**EDIT**: Please see update here

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.

So, the cookies I baked from Nestle frozen cookie dough tasted like heaven right out of the oven. But what about today? Disappointingly the yummy cookies I baked yesterday were a bit less yummy today. My biggest complaint is that it was tough and the previously crisp outer shell was the same texture as the inside. The circumference still maintained some of its crispiness though. I’ve learned that it’s best to eat this cookie the same day that you baked it, so if you have a party, bake the same day. The next day will still be good, just not as good. I’d say about 85% as good.

YUM!

Doesn’t that look delicious!!! Now that the whole Nestle cookie dough / E. coli thing is over (er, except for a select few people) Nestle has put their cookie dough back on the shelves with new labeling that clearly states that it is a New batch and not to consume raw cookie dough in bold letters:

^ Cookie dough that I am not supposed to consume raw

This is one of the easy ones where you just break the dough up into pieces:

And they weren’t kidding when they said JUMBO on the package.

The package said bake the dough in a 325-degree oven for 16-18 minutes, but I had to leave them in there for about 22 minutes, specifically because I did *not* want to consume raw cookie dough!! But the wait (impatient as I was, and everyone who knows me knows that I am NOT patient) was worth it!

Out of the oven golden brown and delicious and onto the rack. I know the whole appeal of getting the break-apart-and-bake cookies is ease, quickness and simplicity, but as you can see above, there are hard lines in the cookies. I would suggest that you round out the bricks of dough a little bit to achieve that “home baked” look; otherwise, it looks like you wanted square cookies. That, my friends, is something you will have to achieve another way. Except that I got lucky with our friend up there in the middle row, on the left, that’s a pretty square cookie. Well, so am I. Moving on.

Nestle is almost synomous with home baking. The chocolate chips are what they’re known for, and that alone is good enough for me to trust any recipe they put out. I wouldn’t have expected anything but near greatness from them. And that is what I got. I eagerly broke a cookie in half (come on, I’m on a diet, and one of these JUMBO cookies has 180 calories!) and bit into the cookie to find a crispy outside and a soft center. The cookie had a nice crunchy crust on the outside and as you can see from the photos there are plenty of their famous chocolate chips in each bite. Buttery, soft, flavorful… what else could anyone want in life?!

• Taste: 10
• Crust and center moistness: moist all around. crispy exterior, soft interior.
• Value: 12 cookies for $4.49, on sale for $3.50. You could definitely make these smaller though and still have good-sized cookies. and there would be more of them!
• Overall: It’s easy to make and tastes GREAT. I’d buy if I had no time to make my own. 10!