Danish Butter Cookies
by LloydSkoyd (10.10.02)

30% butter... mmmWhat is it?
Surely you've had a Danish butter cookie--or at the very least seen them... Well... anyways, here's a blog entry I found on a site that illustrated perfectly the relationship between the common consumer and the mysterious companies that hammer out the (usually) blue tins of cookies:  "The Mystery of the Danish Cookie - The Danes must be an extraordinarily organized bunch. How else to account for the Danish Butter Cookie, Product of Denmark? I was at the Factory Card Outlet (compelling name, that) last night, and they had low-rent butter cookies on sale, so I picked up a couple tins for the office. Not that I ever recall a real brand name where Danish Butter Cookies, Product of Denmark, are concerned, but it was still slightly amazing to me that when I opened this randomly selected package, I discovered the exact same assortment of butter cookies I’ve been eating since I was a child.  To wit: The plain, swirled, round butter cookie with a hole in it.  The pretzel-shaped butter cookie topped with roof-of-mouth-gouging sugar chunks.  The rectangular-shaped butter cookie topped with roof-of-mouth-gouging sugar chunks.  The plain, round butter cookie scored with parallel lines.  And finally, the round butter cookie that looks plain, but when you bite into it is found to contain some kind of hard-to-place, freeze-dried "currant" bits.  Danish Butter Cookies, Product of Denmark, must be very popular (even if I bought mine for $2.99), as the ingredients list is printed in German, Danish, Spanish, and what appears to be Hebrew. (27% butter! Wow.) I imagine somewhere in Denmark is a very happy conglomerate, mass-producing cookies from the same stamps they’ve been using since, well, at least 1968." (source: Half Mad Spinster)

The good:
First, I must start off by pointing out the tin that these cookies usually come in.  They're pretty fancy... the classic blue was looking good but then the Danish butter cookie industry took a spin on the wild side with the onset of "decorative" Danish butter cookie tins being put out by many different Danish butter cookie companies.  The tins' interior packaging was given just as much thought: sorted stacks of 3 or 4 cookies in cupcake style paper cups in layers so as to maximize the number of cookies per tin.  Not only does it maximize utility of space, it makes for easy access to a consumer's favorite cookie shape and prevents cookies from being broken as easily at the same time.  In general, the taste of the the cookies is decent... nothing to marvel at.  These people have been using the same formula for cookies since the last time you tried them, whenever that may be.  And there's variety.  Hell, I've even heard of some cookie companies putting out chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cookies with the standard 5 Danish cookies.

The bad:
I think it's humorous that the masterminds behind the Danish butter cookie decided that if they pressed the same cookie into different shapes, they could give an otherwise "plain old tin of cookies" into an "assortment."  Then sometime later down the line, they figured out that people were starting to think that maybe the pretzel shaped butter cookie was actually no different than the circle or rectangle shaped butter cookie.  This is when they decided to introduce the sugar chunks and the "currant" bits.  Like Half Mad Spinster said, the sugar chunks are indeed roof-of-mouth gouging.  The currant bits... small, dry and semi-hard/semi-chewy are a bit much.  They leave one wondering whether the black dot in the cookie was actually derived from something that was once fruit.  Next there is the issue of nutrition.  They called them butter cookies, yes, but 30% butter?  That equates to a hearty 23 calories per cookie.  The paper cups also lead to the problem of picking and choosing.  I know from personal experience, that there tends to always be one or two shapes of cookies that nobody seems to like, and is the last to go on each layer.  You can't really get to the next layer until you finish them all... there's that piece of paper there, separating the layers.  Sure, you can lift the paper and get at the level underneath, but I always felt like I was cheating when I did this.

The shapes:
Each shape is unique and can be easily identified.  I tried to find some big pictures of each cookie shape, but was without such luck--apparently the world doesn't think Danish butter cookies are important enough to take decent pictures of.  Here is the run down of each cookie design:

Conclusion:
You could probably do without Danish butter cookies in your life... but sometimes they're just so cheap, why not?  I don't know, really.  The texture of the cookies really bothers me... and the fact that all the cookies are basically the same yet they carry a false sense of variety also bothers me.  And what if you've never tried them before and feel the need to rebel against this review by purposely going out and buying half a dozen tins?  Let me tell you again--you're not missing much--roof-of-mouth gouging is sooo overrated.

I give Danish Butter Cookies a 5 out of 10.