Stella D'oro and Coffee: Which Cookie to Dunk and How Many to Set Out

The emblem is on every bag: a steaming cup inside a starburst, with the words Stella D'oro and coffee on either side. Four bags go further and print Coffee Treats on the ribbon.

You judge a cookie made for a cup on three things: whether it holds together when dunked, how fast it takes up the coffee, and how sweet it is against a bitter drink. The panels on the bags answer more of that than you would expect, and buyers fill in the rest.

Five of the nine bags in the Stella D'oro lineup belong next to coffee by their own ribbons: Breakfast Treats and the Coffee Treats. They share a base of flour, sugar and eggs, and none of them is iced or filled. What separates them is how dry they are baked and how much fat they carry.

Start with fat. Almond Toast, Anisette Toast and Anisette Sponge carry 2.9 to 4 grams of fat in 100 grams of cookie, against 9.5 for a Breakfast Treat and 14.5 for a Roman Egg Biscuit. That matches how buyers describe them out of the bag: the toasts snap, the sponge gives, and the biscuits sit between the two.

These five are one department in the catalog, Breakfast & Coffee Treats. The labels of all nine bags, with allergens and the kosher mark, are read side by side in the cookie guide.

Almond Toast is baked twice, and the brand's own description calls it shaped for easy dunking. A slice weighs about 15.5 g and carries 50 calories. There are pieces of almond in it and no oil in the ingredient list.

Eaten dry it is hard, as any twice-baked slice is. The buyers who love it nearly all mention the cup: dunking in the morning, a cup of tea, a hot drink in the afternoon. One spreads extra-crunchy peanut butter on it at breakfast.

Anisette Toast is the same idea with anise in place of almond. The slices are lighter, under 12 grams each, and three make a label serving of 130 calories.

Slice for slice it is also the less sweet of the two: about 4 g of sugar in an Anisette Toast against 5.5 g in an Almond Toast. The almond slice is the bigger bite.

One buyer describes the method exactly: dip the toast, let it take up the coffee, and bite before it is soaked through. Leave it too long, the same review warns, and it melts into the cup. Another buyer dips it in cold or hot milk, or in hot chocolate.

Neither anise panel names the seed. The ingredient lists say natural flavor, and the brand's own description of the toast speaks of the aroma and taste of real anisette. Whatever the source, buyers agree on the result: it tastes of licorice, and it suits coffee.

The toasts draw one steady complaint. A bag can arrive harder than the buyer expected, with what one review calls no give at all. If biscotti are too hard for you, skip the toasts and take the sponge.

Anisette Sponge carries the anise of the toast in a soft, airy slice. It takes up coffee at once. Buyers who prefer it use plain words: a spongy, softer texture, great for dunking into milk or coffee.

A slice weighs 12.5 g and carries about 45 calories. Two are a label serving, and the 6.1 oz bag holds about 14.

The same softness is its limit. Dip the sponge and lift it. A buyer who misses an older, harder Stella D'oro cookie makes the point from the other side: that one could be dunked without falling apart.

Softness has a second cost, and a buyer names it: sponge does not keep as long as toast. If you drink coffee once a week, the toast is the safer bag to have open.

Breakfast Treats Original is the one-biscuit breakfast: 21 grams, 80 calories, 6 grams of sugar. Buyers describe a crunchy outside and a cake-like inside, and call it perfect for dipping in coffee or tea. It is also the most-rated bag in the catalog.

One buyer tastes a little almond in them, and the panel bears that out. Next to natural vanilla extract, the ingredient list names benzaldehyde, the flavoring that gives almond extract its taste.

It travels well for a plain biscuit. One buyer keeps a supply at work as a pick-me-up, moved from the bag into a gallon storage bag, and reports them fresh until eaten.

Roman Egg Biscuits are the big ones: 31 grams and 130 calories apiece, about 11 to a bag. One reviewer, who came looking for a crisper egg biscuit remembered from decades ago, settles on the phrase soft biscotti and calls them superb for dunking.

The same reviewer timed the dunk: no longer than about half a second. Not everyone is won over. Other buyers found the biscuits dry, or harder than they should be, and rate the bag low.

A plate next to a cup is small, and the labels make it easy to total. Take one label serving of each cookie:

The share is measured against the figure the FDA uses for a day:

Against that reference, one serving of these cookies takes 12 to 24 percent. The toasts sit at the top of the range and a Breakfast Treat at the bottom. Sugar stirred into the cup counts toward the same total.

The plate is yours to size. Two Breakfast Treats are 160 calories. Half a label serving of Anisette Toast is a slice and a half, which nobody serves. It is easier to count pieces than servings.

The Cookies line belongs on the same table, and its plates run heavier:

The sugar is about the same as in the coffee bags. The difference is fat: 4 to 8 grams a serving here, against 1 gram for a serving of toast. Swiss Fudge is the heavy plate at 170 calories for three small cookies.

