Pretty Yummy Cookies

Today I walked down the street to the local bakery. My neighborhood has a large Armenian population and there are a lot of small Armenian grocery stores and bakeries. I love it. It's so much fun to see these foods that are very exotic to me. When I go to the bakery, I stand and gaze at the delectable goodies housed in the glass cases, trying to decide which I would like to eat. Often I just end up getting more than one. Today I intended to get one each of four different kinds of cookies. Somehow, the box had four of one kind in addition to the others. Oh well, more cookies for me.


Much to my surprise, all of the cookies were sandwich cookies filled with apricot jelly. For a moment I was dissapointed but ended up loving every morsel. I think the walnut one was my favorite (seen in the center of the group photo at the top). The walnuts added a nice crunchy element and additional flavor to the chocolate, apricot and cookie.

I wanted to duplicate these cookies on my own for a quick no-bake but still made at home cookie. So, I bought some simple tea biscuits, chocolate chips and apricot jam. I melted the chocolate and spread it on the cookies. It was a little too thick but it's chocolate, what's not to like?

I waited for the chocolate to harden and opened the jar of jam. Well, it wasn't jam. It was preserves. Beautiful, affordable apricot preserves from a local Armenian grocery. A regular old jar of Smuckers preserves is essentially jam but that is not the case with Armenian preserves. They actually have whole pieces of fruit! Great, unless you want to spread it.

The thing that really bugged me was that I had bought a jar of cherry preserves made in Armenia and it tastes great but the cherries still have pits! So, I tried to be careful when I bought the apricot jam. I turned the jar upside down, debated buying a simple American jar but I was pulled in by the exoticness and the lower price of the preserves. Foiled once again.

Anyway, I didn't make the sandwich cookies as I had intended because the jam part of the preserves was too runny. I suppose I could cook it and try to condense it but then the whole process wouldn't be quick and that's the point of a no-bake cookie.

So, I just ate the cookies. All of them. By myself.

I plan to try again when I find some actual jam.