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!

One of my favorite news sites, CNN, has reported that the FDA’s investigation into Nestle Toll House’s cookie dough E. coli contamination has hit a dead end. Apparently the sample of cookie dough that held a strain of E. coli obtained from a Nestle USA manufacturing facility in Virginia was not the same strain that hospitalized 35 people. As of Thursday the investigation of the plant was officially over. Despite the E. coli being found in the cookie dough, there were no E. coli strains found on equipment, shifting the blame away from Nestle. And after conducting 1,000+ tests at the facility after the outbreak, taking apart the production line and testing all the equipment in the facility, you’d better believe that the FDA almost wanted to find something wrong here so they can cite the source of the outbreak and prevent more widespread sickness.

Following this great news, Nestle USA spokeswoman Laurie MacDonald said they’re going to recontinue making our favorite snacks at the plant. They’ve purchased and are going to thoroughly test new lots of ingredients. In terms of when they’ll be back in the freezer aisle, though, that won’t happen for some time unfortunately. But when it does happen, there will be a new label that will indicate freshness and a new batch.

Well, that sucks. As my favorite pre-made dough, it’s really disappointing to hear that I won’t see it on the shelves for “quite some time.” Will I have to resort to Pillsbury?!?! Obviously this is going to mean a huge sales decline for Nestle, not only because of the bad press but because of how long it is going to take them to be able to sell cookie dough again. Big sad face I wonder if the new packaging will put a spike in their sales… or if it’ll bust a Tropicana orange juice repackaging nightmare.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/10/toll.house.dough.e.coli/

So Bill Marler of the Marler Blog writes of a hypothetical situation in which someone (or some people) intentionally poisoned the cookie dough. He cites multiple instances in which food was purposely contaminated with disease and chemicals. You might think he is pessimistic and thinks ill of the human race, but he says:

The reason I bring this up is not to mark another anniversary of 9/11, not because I actually think that food terrorism really is the cause of this week’s E. coli cookie dough outbreak, but I wonder if it would have made any difference in our government’s ability to figure out there was an outbreak, to figure out the cause, and to stop it before it sickened so many.

He’s bringing up this issue to bring to the attention the lack of protection our government provides us when it comes to foodborne illnesses (something he believes can easily and very readily happen today):

The [Centers for Disease Control & Prevention] publicly admits that it manages to count and track only one of every forty foodborne illness victims, and that its inspectors miss key evidence as outbreaks begin.

I honestly think (and hope) that it was a carelessly looked over mistake. I’m not really sure who’s got it out there for adolescent girls (the majority of the raw cookie dough eaters out there) but the issue here is how much regulation there is when it comes to providing us with safe cookies and cookie dough. Granted, we’re not supposed to be eating raw cookie dough, but this is E. Coli which isn’t supposed to be found in raw cookie dough (salmonella, I can understand, due to the eggs. but E. Coli?) Even the NY Times has gotten in on this:

Coming after problems with tainted tomatoes, peanuts and pistachios, this is another warning about the weakness of the nation’s food safety system and why Congress needs to fix it. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved an excellent bill that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s powers. The full House and the Senate — with White House support — need to move this package forward.

Food contamination has been happening way too often recently. Tomatoes, peanut butter paste, now cookie dough? We need to have the ability to trust our current system and be able to eat what’s provided to us on the shelves. I’ve kind of lost faith in our governmental system to do anything right around all of their inefficiencies and sheer number of things they have to take care of. I can only hope that this influx of tainted foods will open food companies’ eyes to the dangers of lacking clean and well-maintained facilities. If anything [putting my business / marketing / corporate hat on], it looks really bad on the brand. So if it’s one thing to care about, and if it’s not my health, the brands should be worrying about themselves, their brand value, their market share, their customers, their pages on Facebook and their followers on Twitter. With the internet, information is largely free-flowing and companies in every industry have to be much more careful and aware of what they are doing.

*steps off the soapbox*

What do you think? Do you think food-borne illnesses are on terrorists’ minds? What do you think of how the Center for Disease Control & Prevention tries to prevent and handle situations like these?

Uh-oh.. things aren’t looking good for Nestle. It looks like the FDA found E. Coli in a sample of cookie dough in a Nestle USA manufacturing facility in Danville, VA (same facility I wrote about earlier) yesterday. They’re doing more tests to figure out how the bacteria got into the dough in the first place. Note: the actual factory is clean — meaning the contaminant probably came from outside sources directly in contact with the dough — ie, the ingredients. It’s interesting because the biggest worry regarding raw cookie dough is salmonella from the uncooked eggs; this E. Coli thing is new. According to this article, “none of the main ingredients in the dough – such as butter, chocolate, flour, milk or eggs – is known to host E.coli 0157: H7.” My theory? A factory worker in the plant that produces the infected ingredient went to the bathroom and didn’t wash his / her hands. I also heard that all food production facilities don’t have to be extremely clean; in other words they’ll pass inspections if they have a few bugs. Could a bug have left its infected feces on one of the machines? Do bugs carry E. Coli or is that just a human / cattle thing? Not sure how that works… Also worrisome is the fact that the plants that deliver the cookie dough ingredients probably also deliver the same ingredients to other food manufacturers.

The press release states:

SOLON, Ohio, June 29, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Nestle USA’s Baking Division was informed today by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it has found and confirmed evidence of E. coli 0157:H7 in a retained production sample of 16.5 oz. Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough bar. The product has a day code of 9041 and a “Best before 10 JUN 2009″ notation.

For the official full-length press release: http://www.verybestbaking.com/products/tollhouse/dough/recall-06292009.pdf

Sources:

• http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/30/contaminated-sample-of-nestle-cookie-dough-found/
  (btw I love how the WSJ cites that most of the 69 infected people have been adolescent girls)
• http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/On-your-radar/Contamination/E.coli-contamination-confirmed-in-Nestle-dough