Ok, so we went over Trader Joe’s Chocolate Chunk Cookie. How does their vegan chocolate chip compare?

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies - Trader Joe's

In a few words: it falls short. Their vegan cookies are in white paper bags to differentiate them from their non-vegan counterparts which are in brown paper bags (see previous blog post linked above), possibly to indicate purity… but I’d rather not be a Puritan.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie - Trader Joe's

As you can see in this picture, the 135-calorie non-dairied and non-egged cookie is slightly smaller than the palm of my hand. Also visible in this picture is the grainy texture; it was a bit dry and crumbly, but not hard. The taste was lacking in some ways: no smooth flavor to go down nicely. Bland even. The chocolate chip + some nuts in every bite helped spice up the flavor some. But not enough.

• Taste: 5
• Crust and center moistness: dry, crumbly, soft
• Value: around $4 or so for 11 small-ish cookies, $0.37 / cookie. 7
• Overall: This is one cookie not to have in your cookie jar. 6. Stick to their Trader Joe’s Chocolate Chunk Cookie. But, I reiterate, if you gotta go vegan, do Michelle’s Naturally Vegan Chokolada Chip Cookies.

I ventured into the area of Los Alamitos this past weekend, with one goal in mind: cookie. I searched on Yelp for places near where I live that had good cookies for a lunch / cookie run with some buds and landed at Katella Deli. After a meal of scrambled eggs with milk and matzo, applesauce and fruit I was so ready for a cookie! Ok, two cookies:

The place was a Jewish deli and reminded me of Jerry’s, Canter’s and Izzy’s Delis. The smaller one on the left had us puzzled — we later concluded it was an egg cookie. My first ever! It was crumbly and not at all soft. I.. actually didn’t finish it, it was too weird tasting for me. The size of the cookie was good, it was really cute, just.. not your typical cookie. My great cookie experience at Izzy‘s made me hopeful for this cookie here on the right. It indeed was good. Not as good, but it was good. The inside was still soft and slightly gooey, but the outside could have been crunchier. The taste was.. average. It was also wrapped in plastic and for some reason I feel like cookies wrapped in plastic aren’t as fresh as those even sitting in a glass case, unwrapped. Again, not enough chocolate chips! A very large cookie that could have benefited from being taller and not as wide in diameter. I’ll be honest; for a place that boasts its own bakery I expected more.

• Taste: 7
• Crust moistness: medium
• Center moistness: soft
• Value: A really great value. Large / Oversizedish cookie for $1, and the weird egg cookie was $0.30
• Overall: Shrug. Your average cookie. A good way to end a meal, but maybe try something from their extensive line of baked goods there that you can’t find anywhere else, because you can definitely get a cookie of this quality elsewhere. If you’ve got a craving though and you happen to be around, get it. 7

Katella Deli
4470 Katella Ave
Los Alamitos,CA 90720
(562) 594-8611
Mon-Sun. 7:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.

****RE-REVIEW****

I got a Coffee Bean cookie as a surprise today. I’m eating it to show my gratitude (if you missed it, see my harsh review below). But to my huge surprise, the cookie is actually very good!!! The first time I must have gotten a bad cookie or something, because this cookie is MUCH softer than I remember and smoother in flavor. Chocolate chunks still aplenty and still delicious. Re-grading this cookie to Overall: 7 (docked points for the price tag; portion control, people!!; inconsistency in the Coffee Bean Cookie Jar; and it was good, but not good enough to buy again unless I had a craving and it was close)

If you are interested in reading my Starbucks cookie review: http://chloescookieblog.com/2009/09/cookie-review-chocolate-chip-cookie-starbucks/

Old review

Convenient cookies are great. I don’t drink coffee, but hey, there’s Starbucks and Coffee Bean everywhere; one of each by my work. Coffee Bean’s a bit closer, so I grabbed a cookie to soothe one of my regular cookie cravings.

And here we have another bad camera phone picture:

It’s a fairly sizeable cookie. I have a love/hate relationship with big cookies. On the one hand, I kinda feel fat afterwards. On the other hand, if they’re smaller, I sometimes will eat 2. But I’d much prefer the option of eating one medium one or two medium ones than one big one. Anyway, I bit into this cookie and the first thing that came to mind was: bland. There must have not been enough butter or salt in this cookie because the dough was just blah. The texture was somewhat grainy and not as smooth as I’d like. The chocolate chunks, however, were aplenty and delicious. They weren’t enough to save this cookie though, and if I go back to Coffee Bean it’ll be for the hot chocolate, and definitely not the $1.50 huge bland cookies.

