After an awesome time seeing Robin Hoodwinked at The All American Melodrama Theater and Music Hall in Long Beach, we stopped by Funnel House to get funnel cakes. M and I opted for our very own ice cream sandwiches. Had we known how HUGE they were, we might have decided to share one, especially considering neither one of us finished hers. Out of their 10 or so flavors of cookies and 16 flavors of ice cream I got cinnamon sugar and white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies with mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Cinnamon sugar…

and white chocolate chip macadamia nut!

Did I mention this sandwich was HUGE?? It was huge both in diameter as well as height (please, no that’s-what-she-said-ing here). I had to hold it with my entire hand (rather than just the palm of my hand, it was so big and heavy). The cookies were room temp, but I believe they do bake these cookies in-house. The cookies were soft and easy to bite into and paired nicely with the creamy ice cream. The cinnamon sugar was kind of bland (not enough cinnamon nor sugar) but the white chip mac nut was ok. Not overly sweet, which is a great complement to the sweetness of the ice cream.

Funnel House
425 Shoreline Village Drive
Long Beach, CA 90802-4550
(562) 901-1835

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: soft
• Value: $3.75 for a MASSIVE cookie sandwich. 8
• Overall: It was way too much food, and that’s coming from ME. I’d probably want to share this with at least 2 other people if I were in the area, and would probably just take some cookies if I really wanted one. My friends weren’t too ecstatic about the funnel cake either, but everyone on Yelp seems to disagree with us, so it may have been an off day, which still doesn’t make a good impression on me because it shows inconsistency. 7

One thing on our minds lately is the awful oil spill that has been spewing tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day since mid/late April. The situation might be deemed the greatest environmental catastrophe in history. The oil spill pictures are heartbreaking — the effect on sea life (SAVE THE TURTLES!!) and marine land could last for a generation. Here’s one way we can help clean up the oil, and yes, it does involve eating cookies!

Baking for Good is an online bakery that gives part of its profits to good causes that you choose. Among the variety of nonprofits and community fundraisers is The Gulf Coast Fund. They helped out after Hurricane Katrina and they’re back again to help with this oil spill. From the website directly:

The Gulf Coast Fund is working to identify and galvanize resources and support for coastal communities affected by the BP Oil Drilling Disaster. Its goal is to raise $100,000 in the next 30 days for support of community-led first response initiatives, and to establish a fund of up to $1,000,000 to address the long-term effects of this disaster. It has already distributed a portion of its own emergency grant reserves. The goals of the first round of emergency grants are: (1) to coordinate and enhance the work on the ground being led by coastal communities; (2) to reduce the duplication of efforts; and (3) to encourage joint collaboration across the region.

If you choose to support this cause, 15% of your total (minus taxes and shipping) goes to the Gulf Coast Fund. They have lots of baked goods, but their cookies are diverse, including gluten-free and vegan kinds. If you want to help this oil cleanup process while eating yummies at the same time, this would definitely be a great way to do it.

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

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

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