Picture this: it’s a summer night in the 1970s, around midnight. Two kids start scrounging through the kitchen of an Evanston home looking for a snack. One finds a box of Sunshine Lemon Coolers cookies, and the kids sit down at the kitchen table and plow through the box in about 30 minutes. Buzzed on sugar, the two head back to their sleeping bags and lay awake the rest of the night reading comic books.
That was my introduction to one of the most delicious cookies I’ve ever tasted. The kids in the story were my cousin and me, and my aunt had bought the Lemon Coolers earlier that day. She was pretty upset that they were gone by breakfast, but it was worth it.
Lemon Coolers were round, lemon-flavored, crispy-almost-shortbread cookies with lemon chips dusted with lemon-flavored powdered sugar coating. They were unique in that nobody else made cookies like these– the only way to get them was in their green and yellow box, and many grocery stores only sold them during the summer.
Over the years I would pick up a box, at least one per summer, when I saw them on the shelves. But like so many other things of our youth, Lemon Coolers fell victim to The Bottom Line. Keebler/Kellogg’s bought Sunshine in the 1990s, and in their infinite wisdom they discontinued the product.
Now, I told you that story so I could tell you this one.
I’ve been looking for something similar to Sunshine Lemon Coolers cookies since then. Supposedly, the Girl Scouts sold a “Lemon Coolers” cookie years back but I have never seen them in real life. There was also allegedly a President’s Choice-branded lemon cookie but I’ve never seen that, either. Then I found several recipes on the internet for Lemon Cooler-like cookies, and the recipes I tried– even with a few tweaks– were awful.
Last night, I went to the Jewel and found Archway Iced Lemonade Cookies. I was intrigued, especially by the word “crispy.” I figured I had little to lose, so I bought a bag.
I was very pleasantly surprised: this is the closest thing to Lemon Coolers I’ve tasted in a long time. The cookies have the right texture, and while they don’t have lemon chips in the cookie itself they have just the right flavor. The iced coating isn’t as tart as the powdered sugar on the originals, but it’s a lot less messy so I’ll call that an improvement.
Thank you, Archway.
Now all I need is a tall iced tea and some time in the hammock. And maybe a comic book or two.