On the way back from Mammoth a few weeks ago, we made a pit stop in Bishop to visit Eric Schatt’s Bakkery. Any place that spells “bakery” with two k’s has got to be good, right? Good sandwiches and bread, but let’s get on to what we really care about….

COOKIES!

This is the one that you get with every meal you buy. I believe it’s the Swiss Pecan cookie. It’s very light, not too sweet, crunchy but melts in your mouth. Quite yummy!

This is a HUGE chocolate chip cookie (I broke it in half before I remembered to take a pic)!! Check out ALL THOSE chocolate chips!!! If you think they just put all the chocolate chips on top, think again..

I can honestly say that this was the most intensely loaded chocolate chip cookie I have ever seen in my life. IN. MY. LIFE! WAY too many cookies have not enough chocolate chips. You can even see in the pic above that the choc chips were overflowing inside the wrapper and spilled out. DELICIOUS. Great texture, good crunch (not soft on the inside but all those choc chips can’t be too soft can they), great taste.

And my favorite..

This photo was taken the day after, so please forgive the broken sprinkles and chipped cookie. Heart cookie with pink, red, clear and white sprinkles for Valentine’s Day!! This was just a sugar cookie with sprinkles on it but I will say that this cookie was smoother and not as crumbly as the average sugar cookie. AND it’s in the shape of a HEART!!!!

Boss: “Hey Chloe, come in here, I got some stuff but I don’t think you’d be interested in any of it.”
Me: [runs (literally) to his office] GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP!!!

Guess. What. My Boss. Got. A HUUUGEE tin of sweets!! Brownies, brownies, brownies, mini cupcakes, fudge, and COOKIES. He said he’d only let me have one thing a day (aww, he cares about my pancreas!) — so I snatched up the cookies real fast

Actually, there were two types of cookies: chocolate chip and this other one with frosting and sprinkles. I’m not a huge fan of frosting, so I took the chocolate chip one, with hopes that I’d be able to get the other one later (alas, that one was taken):

Good sized cookie, at a… not so great taste? I mean, it didn’t taste horrible, but it was definitely not as yummy as I was expecting. Taste was meh, not enough chocolate chips, texture was hard (not crunchy though, just hard) on the outside and soft on the inside though. There were two cookies in the bag, but I didn’t see the calorie intake worth a second one.

Big Sugar Bake Shop
www.bigsugarbakeshop.com
12182 Ventura Boulevard (Cross street is Laurel Canyon)
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 508-5855

• Taste: 6
• Crust and center moistness: hard outside, soft inside
• Value: $1 a cookie, not bad
• Overall: Hard to complain about free cookies as a gift… so I won’t. But I heard their brownies were really good; get those instead.

Oh.

My.

Gosh.

Good Stuff in Hermosa Beach (1286 The Strand, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254) definitely has some good stuff. Great, even. I got the yogurt with fruit and granola and for $7 I think I actually got my money’s worth for being out in Hermosa. But to the important part!!:

I ordered two cookies to finish off my brunch and again, oh. my. gosh. they serve it to you WARM, and it is DELICIOUS. So tasty, so chocolatey, so smooth… everything in a great cookie. Did I mention they serve it to you warm?! If your idea of a great cookie eating experience is being served your cookies on a plate with dessert spoons, licking your fingers and wanting more, this is a great cookie eating experience.

• Taste: 10
• Crust and center moistness: medium
• Value: $1.40 for these two cookies. At $0.70 each for a large, warm, great tasting cookie, it is way too hard to complain.
• Overall: Would DEFINITELY get again. 10!!

