Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com September 2019
For four falls now, Nancy Morozin has blended crushed Sweetzels spiced wafers with vanilla ice cream to make the Sweetzel shake (spiked or unspiked) to sell as a seasonal treat at the Dining Car restaurant in Northeast Philadelphia. She tops it with whipped cream and chocolate sauce and a whole cookie.
But Morozin personally prefers Sweetzels dunked in black coffee “until it gets chewy and nice.” She calls spiced wafers “Philly’s best-kept secret.”
“It’s so big here,” she says, “but if you drive 60 miles, they’re like, ‘Spiced — what?’”
For the uninitiated, that’s spiced wafers, a hard, craggy cookie similar to a gingersnap, but with a more complex flavor profile that also includes molasses, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice. These are factory-made cookies, by the name of Sweetzels or Ivins, sold in grocery stores in boxes featuring drawings of bakers and a Halloweeny color scheme.
Locally, spiced wafers are the food harbinger of fall — in big supermarket displays, where they sit alongside apple cider and Halloween candy, but also in restaurants and shops like Toto’s Gelateria in Ambler, where they are ground up to make a popular Spiced Wafer flavor, and in homes, where they are fed to spoiled dogs and horses, fashioned into crusts for cheesecake, layered with cream in icebox rolls, dipped into apple butter, slathered with cream cheese, and dunked in almost every imaginable liquid, including beer.
Spiced wafers’ unyielding texture might explain the widespread practice of dunking.
Sweetzel president Robert D. “Bob” Borzillo admits, “The first thing people say about these is that they’re hard.”
To the point that people break their teeth?
It is more or less a joke-question, but not to Bob.
“Yes, it’s definitely happened,” he says. “We turn that over to the insurance company.”
“If you pop them in the microwave for 8 to 12 seconds, it softens them right up,” his son, Robert A. “Rob” Borzillo, adds quickly, to help head off a spiced wafer dental scare.
Most Sweetzels spiced wafers and its Acme house-brand competitor, Ivins, are sold between Labor Day and Black Friday (bereft spiced wafer fans say the more limited availability once Santas start showing up in stores is the real reason for that day’s bleak nickname). And they can only be found in supermarkets here in Greater Philly and nearby Jersey and Delaware because, well, nobody else wants them.
Acme found this out the hard way in 2016. After acquiring some former Pathmark, Superfresh and A&P stores in New York, Connecticut, and Maryland, their managers were schooled in the sales magic of the big fall Ivins cookie displays. But, to their surprise, the cookies did not sell.
“The North Jersey line is pretty much where you hit the wall on Ivins,” says Acme spokesperson Dana Ward.
In the fall, Ivins still outsells every other cookie, including national favorites Oreo and Chips Ahoy, at Acmes chain-wide .
“Spiced wafers are the original pumpkin latte,” Ward says.
Sweetzels’ similar popularity explains why the company’s world headquarters is hidden behind an unmarked door above a Flourtown jewelry store.
“We don’t want to have to deal with people knocking on the door looking to buy cookies,” says Rob Borzillo, who runs the spiced wafer cookie business from that small office with his dad, Bob, and sister, Nina.
As for how these two competing brands stack up: Ivins spiced wafers are about an eighth larger and “more robust in flavor” than Sweetzels, says Ward, and only available at Acme. Sweetzels are sold everywhere but Acme, in the same-size box for virtually the same price (about $3).
Sweetzels’ Bob Borzillo, 70, says that “Ivins’ flavor is different,” but not that Sweetzels are better, which seems surprisingly magnanimous — until you learn that the Borzillos have been making Ivins cookies for Acme for well over 35 years. (Take that, all you die-hard Ivins or Sweetzels brand loyalists!)
As the son of an Acme shopper, Glenn Esher, 60, of Haddonfield, N.J., grew up eating Ivins’ spiced wafers “exclusively,” usually dunked in milk that itself would “become delicious in the same way that cereal milk takes on the taste of the cereal you put in it.” He also remembers the wafers as one of few acceptable non-candy Halloween treats. “Usually if you got something other than a candy bar — like an apple or a penny — we’d be like, ‘What is THIS?” But when you got some spiced wafers in a stapled orange-and-white trick-or-treat bag, we were OK with it.”
Esher did some spiced-wafer evangelizing at his North Jersey college and later, during a New York state food-service gig, both with only limited success. “It’s not the kind of thing people love right off the bat,” he said, noting the strong spices and extra-firm texture. “But if you hand-sold it, especially to foodie types, they could be won over.”
The spiced wafer likely owes its texture and general austerity (at least compared to the modern gooey-chewy cookie) to its colonial Dutch, German molasses cookie origins.
Commercial bakeries first caught the scent of the spiced wafer business in the early 1900s in Greater Philly, and pretty much only here. A search for “spiced wafers” on the Boston Globe’s archives from 1872 to 2019 yields only eight hits; the same search from a similar time period in The Philadelphia Inquirer archives produces more than 800! Many are advertisements for spiced wafers by Ivins, a bakery that opened on Front Street before the Civil War and later moved to North Broad near Mt. Vernon Street.
“Even the littlest tots are learning to lisp “Ivins” when they want a cookie. And there’s no Ivins product more delightful than Ivins Spiced Wafer,” argues one 1912 ad featuring Ivins’ toque-topped baker .
But by 1934 Ivins had competition from Sweetzels, the sweet companion to Perfect Foods of Lansdale’s flagship Tritzels pretzels, as well as Uneeda, ASCO and Nabisco. A 1956 Inquirer ad announcing the opening of the latter company’s Roosevelt Boulevard plant touted Nabisco Spiced Wafers, “a local favorite that’s the life of your Halloween party.”
