Duplex cookies bring a whole new level of literalness to the phrase “playing with your food.” These two-toned sandwich cookies beg to be used for board games such as Othello and checkers (or Go, if you have a lot of cookies). All you need are cookies, a large piece of paper and a pen.

We made a stop-motion video of a few minutes of playing games with the cookies, Check it out on youtube or watch it embedded here:

 Duplex creme cookies are inexpensive, often on sale, and usually available at discount stores. Nearly all grocery store and most convenience stores have them, often under a private label. We have no idea of how to account for this inexplicable ubiquity. This isn’t health food, they don’t seem to have any particular cultural significance and their taste is, well, nothing that we were planning to rave about.

Duplex cookies do of course have their fans, although perhaps not so much as the black and white cookies that made a cameo on Seinfeld. But, whether or not you love to eat them, duplex cookies do make very fun game pieces.

For your game board, you can use newsprint, butcher paper, or even a paper grocery sack that has been cut open. Draw an eight by eight grid with two inch squares on your paper. Get out your cookies and get playing.

Othello (also called Reversi) is the most obvious game for duplex cookies as the pieces are required to have differently colored sides. You’ll need 64 cookies, which almost always means that you’ll need two packages.

Some of the pieces will always get turned over a lot of times, so it’s a good idea to wash your hands before playing, especially if you intend to actually eat any of the cookies.

The array of cookies at the end of the game looks particularly yummy, but don’t let that fool you.
 

For checkers, we turned the pieces to dark for one player and light for the other.

Checkers was a little bit of a challenge for us, as neither player had played in a long time, and never formally, so we had to double-check up the rules before we got started.

The pieces stack well for “kings” even without the fancy matching grooves that modern plastic pieces have. Play was fast, and it was all over quickly. However, we’re still working on finishing up the cookies.

 
Special thanks go out to Jay of Dark Carnival for pointing out the true value of these cookies as game pieces.