“How do I love thee?” Let us count the ways—a dozen doughnuts, a
handful of chocolates, two almond croissants, and three scoops of ice
cream. 

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what Elizabeth Barrett Browning
had in mind. But sonnets aside, sweets and love are a natural pair any
time of year, especially in February when a gift of candy means more
than calories on Valentine’s Day. In fact, it’s the fourth biggest
holiday for confectionery purchases (after Halloween, Easter, and
Christmas), according to candyusa.com. With that in mind, we went in search of the best sweets that Baltimore has to offer.

A heart-shaped box might be nice, but there are lots of other ways to
woo your lover’s sweet tooth. Here are 50 of our favorite treats.

When I first moved to Baltimore more than 20 years ago, everyone told me I had to try the Berger Cookie. “Life changing,” they said. “Best. Cookie. Ever.” So I bought a box. My first thought was the cookie looked unremarkable, but perhaps that was part of its charm? My second thought, after tasting it, was: THIS is the cookie everyone’s so gonzo about?

I admit that, all these years later, like some sort of cookie-based Stockholm Syndrome, I’ve come to sort like the misshapen fudgy disc, but I still maintain it’s a mediocre cookie, at best. Baltimore‘s former marketing director Jessie Peterson stepped up to the plate to challenge my opinion.

Max Weiss: The Berger Cookie, as far as I can tell, has two elements. The cookie and the blob of chocolate on top. Neither of these things is especially remarkable. The cookie is a generic shortbread and the fudgy top is not exactly Ghirardelli— it’s essentially a super sweet cross between chocolate icing and chocolate fudge, the kind of thing that leaves teeth marks when you bite into it (shudder). Basically, Berger Cookie, you had two jobs: Give us a great cookie and give us great chocolate on top. You get a C for both of them. What say you, Jessie?

Jessie Peterson: I say bananas. My grocery cart always comes to a screeching halt when I spot the golden Bergers. I say golden only because I swear a beam of light engulfs the rack that so luckily embraces each package of such magnificence. Examination of each package ensues. My mission: To find the blobbiest of them all. And by blobby, I am referring to the artful wisps and layered swirls of magma-esque fudgy chocolate cascading off the sides of the perfectly round cookie. Beautiful imperfection, I tell you. And I beg to differ on the graded C. I give taste an A with extra credit thanks to the little bits of chocolate that have fallen to the bottom of the package. Who can resist the gooey brownie-like chocolate blanketing the cookie in a fine balance of super-sweet and semi-sweet deliciousness?

P.S. 140 calories. That is all

MW: First of all, your little tableaux at the grocery store confirms what I’ve always secretly suspected: That the Berger Cookie has put some sort of communal spell on the residents of Baltimore. (Beam of light? Really?) As for your assessment of the “super-sweet and semi-sweet deliciousness,” well . . . I guess we can agree on the super sweet part. And you had to go there with the calories, huh? As though Berger Cookies are somehow . . . good for you? Not so fast, my little sweet-toothed fairy. You have forced me to reluctantly bring up the words that send a shudder down any Berger Cookie lover’s spine: Trans fat. Yup, those partially hydrogenated oils that are found in the Berger Cookie and which, according to WebMD, “turn your arteries to sludge” (who knew WebMD could be so poetic?). With the FDA proposed trans fat ban likely to go into effect, the Berger Cookie may be forced to change its recipe. (Come to think of it, that may not be such a bad thing.)

JP: Call it a communal spell. Fine. A spell to awaken thy senses to take in such
a fine delicacy. Spell or not, I eat my Berger Cookies with pride . . . trans fats and all. Yeah, yeah, so that trans fat stuff is bad. I get it. Berger Cookies have been made with the same basic recipe since the 1800s. Call me and my ancestors survivors. For the record, some pizzas contain hydrogenated oil. PIZZA. And French fries. And baked pies. And pudding. And pancakes. Not all variations mind you, but for the love of snack food! To quote Mark Twain: “Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey Berger Cookie is just enough.”

MW: It bears mentioning that, right here in Baltimore, we have Otterbein’s chocolate chip cookies, which I vastly prefer, for both their high quality chocolate morsels and the slight hint of saltiness in their cookie batter. To me, that’s a more sophisticated cookie flavor. Berger Cookies are more like an overactive 6-year-old’s idea of heaven, a blast of uncomplex sweetness that goes straight to your pleasure sensors.

