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).

BAKING BETTY’S

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?

SNOOKIES COOKIES

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.

PLATINE BAKERY

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!

ESSENTIAL CHOCOLATE DESSERTS

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

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

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.

B SWEET CATERING

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.

Not sure what was in the stars but Cara Pearson of Pacific Cookie Company had really good timing, sending a heartbroken girl two dozen cookies. TWO DOZEN! 24! Helped lift my spirits a little bit:

Pacific Cookie Company is gourmet cookie gift basket and boxes company based out of NorCal. (Haha, remember that post where I was like, what makes a gourmet cookie?) They have a retail store too! They use high-quality, natural ingredients with no trans fats (you hear that? straight butter. none of this “hydrogenated oils” crap in these cookies!). The pb they use in their pb cookies is Skippy. And the chocolate they use is Guittard chocolate — just as fancy as Valrhona chocolate, which I ate earlier at LAMILL! Fun facts (thanks wiki): Guittard chocolate is Frenchy, and they were the first company to make chocolate chips. They also use pure cane sugar as opposed to regular white / refined sugar, which ensures the eater of said cookies that there is a lot less chemical activity involved in these ingredients. Amen to them. Another piece in limiting the number of chemical interactions with their ingredients comes in their unbleached and unbromated flour, which is, obviously, flour that doesn’t have potassium bromate. I’m sure you totally knew that.

LOL, jk. Wow, I’m learning a lot today! Unbromated flour is a higher protein baking flour that yes does not contain potassium bromate, which is typically added to bread flour to help the elasticity of the baked product. UNbromated flour is more stable due to its higher concentration of gluten obtained from more proteins and is desired by bread bakers in general as well as those in higher altitudes. Some say it’s even safer than regular flour since the bromation (…wow.. that sounds like two dudes hanging out. bromance. bromation) might maybe possibly cause cancer. I would like for my cookies to not give me cancer…

Here’s the breakdown of the cookie list. Oh, the variety!!

(green hearts mean all natural and red hearts means 0 grams trans fat.)

K so she gave me 4 varieties of cookies. The first one I dug into was Cahootz! (white choc mac nut):

This was super yum. The mac nuts are HUGE! The cookie was soft with multiple mac nuts in every bite. Sometimes the nuts even split in between bites because they were so big. Once in a while I ate a white chip but to be honest I was so busy being amazed by the generosity of the mac nuts. There’s coconut in here fyi but I couldn’t taste any. Unfortunately for me the cookies were wrapped with the lemon cookie and the flavors definitely seeped through the plastic so the smell of the lemon and the taste of the cookie kind of meshed. After a couple of days though when I put the cookies apart, the lemon went away and the cookies were better. I was feeling shitty that day and I totally ate this with Lovin’ Scoopful ice cream and found out that this cookie would make a really good other half to an ice cream sandwich because it’s soft and not too sweet!

Shared some of this cookie with my buddies:

This was the lemon drop that partially contaminated my Cahootz!. It looks like this cookie has the smallest ingredient list. My friends really liked this one! They said it tasted like candy and likened it to a Starburst! I don’t particularly like lemon so I made sure that as many other people could try it as possible. It wasn’t popular with the sisters though, unfortunately. So, mixed reviews on this one. I ate a piece, and the lemon doesn’t kick in until a second later. I think my sisters didn’t like it because it was very sweet.

I was excited about the dark chocolate cranberry:

This cookie was good. Browned to perfection here. The Guittard chocolate was smooth and wasn’t bitter like other dark chocolates. The texture was not too soft but not crunchy either — a really good in-between. The dried cranberries made your teef sticky though, but I didn’t mind. I love dark chocolate! Another cookie with a simple ingredient list.

Then came the almond joe:

I think it was this cookie that the boss boss at work called “un-fucking-believable” (verbatim). Well if it wasn’t this cookie it was the dark choc cranberry. Anyway, man, this cookie is like a circus in your mouth! Semi-sweet choc, almonds, coconut. I was hesitant about this one because of the coconut (both shredded c0conut and pure coconut flavor) but I didn’t really taste it or it didn’t bother me that much. In other words the coconut flavor is not overpowering the rest of the cookie. It was definitely more about the semi-sweet chocolate and nuts in this one for me. I think I actually preferred this one over the dark choc cran because the texture throughout the cookie meshed better. In contrast to the Cahootz! cookie, the nuts in this one were smaller in size which made a good balance for the choc chips.

One major drawback is the huge amount of calories each one has. Over 200 calories each cookie! Well, I mean, it *is* a cookie, and I’ve definitely eaten cookies that have more calories, but it’s something I wouldn’t choose to do. My personal preference is 180 cals for one cookie max whereas a chocolate chip cookie from Pacific Cookie Co would have almost 250.

Pacific Cookie Company
(See website for order information)
1203 Pacific Ave.
Santa Cruz, Ca 95060
831.429.6905

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.

I just have to open this up by saying that Pepperidge Farm cookies are *the* go-to supermarket consumer packaged good cookie for me. I packed a bag of these when I went to China, and thank goodness I did, because apparently these types of cookies are not an Asian thing (see post below about Chinese cookies).

They have several different varieties; I really like the Chocolate Chunk line (except the one with pecans in it — not a huge fan of any other nut besides macadamias in my cookies) and the next line I’m going to get into is the Soft Baked one. I haven’t tried the 100 Calorie packs yet though, I’d be interested in trying those too.

This review will be about the Chocolate Chunk Tahoe White Chocolate Macadamia cookies, since these saved me so badly when I was sans-”normal” cookies:

The cookies are on the large side, definitely; there’s 8 cookies in each bag.

I absolutely love the color on these cookies. Perfectly baked. AND, there’s the exact right amount of “toppings” in the cookies; every bite has more than one chip or nut so you get a mouthful of yumminess rather than a mouthful of just dough sometimes. Don’t think that these cookies are overly sweet though; the dough is not too sweet (just slightly buttery), which balances out the sweetness of the other components. The chocolate chunk ones are the crunchy ones, and believe me when I say to listen to the label. These are very crunchy, which do translate into crumbly, which leads to a mess on your shirt and your mouth (and the dining room floor). In addition, because these are so crunchy / crumbly, sometimes pieces break off that you didn’t bite into (I hope you have fast reflexes. Or don’t listen to the 5-second rule). Another slightly annoying thing about these cookies is that they (moreso than other cookies) leave a lot of cookie on your teeth so your tongue gets a good workout. Other than that, these cookies have a great flavor and aren’t too dry. Pepperidge Farm is also the only brand I can think of that make milk chocolate macadamia nut cookies too, so they definitely get points from me regarding that.

• Taste: 10
• Crust crunchiness: 10 for very crunchy
• Center crunchiness: 10 for very crunchy
• Value: when they’re on sale at Ralphs for $2.50 or $3, 10; remember, there’s 8 cookies in this bag! They’re normally $4 or $5, and I’m cheap, and I don’t buy them unless they’re on sale.
• Overall: 10, for being my go-to grocery store cookie

Check out Pepperidge Farm’s other cookies here.