The other half of the table is the pot. The National Coffee Association gives a starting point for drip coffee:

Grind is the other setting the Association addresses for a drip machine:

The cup count allows one cup for every guest and a second for half the table. That allowance is our assumption, not the Association's. The range for ground coffee is the ratio itself: 1 tablespoon a cup at the mild end, 2 at the strong end.

For the cookies, a label serving is a fair unit per guest, because of how the FDA requires it to be set:

So plan one label serving a head and divide by the servings in a bag. Cost here means whole packs, in whatever sizes are on sale, at the lowest total that covers the guests.

For twelve guests the cheapest single-cookie table is Breakfast Treats, at $4.12 for one bag. The dearest is Anisette Toast at $35.67. The gap comes from two things at once: how many servings a bag holds, and which pack sizes are on sale.

Round up, not down. A bag left unopened after the guests go is not wasted: by USDA data crisp packaged cookies keep for months in the pantry, and the figures are in Stella D'oro by the Bag or the Case.

A mixed table is kinder than a single bag. Put a plain biscuit beside a toast, then add something sweet from the Cookies line. Margherite brings two flavors in one bag. Lady Stella brings five kinds of small cookie. Swiss Fudge is the chocolate.

One caution about Lady Stella on a guest table. An assortment varies from bag to bag, and buyers have opened bags that were heavy on plain chocolate cookies and short of the iced ones. If the plate depends on the pink and white rings, open the bag before the guests arrive, not in front of them.

One way to fill that mixed table for twelve people, bag by bag:

That is about 69 pieces for twelve guests, close to six each, for $21.47 in cookies. Nobody has to take the anise, and nobody is left with a single kind. Swap one bag of Almond Toast for Anisette Toast if the table likes licorice. For the pot, 18 cups take 108 ounces of water and 18 to 36 tablespoons of ground coffee.

Open the bags close to serving time and set out a third of each, then refill the plate as it empties.

Guests come now and then, but the morning cup comes every day. For a daily habit, count one label serving a day.

Each cost is taken from the pack with the lowest price per ounce. Breakfast Treats is the cheapest daily habit at 34¢ a morning, and Anisette Toast the dearest at $1.22. One buyer of the almond cookies does this sum in a review: a dozen bags, two cookies a day, finished before the date on the bag.

For one person a bag goes quickly. Almond Toast holds 6 servings and Anisette Sponge 7, so a daily drinker opens a new bag every week. Two people at the same cup halve every figure, and that is the household for which a multi-pack starts to make sense.

Pack sizes, price per ounce and how long a case keeps are worked out in Stella D'oro by the Bag or the Case.

Buyers' reviews tend to tie each cookie to a time of day. Morning belongs to the plain bags. One buyer calls Almond Toast an everyday breakfast. Another has a couple with the morning coffee and maybe a couple more as a mid-afternoon snack. A Breakfast Treat is the lightest way in: one biscuit, 80 calories.

Afternoon is the second cup, and for many buyers it is tea. Reviews of Breakfast Treats, Almond Toast, Margherite and Lady Stella all mention it.

After dinner the sweeter bags take over. A buyer of Margherite describes them with a cup of tea or coffee as a light dessert or snack. Swiss Fudge is the one to set out when the table expects chocolate. In a kosher home the pareve mark on the bags matters most at this hour, after a meat meal. The mark and what it covers are explained in the cookie guide.

Coffee is on the emblem, and the reviews range wider. Buyers take Breakfast Treats with morning tea. Anisette Toast goes into cold or hot milk and into hot chocolate. Swiss Fudge, from the Cookies line, gets dipped in cold milk. Roman Egg Biscuits are praised with coffee or with cold milk.

Milk is where the children come in. Several buyers were raised on these cookies and now buy them for their own kids. One admits to hiding the bag from them.

Anise with coffee is the signature pairing among these bags, and a divisive one. The flavor reads as licorice. If someone at the table dislikes licorice, set Almond Toast or Breakfast Treats beside the anise cookies and let people choose.

The trouble buyers report most has nothing to do with the cup: cookies broken in the mail. A broken toast can still be dunked, while a broken slice of sponge is mostly crumbs.

Hardness is the second complaint, and it runs both ways. An Almond Toast buyer found recent bags extra hard to chew. A Roman Egg Biscuit buyer expected soft and got hard. A buyer of the sponge, raised on it, opened a bag that had gone stale.

Two fixes come from the buyers themselves. One softens the almond cookies by wrapping two in a damp paper towel and microwaving them for 30 seconds. Another wants the toasts harder and leaves the lid partly open overnight.

Then there is price. Single bags of Anisette Toast and Anisette Sponge cost about twice as much per ounce as the same cookies bought by the case. If you drink coffee every day, check the pack size before you choose the cookie.

Last comes age. One buyer of Roman Egg Biscuits received bags past the date printed on them. What that date means, and how long cookies keep, is covered in Stella D'oro by the Bag or the Case.