Reporting back on the experimental cookies:
Samoa cookies: Most who ate them found them lovely enough to eat more than one.
Oat fudge bars: The espresso powder the recipe requires actually gives the chocolate layer a distinctly coffee flavor rather than just being present to enhance the chocolate flavor. Two separate and independent tasters (among those who actually talked to me) reported this outcome. These should perhaps be called mocha oat bars.
Flatteringly silly was the declaration from two colleagues that I am their hero for providing all these sweets on an otherwise dreary Monday morning.