JP: Otterbein’s? Well, I guess if you like the .027-inch sliver of cookie that bears a resemblance to pan scrapings. Or maybe you just like the excitement of the almost-maybe drawing of one whole cookie in its entirety. (Side note: I’m positive the Otterbein bags are first beaten with a club and then dragged behind the delivery truck on Thames Street.) At least the Berger is two inches of solid COOKIE and not the remnants of one. You’re absolutely right about the pleasure sensors. Finally we agree on something! Well, it’s official. Pavlov’s reflex is in full effect. I’m off to Harris Teeter to pick me up a box of Bergerliciousness. And Max, I will be sure to share.

Vaccaro’s

Several locations including 222 Albemarle St., 410-685-4905.

While
the bakery’s luscious cannoli with sweet ricotta and milk-chocolate
morsels may be its top seller, it also offers an array of outstanding
cookies, including pignoli cookies with almond paste and pine nuts,
butter sandwich cookies with Nutella and coated with powdered sugar, and
a gluten-free croccantini (cocoa powder and almond bites).

Editor’s pick: Chocolate biscotti dipped in white chocolate.

Berger Cookies

Found at local stores.

While
the bakery plant in Cherry Hill has been passed along to different
families through the years, the recipe—a white-cake-like cookie with a
layer of chocolate fudge—remains the same, at least, for now. If the FDA
approves a ban on trans fat, the texture could change in the future. In
the meantime, our hometown favorite can be found in other concoctions
like Taharka Brothers’s Berger Cookie Ice Cream.

Eddie’s of Roland Park

Two locations including 5113 Roland Ave., 410-323-3656.

Eddie’s,
run by the Cohen family, has long been a go-to grocery for neighborhood
types who don’t feel like cooking—or baking. The dessert case is filled
with cookies in all shapes and sizes, from walnut-filled Russian tea
cookies and hazelnut shortbreads to coconut macaroons.

Editor’s pick: Sugar cookies in seasonal shapes that taste homemade. Try the pink hearts for Valentine’s Day.

Gourmet Again

3713 Old Court Rd., Pikesville, 410-484-9393.

The
grocery aggregates cookies from all over the region—from Brooklyn, NY,
home of Erica’s Rugelach; Gourmet Bakery in Baltimore, which supplies
the icebox cookies; and Goldman’s Kosher Bakery in Reisterstown, maker
of strawberry fingers dipped in chocolate.

Editor’s pick: Chocolate moon cookies.

Otterbein’s Cookies

Found at local stores.

In
1881, Adam Otterbein, newly arrived from Germany, opened a small bakery
in Locust Point. Today, production takes place in Windsor Mill and is
run by Adam’s great-grandkids. The wafer-thin cookies, packed in the
familiar red windowpane paper bag, come in five flavors: sugar, lemon,
ginger, oatmeal raisin, and the best-selling chocolate chip.

Editor’s pick: Lemon, a great tea cookie.

This is not the way the cookie is supposed to crumble. Early in the
year, Baltimore awoke to find out that its iconic, beloved Berger
Cookies were becoming scarce to non-existent.

The city Health Department had shut down the Cherry Hill plant, where
the well-known treats are made, on Jan. 31 because it lacked a
food-service license. It wasn’t a food issue. It was a paperwork
problem. Soon, stores were running out.

One industrious hoarder took to eBay, offering a box of Berger
Cookies for $25 with a note: “Left over from our Super Bowl party.”Other
snackers took to Twitter and Facebook bemoaning the loss of the
fudge-topped shortbread sweets. Also complicating cookie-gate, the
bakery’s owner, Charles DeBaufre Jr., was in the hospital, unable to
sign needed documents to continue the business.

After being produced since the 1800s, was this the end of the
intoxicating sugar-and-chocolate rush experienced by generations of
Baltimoreans? For more than a month, citizens waited for the crumbs to
settle. Finally, the company was able to work out its difficulties and
crank up the ovens. By March, delivery trucks were on the road again,
stocking shelves. Life was sweet again in Charm City.

“I knew we were appreciated. I did not know people cared as much
as they did.”—Corey DeBaufre, son of the owner of Berger Cookies, to
WJZ-TV