So… I hate fast food. I’m actually kind of against it. But, I ate McDonald’s cookies a long time ago, and was really surprised at how good they were! We stopped by a McD’s more recently and I got two cookies. Apparently when you buy cookies, some of the $0.42 goes to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

Average-sized cookie:

I actually got two. . I expected to bite into a soft cookie like I did before, but there was a huge CRRUUUNNNNCHHHH upon my first bite. It wasn’t crispy as much as it was hard. I felt like it was yesterday’s cookie or even two days ago’s cookie despite the sign on the bag that says they’re baked fresh daily. It was so much closer to a biscuit than a cookie. It wasn’t horrible, just not what I expected. What I expected was in the second cookie: soft, moist, chewy, tasty. But the first cookie left such a bad taste in my mouth that it was hard to enjoy the second one.

• Taste: 4 for the first one, 8 for the second one
• Crust and center moistness: first one was hard and biscuity, the second one was moist
• Value: $0.42 for one cookie is a great price, especially if you get the real fresh-baked ones.
• Overall: I don’t even know how to review this. They get negative points due to their inconsistency, but their good cookies are actually good. 6. I don’t like inconsistency!

AHH! Total John brought me cookies from his conference in NY for totalbeauty.com — isn’t he the absolute sweetest!

They’re from this place called Le Pain Quotidien. I looked them up and they’re an international chain restaurant + bakery. It was 10:00 when TJ strolled in and dropped off the cookies, but who cares? I ripped the bag open and grabbed one anyway (patience is not one of my strong points..):

Good sized cookie, but how about the taste? Well let me tell you right now that this is the cookie for you crispy cookie lovers. It’s crunchy inside and out, and the inside structure holds up well (you can see the granules of the cookie and even the space in between the leavened parts). It’s not too sweet and the chocolate chip factor was DEFINITELy not a scarce resource.

• Taste: 7
• Crust and center moistness: crunchy crunchy!
• Value: <3 TJ
• Overall: You gotta get this cookie if you love crunchy. If you’re one of the many who love soft cookies, stay away. This was gone from my desk in about.. half a day or so (including people who came back for seconds). Overall, a good cookie, a  must try if you like crunchy. Personally I like a little softness in my cookies, so I’m gonna give this one a 7.

WOW! It’s been a while. I’ll tell you the truth: I got hit by a car two weeks ago, and I’ve been busy ever since! BUT! I made up my mind NOT to let it get in the way of letting the world know what great cookies there are out there. Boy do I have a juicy one for you here today!

I didn’t know this until I went to the aisle, but Nestle makes refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough with filling (caramel or chocolate). The one that I chose was the caramel filled chocolate chip cookie, because I LOVE caramel. Two of my favorite candies are Caramello and Twix, so I felt that the combination of caramel and chocolate and COOKIE would be DIVINE.

So you eagerly tear open the package and place the rounds on a sheet, bake at the instructed oven temperature for the designated time. I found that I had to add about 50% of the time to my baking time (almost 20 minutes), but of course your oven may vary.

Perfect for halftime during a USC football game (specifically, when USC killed Cal a few weeks ago teehee):

Everyone was wondering what the gooooooooooood smell was — already a great start! I eagerly and selfishly broke apart one cookie for me to see the inside:

I was honestly a little disappointed to see that there wasn’t as much caramel in there as I thought there would / should be. The cookies are signature Nestle: soft, moist, chewy, enough chocolate. The caramel filling was just ok for me, but still, it’s a really good twist on an otherwise “normal” cookie. Everyone loved them and they were gone way before the game was over!

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: moist all around, especially due to the hot caramel filling. too bad I can’t say how it is the day after, though; it’d be interesting to see how the cookies held up overnight.
• Value: a dozen regular-sized cookies from refrigerated cookie dough on sale for $3.50, when it’s normally around $4 or $4.50. good deal, especially since it’s on par with other Nestle cookie doughs and these in particular look so appetizing!
• Overall: It WILL please a crowd but if I were to buy a cookie dough just for myself, I’d go with the regular kind just because these weren’t THAT much better. I can’t figure out if it’s because there wasn’t enough caramel or because it was sweet+sweet? Glad to have tried them though. I’d definitely buy them again for a party, and in that scenario, I’d give them an 8; for myself, 7.