Cookie Showdown 2010!
OMG!! I was looking forward to this event for WEEKS. Or like weeks and a halfs.
Cookie Showdown 2010 was put on by Hello Drama and Nylon Pink and took place in August’s Downtown LA Artwalk. If you’ve never had the pleasure, DTLA Artwalk has become a MASSIVE event for hipsters, yuppies and normal people too to hang out. Art galleries stay open late but they have to since it’s so crowded it takes forever to get inside one and see everything (ok, that was only a little exaggerated). There is live music, restaurants stay open later and a HUMONGOUS array of food trucks that have taken over LA streets.
I lost track of how many cookies I ate but I think I ate around 9 (my record is 11). AAAAAAANNNDDD I didn’t get a stomach ache!!! Since we walked around and revisited bakeries over and over, I’ve organized this blog post by bakery and not chronological order. I also must apologize for the bad picture quality. My camera’s been having issues lately and inside it was either too dark or too light to take good pictures. (I didn’t want to put ALL the pictures on the blog, so more pictures can be found on my Facebook album.) Also, I’m pretty sure all of the sample cookies weren’t true to size of real cookies you’d buy, so I didn’t take that into consideration in my review except for one of them (see below).
If you remember my post about Baking Betty’s S’Mores Cookie, you’ll remember that I received a scrumptious lookin cookie in the mail and.. did not eat it all because I don’t eat marshmallows. I was SO stoked to hear that they were here! And OMG, ok, Baking Betty’s def gets the award for BEST OUTFITS EVER:
Emily and Taryn were the sweetest and let me in on their secret cookie that they had been tweeting about all day: white chocolate oatmeal cinnamon. Or oatmeal white chocolate cinnamon. Not to sound ungrateful but I thought I had the worst luck with them. First I get a non-vegetarian cookie, then they give me a cookie with oatmeal in it. But ‘OLY CRAP that was not what I was expecting. This cookie was freakin good! Hah, I actually ate the whole thing this time.. even after begrudgingly offering Scott some.. I think he knew how much I was enjoying it so he said no. 
(That is the secret: take someone on a cookie outing with you who doesn’t eat cookies. Luckily Scott is a cutie so I hang out with him. I don’t normally associate with people who don’t like cookies.) I have ALWAYS had problems with cookies with cinnamon in them. There’s never, ever, ever enough cinnamon, and this includes cinnamon sugar cookies. I’m like, dude, if you’re going to make a cinnamon cookie, put some freakin cinnamon in it. Baking Betty’s got this one right and the soft, moist interior of the cookie had exactly enough cinnamon for me to say FINALLY! A cookie with enough cinnamon! The white chocolate complemented the oatmeal very well (which is HUGE coming from someone who doesn’t like oatmeal). I will admit though that the oatmeal in this cookie was downplayed (otherwise I probably wouldn’t have liked it). I do love the fact that they focused on the cinnamon and white chocolate aspect of this cookie as they were in danger of completely overpowering the flavors with each other. I would totally get this cookie again. I got this cookie out of the sweetness of their hearts, without using one of my tickets. At the end though I wanted another… so I used my ticket this time 
A legit chocolate chip! Just as soft and just as tasty as the white chocolate oatmeal cinnamon. I will admit that this cookie is better than the select cookie parts of the s’mores cookie. Perhaps it was fresher? thinner? softer?
Thankfully they have nothing to do with that Snooki girl from Jersey Shore. Whew. Now that I got that out of the way, we stopped by the half Laker-colored booth and the girls there were SO sweet and gave us cookies without taking our tickets. I grabbed a white chocolate chip and Scott got a chocolate pecan cookie:
The chick there was my type of girl. When Scott refused a free cookie, she MADE HIM. THAT is a WOMAN I ADMIRE!! She put it in a plastic bag for him and we walked around. FAUX PAS! He dropped the cookie. Well, no, the cookie is just so soft and moist that when he was holding it by one end, half of the cookie fell off onto the floor. THAT is how soft it was. Both cookies were DELICIOUS. There weren’t that many pecans in the chocolate chip pecan cookie though. Or maybe the floor ate them. There was definitely enough chocolate to go around in these cookies and their recipe is top notch. Just like with Baking Betty’s, I went back later and used my ticket to get a milk chocolate chip cookie:
…which of course was excellent. Soft, moist, buttery delicious.
