So… back track a little bit to when I was still in New York. The day after we went to Jacques Torres, we went to a place with a lot of shopping (..I don’t remember where this was… D.U.M.B.O I think it’s called). After a couple of rounds at the Marc Jacob stores, we went to Magnolia Bakery! We were so stuffed by this time that we didn’t get any cupcakes but I totally had to grab a cookie:

This is a chocolate chip cookie. It’s an interesting color.. I’m wondering if they used shortening? For only $0.75, this cookie is lightly crispy and smooth. Magnolia Bakery is known for their cupcakes, but their cookies are great too! It does have its own distinct taste and is smooth going down. Not enough choc chips, but one thing I noticed is that it didn’t leave me parched in the end.

They’re going to open up shop in LA too!!! can’t wait!!

Magnolia Bakery

Downtown:
401 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10014
(212) 462-2572

Uptown:
200 Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
(212) 724-8101

Rockefeller Center
1240 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
(212)767-1123

Grand Central Station
107 East 42nd Street
New York, NY‎
(212) 682-3588‎

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: crispy and light; neither dry nor moist
• Value: $0.75 / cookie, GREAT DEAL! 10
• Overall: Get one if you’re already here but I wouldn’t make a stop just for a cookie because the line is out the door. 8

OMG.

..I just realized I start a LOT of blog posts like that…

We were in NY after we went to PA for my mom’s graduation (GO MOMS NGUYEN!) from Penn State Harrisburg with a Master’s in American Studies. We were told we HAD to visit Jacques Torres, which is a chocolate shop. They’re known for their hot chocolate, which is incredibly thick and rich. Emphasis on THICK.

It was my first time in NY and this was the first stop of the start of the weekend!! How awesome is that!? We walk inside and I find..

Chocolate chip cookies, called French Kiss cookies and…

…chocolate mudslide cookies. After getting a box of 25 chocolates for the 3 of us to share, 2 croissants, a hot chocolate and 2 cookies, we sat down to indulge!!!

First up: the mudslide cookie. Huge, and heavy might I add. This cookie had a brownie-like consistency: soft, fluffy and moist. The walnuts added a great crunchy contrast to the pillowy interior. The outside was crunchier than the inside, and the farther you ventured into the middle of the cookie, the softer it was. Oh. and the taste. was. divine. It is worth mentioning that they exclusively use King Arthur flour which I’m positive contributes to the quality of this cookie. And this shop has their own chocolate and OMG it tastes so good!! Which brings me to..

..the french kiss cookie. This cookie looked ginormouser! The eldest deemed it the best cookie she’s ever eaten! You’ll see that the chocolate in this cookie comes in the shape of discs rather than chips. This allowed for a bigger spread of chocolate across the cookie. But Mr. Chocolate must have thought it wasn’t enough to do that, so he took it a step further and layered the chocolate discs:

I hope you can see the layers in there. Very unique cookie in this aspect. In contrast to the mudslide, this cookie was more on the crunchy side with a sturdier construction. I LOVED it. And I kind of regret not getting the box of cookie mix that was in the store.. boo!

Jacques Torres Chocolate (a few locations)
66 Water Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(212)414-2462

Went to eat Guatemalan food as a fast fix for lunch one day. Cheap food, hardly anything vegetarian though FYI. The bakery display case had a TON of baked goods in it, so I grabbed a cookie

The boss let me have some of his too. It was like an oval sugar cookie. It was yums! It was too big though. Very sweet. This cookie I saved for later to share with my boyfriend. All the chocolate chips are on the top; there aren’t any mixed into the dough at all, lol. It was hard and crunchy, just like the oval sugar cookie, and for some reason the chocolate chips weren’t very tasty despite the fact that there were a lot of them on the cookie. Overall.. meh.

Gualtemalteca Bakery & Restaurant
4032 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90004-3314
(213) 382-9451‎

I have the urge to introduce you to my new best friend LaRae Wiggins. Ok, to be honest… LaRae, I only want you for your cookies.

*whew* Felt good to get that off my chest!

She sent me an email telling me she bakes good cookies. I’m like, ok.. it’s like whenever people hear that I play ping pong: they usually tell me that they’re really good and they’re the best on their block. Then their asses get beat and they walk away crying because they don’t know what it means to play against a former Women’s Team Captain of the USC Table Tennis Team on the USC Ping Pong Posse who helped bring her team to the NCTTA College Nationals 3 years in a row.

But I digress.

I’m sometimes up for a challenge, and always up for a cookie tasting!!! So she sent me my favorite cookies (white chip mac nut and choc chip). AN ENTIRE DOZEN. She said she wants to start in the big-times, selling them on her own and all, online nonetheless. Well, I think her presentation is impressive:

A FREAKIN DOZEN.

List of ingredients. Notice: does not include ANY hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup. Just normal stuff that you have in your kitch. A fact which, as I’ll explain in a sec, completely pissed me off.

I can’t believe I held onto this cookie wrapped long enough to take a picture

..and to take another one. I FINALLY bit into it, and omg. I think I’m in love. (el novio debe estar preocupado.) She warned me that the ones packaged / sent / received days later might taste not so great, but Holy Sugar Rush Batman, if this cookie tastes this awesome right now, how good does it taste right outta the oven?!?! One of the awesomest things about her cookies is that the center stays in that not-fully-baked, gooey, soft, buttery state:

The circumference is a really nice sorta crunchy texture (not too crunchy) and the middle of the cookie is softer. The outside of the cookie (like the top and bottom) are medium soft, and the middle is incredibly moist and delicious. It was PERFECT. Not sure how she managed to fit 3 different kinds of moisture and texture into one cookie 12 times but she did. OH. And I MUST mention that my new BFF got  a really good chips/nut to cookie ratio!? jeebus! *SO* hard to find. Ok. I’ll say it. It was the best cookie ever. OMG! I said it.

Chocolate chip! Same thing. You can see the homemade texture on this cookie really well.

And this is where I explain to you why I’m pissed off about the ingredient list. That list? I have EVERYTHING on that list. So.. why can’t *I* make these cookies?!?!? So. Not. Fair.

LaRae, take it from your new BFF. You’d be doing the world a disservice if you did not put your cookies up for sale on the interwebs. If anyone has experience doing an e-commerce site or making a website in general and is looking for some freelance work, hit me up!! If you would like to try the cookies I’ll hook you up to her too, leave a comment. Come on, it’s for the good of all of us!! If that doesn’t work out for you, try selling your cookies to Cheryl & Co., because they know nothing about “gourmet” cookies. You’ve set a new standard for cookies! Diddy Riese, step aside.. you’re now my #2.

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.