• Taste: 4
• Crust moistness: dry
• Center moistness: dry
• Value: awful. $1.50 for a bland cookie? No way.
• Overall: not doing that again. 3.

When my mom requested milk and cookies from her [favorite] daughter, I knew I had to buy her the best one I could find (I was instructed to buy chewy). But I was at Trader Joe’s and I’ve had some cookies from there, but not any that I was crazy about. I took a leap of faith and got these:

And boy did I make a great decision!!

The packages advertises “chewy” and I eagerly bit into one. The very first thing I noticed was that it was crunchier on the outside and chewier on the inside — something I ABSOLUTELY LOVE. I’ve been eating a lot of same-texture-on-outside-and-middle cookies going on; it was really refreshing to remind me how good a crunchy “crust” can complement a chewy inside. Although on the chewy side, it wasn’t as chewy as i was expecting — probably due to how thin this cookie is:

I’m sure that if this were a thicker cookie that it would be tons chewier. Very moist and not too sweet. I put it in the microwave and it didn’t improve the cookie that much, room temperature is fine. There’s nothing too “special” about this cookie, though, in terms of taste; it’s your standard chocolate chip cookie. Which I’m not opposed to eating.

• Taste: 8
• Crust and center moistness: good crust with soft center; 9
• Value: $4.29 for 12 cookies. Great deal!!
• Overall: Would DEFINITELy buy again during a TJ’s run. 9

There are TONS of cookies at Trader Joe’s. Which one(s) should I try next?

I saw these hot new products from Pillsbury at Ralphs this weekend; I should have picked one up for a day like today (yes, it was one of those days). Well, hopefully I can win one (plus a cookie jar, a nice lil tote bag that I can use to carry MORE cookie dough, and a grocery notebook so I can write down which cookies I have to remember to buy) in Megan from Megan’s Munchies ‘s contest! Hopefully Megan will show a cookie blogger sister some love — but if not, you might have a chance to win!

So I told you this review was coming up. I’ll just go ahead and break the suspense if you didn’t read my last Pepperidge Farm cookies review, Michelle’s Naturally Vegan cookies are the BEST vegan cookies I’ve ever eaten. And they’re better than some cookies out there too!! (Ahem, Chips Ahoy and Togo’s, I’m talking to you).

At any point in time I will usually have this stash of cookies in my drawer at work:

::grin::

Michelle has the cutest picture of herself on the front and touts that her cookies are all natural with nothing artificial, contain no trans fats, are fruit juice sweetened and are made with organic ingredients.

I’ve only eaten the Chokolada Chip cookies, but there’s a Peanut Butter Apricot that intrigued me. Now, on with the review!

A standard sized cookie, about the size of my palm. I’ll point out one negative in that the cookies are very crumbly. They take a tiny bit of effort to bite into, and it can get a bit messy but from then on it’s just heaven!! I don’t know how she achieves that “buttery” goodness in a vegan cookie, but somehow she did. This cookie always disappears too quickly Also worth noting is that I’m usually really picky about my chocolate chips in my cookies. I usually like more chocolate chips than less, but this cookie — as you can tell from the photos — don’t have as many as I would normally like. However, in this special cookie the ratio is very well balanced due to the very tasty dough. I can tell these cookies are sold much more fresh than other pre-packaged cookies (a downside is that one time I think I bought a bag of these cookies that had gone a little stale…). And might I mention that one of these chocolate chip cookies is a mere 135 calories??

When I first ate these cookies, I was so impressed that I actually emailed Michelle herself. She ever-so-kindly emailed me back, thanking me for the compliments. That’s another great thing: the customer service of a self-starter is wonderful! I gave one to my meat-eating friend and even he admitted it was one of the best he’s had. Unfortunately, you may not be able to find these cookies everywhere. I get mine at Miss Winston’s on 31st and Ocean Park in Santa Monica for $4.99 (my last post stating that these cookies were $4.69 needs to be corrected but it still doesn’t change my opinion about them!). The Whole Foods on National and Barrington sells it at a monstrous $5.69, but the Whole Foods on Lincoln and Rose doesn’t sell it at all which was appalling.

• Taste: 10
• Crust and center moistness: A little dry, but it’s buttery at the same time
• Value: $5 for 8 almost-fresh cookies, each at 135 calories; GREAT!!
• Overall: If you don’t do eggs or dairy or either, this is a MUST HAVE in your pantry. If you don’t steer in that direction, it’s still a REALLY REALLY good cookie. 10!!

So what do you think of the vegetarian / vegan trend getting into your baked goods? Do you believe that something lacking eggs and dairy could be this good?!