It’s a SQUARE cookie. a SQUARE toffee cookie! I ate this cookie one or two days later in the airport when I was waiting for my flight out of Chicago and it was still soft It was caramel-y too! The toffee bits were satisfying (although not crunchy as I thought they would be) and it was just the right amount of sweetness. Definitely held me over while I needed a good snack!!

Sarah’s Pastries and Candies
70 East Oak Street
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: (312) 664-6223
Hours: Mon-Sat 8am-6pm, Sun 10am-6pm

• Taste: 7 — was good, but not crazy good.
• Crust and center moistness: soft
• Value: $2.15 for this one and $2.50 for the chocolate dipped (half of the cookie is covered) one. kinda expensive for a cookie.
• Overall: Good for a cookie I’ve never eaten before, but a ton of their other candies looked more appealing. The other stuff we sampled in their store was great. Pass on the cookie but get other chocolates. 7 for the cookie.

Grabbed this, a veggie sandwich (panini?) and a mint tea latte for $18. This cookie was $1.95. The sandwich was great, the mint tea latte was uhhhmazing, and the cookie was ok. A good end, but.. nothing to write home about. or blog about. just your standard cookie.

• Taste: 7 — nothing too notable here, but not a bad cookie by any means.
• Crust and center moistness: kinda crunchy, kinda soft. I’m in between about this cookie in all manners lol
• Value: $1.95 for quite a sizeable (but mediocre) cookie. Everything here is kind of expensive though. It fits the establishment, but not my pocket.
• Overall: …pass. 6

Adorable! If you have a cute picture with cookies… send them over!

They have flower and GASP STARS AND HEARTS TOO!!!! OOMMGGG. AND they have a section where you can make your own custom cookies, from the shape of the cookie to the color combinations of the smiley face. HAHAHAH and they even have a pirate smiley LOL.

Mine were white, round and had faces in all colors of the rainbow! I searched and took the yellow one before my mom and sister could take it

I was actually expecting this cookie to be super sweet, considering they are sugar cookies (they have named it all-purpose cookie dough) + there is the glaze. Surprisingly, the cookie wasn’t sweet at all! Or not too sweet. Not an overpowerful sweet. The glaze is hard and complements the cookie with enough sweetness to not turn off people who don’t like too sweet, but may not be enough for you if you have a huge sweet tooth at the moment (and if you know me, I like REALLY sweet things). It’s crumbly, so eat over a trash can or something. I got these on Wednesday, and I just ate some from a Ziploc bag and they STILL taste fresh; they’re not stale at all. They are freakin huge — 250 cals from each cookie! Half a cookie would be good for me if I had willpower to not finish an entire cookie. Definitely can’t deny that they are SO cute.

Smiley Cookie – smileycookie.com – site for ordering cookies. Nothing to lose!

Now get clickin’ and remember, if your cookie gifts don’t make you smile for any reason, we’ll be happy to refund or replace them — guaranteed!

• Taste: 7 — pretty plain, but these cookies are really about simplicity and the smiley face makes up for the taste.
• Crust and center moistness: hard glaze, crunchy/crumbly cookie, but not dry
• Value: $13 for a dozen of their custom made cookies, which is just over a dollar for each giant cute cookie. Once you factor in Fedex shipping cost (they don’t charge tax!!) the value fits what you get in return.
• Overall: These cookies definitely make a cute statement! Unique, fun and not crazy expensive like gourmet shops. I would put Smiley Cookies on the list of gifts to get others. 9

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.

I have some SUPER EXCITING NEWS!!!! There is going to be a COOKIE event at the Downtown LA Artwalk TONIGHT! As of right now there are 8 LA bakeries lined up to showcase their cookies. AND I’M A JUDGE!!!!!!! I think judging cookies is one of the things I do the best.

***FYI the event is now taking place at 333 Spring, around 4th Street***

Ok, info:

Please make sure to RSVP to rsvp@hellodrama.net for your tickets for 2 free mini cookies. If you are going to RSVP for friends, please also include their full names and email addresses in the email

This is a FREE event

The Cookie Showdown 2010 will be bringing together best cookie bakeries from the city to compete for the best cookie trophy

If you are interested in sampling one cookie from each competing bakery and judging for the Audience Favorite bakery– a full sampling pass will be available for purchase. Full sized cookies and a delicious assortment of
baked sweets will be available for purchase

POP UP shops by Hello Drama Jewelry and Killers Never Die Clothing

LIVE DJ sets all night long

Event Hosted by NYLON PINK
Sponsored by Honest Tea

www.hellodrama.net
www.nylonpink.tv

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=139625606061703&ref=ts

Tell me if you’re going and if you want to meet up!!

I feel really stupid. I got contacted by Baking Betty’s (an OC bakery!) and was so busy I didn’t check the website before I received them. Well next time I know for sure to make sure to check the website and let the bakers know I am vegetarian! Otherwise I may receive another scrumptious looking cookie, …with marshmallows…

…which are not vegetarian. Ok, so I just ate around the marshmallows:

The marshmallows were still completely gooey and slightly toasted when I got them The cookie parts without the marshmallows were good too. Slightly crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, considerable amount of chocolate chunks. I’m not sure if there are actually any graham crackers in here, but if there were, I couldn’t taste any.

The price for these cookies are $2.99 each or $28 for a baker’s dozen. They have this kind, regular chocolate chip and double s’more (more chocolate it looks like). It’s a pretty thick cookie but that’s also a pretty steep price. I don’t know anyone else who makes s’more cookies though!! They sell in some stores around OC and online, and even do gift baskets. Overall, a better-than-average cookie; the novelty of the s’more concept is the hook here. The regular chocolate chip is ok, probably good to mix in if you’re getting a variety with the s’more cookies.

Baking Betty’s official website
Twitter: @BakingBettys

• Taste: 7-8
• Crust and center moistness: very moist! crunchy and soft at the same time… if that makes sense?
• Value: $2.99 for one, WOW expensive; $28 for a baker’s dozen. Given the novelty, size of each cookie and taste, I’d say it’s kind of worth it if you get the s’more cookies. I mean, not for vegetarians of course.
• Overall: The chocolate cookies are definitely high up there, but I wouldn’t choose to get them alone just because I can find cookies that are just as good around me that are cheaper. Buy these and take them on a camping trip! 7

Here’s a picture of inside their bakery, which is downstairs from Bistro Boudin. They make tons and tons of bread as you can see, even in cute shapes like bears and turtles!!! I had their sourdough bread and to be completely honest, their sourdough bread tastes the same as bread in LA. …and their cookies didn’t really stand out much either:

Ok this is a REALLY BAD picture taken through plexiglass, but I wanted to show you the different kinds of cookies they had. I wanted to buy both the white chocolate and chocolate chip cookies, but they were kind of pricey so I just stuck with the chocolate chip.

Pretty freakin huge cookie! This chocolate chip cookie was soft and sweet. I always have a sweet tooth after I eat lunch and this definitely hit the spot. Again, nothing too special about this one, just your standard cookie.

Boudin at Fisherman’s Wharf
boudinbakery.com
(multiple locations)
160 Jefferson St.
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-928-1849
Sun – Thur: 8 am – 9 pm
Fri – Sat: 8 am – 10 pm

• Taste: 7
• Crust and center moistness: soft but not chewy
• Value: $1.99, expensive
• Overall: Stick to their bread if you can actually taste the difference. 6