies were probably a 2.5, minus half a pea for not delivering on the olfactory promise, plus a half pea for the individual wrapping and crunchity crunch, but minus half a pea for the weird lingering oiliness. Thus…Mini Crisp Wafer Roll’s get a total
Rating of 2 wasabi peas of out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.
