Manning's Maple Leaf Creme Cookies

While I wasn't born a Downeaster in New England, I've learned to appreciate the taste of maple syrup.  The real thing is quite expensive and very thin to the point of pouring like water over your favorite pancakes.  There's a lot of work involved to bring it to your table.  I've got a sugar maple tree in my yard that might produce enough sap to make syrup for one short stack. 

It's almost farcical that most commercial pancake syrups tend to use the term maple-flavored rather loosely when describing their syrups.  Most consist of corn-based high fructose syrups with lots of artificial ingredients including maple flavor. Most don't contain any of the real thing.  I was well into adulthood before I ever had real maple syrup that while tasting wonderful, it ran very quickly off my pancakes.

I came across a real maple-flavored product awhile back that caught my attention at of all places Dollar Tree.  It's a cookie called Manning's Cookie Shop Maple Leaf Creme Cookies.  They're made in Canada by Commercial Bakeries Corp. in Toronto and seemingly only available in The States at Dollar Tree.  They come in a tray of 16 cookies in a 15.4 oz. package and actually contain "pure maple syrup" as an ingredient.  The cookies are quite large and also very tasty. While sixteen cookies doesn't seem like many when compared to a pack of Oreos, they are a big cookie and wonderful with a cup of black coffee.  While most of us Yanks haven't had much exposure to the flavor of real maple, these are a sweet tasty treat worth trying.  At $1.00 per package, what have you got to lose?