My sister told me to get cookies from here for Moms, and also when we were checking ourselves in, there was a random girl outside who told us that we had to eat their sandwich cookies. So that is what I got!:
They have a few varieties of these. They have one that is like an Oreo, this one like a Golden Oreo and another that has I think chocolate filling. This was good! It kind of looks like a macaron huh? But it’s denser and not as fragile. I took a bunch of these + their regular cookies home, planning to take pictures for this blog when it was daylight. …But the cookies are now gone (and not by me!). I estimate I bought around 10 or so cookies and there were two left 24 hours later. I guess that shows you how good the cookies are!
This table was on the more quiet side. They got my attention because they had a really cute Cookie Monster stuffed animal advertising their ice cream sandwiches! But since ice cream has too much ice cream and too little cookie, I opted for the chocolate chip cookie:
and ew. This cookie was hard and dry and tasteless. I could have done without it.
Freshly Baked defines themselves as making “gourmet cookies with attitude.” Their non-conformity leads them to special creations with funny names rather than the run-of-the-mill chocolate chip. They have oatgasm, demolicious, your mom, kiss my rosie white… I was really annoyed with them though because they gave us LITTLE ITTY BITTY TINY samples on a TOOTHPICK in exchange for a ticket.
Since I had extra tickets and I wanted to try cookies from all of the bakeries, I tried their chocolate pretzel cookie. It was good. I think. Yeah, it was good, had a crunch and nice flavor. …kind of wish I had more of it, like the other bakeries gave.
Hygge Bakery is a Danish bakery in downtown. They had a bunch of European pastries on their table! We got this “empenada” as Armando called it:
which was actually a raspberry.. or strawberry… filled pastry with almond slivers and sugar on top. It was very sugary! Crispy and crunchy, but not enough filling. It was yum Our ticket also allowed us to get another since they were small. The dude behind the table had me at “cocoa powder”:
This one was not incredibly tasty. The other one was better. Kinda hard, kinda not, nuts and sugar on top.. nothing too exciting.
Somehow B Sweet got their own little room with a window display, of which we promptly found out we weren’t supposed to stand in front. Uh, okay, sorry for blocking the view of all of your cupcakes. The place was so crowded as it was but nooooooooo standing in front of the window. I grabbed a cookie from inside:
This cookie was good, nothing too crazy, just a cookie with chocolate syrup and a white chocolate chip on top. Soft, moist, tasty.
It was really hot and crowded inside so we emerged from the building after 2 hours of stuffing my face with cookies. As we stood on the sidewalk I realized I was double fisting. I had my two favorite cookies of the night in my hand and we started debating about which was better: Baking Betty’s chocolate chip or Snookie’s chocolate chip:
Baking Betty’s / Snookies
Armando liked Snookies’ more because it was more buttery. I preferred Baking Betty’s because I thought it tasted better. We did a blind taste test with Scott.. that did not turn out to be so blind because due to our descriptive arguing, he knew which one was which. and eventually sided with me. YEAH BABY! And Chloe the Cookie Monster wrapped it up.
RESULTS:
B Sweet Catering won the contest with their red devil cookie sandwich and angel chocolate chip cookie (which is I guess what we got?). In my opinion either Baking Betty’s or Snookies should have won. Ah, you win some, you lose some; such is life! I had a great time! One of the best nights of my life (uh oh, I hope none of my ex-boyfriends reads that..) Onward to Cookie Showdown 2011!
and don’t forget.. you can re-live the experience vicariously through me here.