Acme bought the Ivins brand and recipe in the 1960s, which is also when Bob Borzillo’s father, Anthony, who ran a bread bakery in Norristown, purchased Sweetzels. By 1985, the Borzillos were making Sweetzels (and only Sweetzels) at a plant in Bridgeport, Pa. That bakery burnt down in 2001 and Sweetzels production has moved around the country ever since.
Today, Sweetzels and Ivins are both made at the same plant in Alabama, both from their individual, original recipes. “We’ve used the same molasses and the same spices for 50 years,” Bob insists.
Changes in the box designs have been similarly few and slight (in the case of Sweetzels, the subtraction of the baker’s peel here — because people kept asking what it was — and the addition of some rosy cheeks there) mainly because, Bob says, “When you change the box, people automatically think you changed the cookie.” And then the phones start ringing. Unique to Sweetzels’ box is a brand name so small and unobtrusive that some people don’t even notice it.
In fact, sales VP Rob, 30, says that when explaining the family business to someone new as a school kid, he wouldn’t mention Sweetzels but instead ask, “Do you know the cookies in the black-and-orange box?”
The typical reply: “Oh yeah, my grandfather always had those in his house when I was growing up.”
Asked if this has him worried — grandfathers being a demographic with limited shelf life and bad teeth — Rob starts talking about how popular the company’s somewhat more indulgent Mini Ginger Creme cookies have become with college kids, especially since the cookie base was changed from spiced wafers to the more familiar gingersnap flavor.
Then, after a thoughtful pause, this heir-apparent to Philly’s spiced wafer empire continues, “Young people might not be buying spiced wafers now, but when they have families and start shopping and see them on the shelf, I bet they will.”
Sweetzels for the Fourth? Why not!
For years, spiced wafers’ seasonal popularity has been fueled by their fall-like flavors, family tradition and FOMO — once the supermarket displays turned Christmassy, the spiced wafers seemed to make like Casper the ghost. But Acme has been selling Ivins’ spiced wafers year-round in the cookie aisle for almost a decade. Sweetzels can similarly now be found anytime at most Walmarts in the state and Giants in Eastern Pennsylvania, as well as online via sweetzels.com and pageneralstore.com.
Another Reason to Believe You’re on the Right Coast
Recreational marijuana is legal in California but spiced wafers sales are not. It’s says so at the bottom of the Nutrition Facts panel on boxes of both Ivins and Sweetzels. That’s because of a chemical produced during the baking of many snack foods that requires a carcinogen label under California’s Proposition 65 cancer-warning law.
Local spice wafer makers could just put these labels on the packages but figure (we figure): Why scare a bunch of Philadelphia cookie lovers on the off-chance of selling a few boxes to people who have never heard of spiced wafers and who would probably just as soon have a KIND bar — or a joint.
Sweetzels’ Box Fact-check
Sweetzels spiced wafer boxes’ boast of being “Philadelphia’s Original Since 1910,” even though Sweetzels spiced wafers first hit stores in 1934. The 1910 date actually references the debut of commercial spiced wafer making in Philadelphia, by current Sweetzels’ competitor Ivins.
Spiced Wafer Apple Crisp
Serves 6 to 8
- 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into small cubes
- 1 cup old-fashioned (not quick-cooking) rolled oats
- 8 ounces (1 sleeve or 24) spiced wafers, broken into pieces 1/2 inch or smaller in a blender or by hitting a sturdy food-storage bag filled with wafers with a mallet
- 6 to 7 (about 2 pounds) tart apples (such as Granny Smith, Crispin, Braeburn or Stayman), peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, salt and 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Cut butter into sugar, using a pastry blender, two knives or your hands until mixture is the texture of coarse meal. Add oats and crushed spiced wafers, and use your hands to toss and squeeze mixture until large, moist clumps form. Transfer to freezer to chill while you prepare apples.
In another large bowl, toss apples with lemon juice, cinnamon and remaining granulated sugar. Transfer to shallow, lightly greased 2-quart baking dish or 9-inch iron skillet, and sprinkle with topping mixture. Place baking dish on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake at 375 degrees F until golden and bubbling, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.
— Courtesy Sweetzels Foods
Spiced Wafer Crust
Use this with your favorite cheesecake, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin or sweet potato pie filling recipes to spice up your Halloween party or Thanksgiving dessert game. Bake the pie crust as directed here, then fill and bake per your filling recipe. For best results when making cheesecake, use a spring form instead of pie pan.
- 20 spiced wafers, processed in blender to yield 1 1/4 cups fine crumbs
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 6 tablespoons butter, melted
Pulse the cookies and sugar in a food processor until well combined and the crumbs are uniform. Transfer to a bowl and add the butter. Combine until the mixture holds together in your hand. Press onto the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie or spring-form pan. Chill in the freezer for 10 minutes then set on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Let cool completely before filling. (Leftover crumbs make a fine pie garnish.
— Courtesy Sweetzels Foods
Spiced Wafer Cookies and Cream Ice Cream
To hold you over until Bassetts brings back this occasional seasonal flavor, which mitigates both the spiciness and the hardness of the cookies. (We’ll let you decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.)
Serves 3 or 4
- 1 pint Bassetts or other super-premium vanilla ice cream or your favorite homemade vanilla ice cream, melted slightly
- 8 ounces (1 sleeve or 24) spiced wafers, broken into pieces 1/2 inch or smaller in a blender or by hitting a sturdy food-storage bag filled with wafers with a mallet
Pour half the cookie crumbs into a large bowl. Working quickly, cover with half the softened ice cream and mix with a spoon or fork. Dump remaining cookie crumbs and ice cream into the bowl and blend until thoroughly combined. Spoon as much of the ice cream as will fit back into its pint container and refreeze. Eat the rest ASAP.