Cookie Monsters

What does one do on a cold and rainy day in New York City? Eat cookies of course! Since Collin Murray and I have been eating just about everything in New York, it stands to reason that we haven't neglected the mighty cookie on our tasting tour. The first cookie that we had that was truly delicious was at a place called the Momofuku Milk Bar. Milk Bar is one of several restaurants in New York owned by a man named David Chang. The restaurants that he owns are very hip and very pretentious in a way that only hip restaurants can be. Milkbar is attached to another of his restaurants, Momofuku Saam Bar and is usually very busy. They sell soft serve ice cream in flavors like red velvet and cereal milk, whole cakes, different kinds of pie (like their signature flavor called crack pie that has an oat crust and a butter-y filling) and they sell cookies. Collin Murray and I shared three cookies, the cornflake cookie that has cornflakes, chocolate chips and marshmallows in it, a double chocolate cookie and a blueberry cream cookie that apparently had milk crumbs?! and dried blueberries. For all the hype that we had heard about Milkbar, Collin Murray and I were a little disappointed. The cookies were good but they weren't great. The blueberry one was especially bland and the cornflake cookie was very chewy and tasty but it had too much sugar in it which made it a little bit hard on the outside. However, the flavors that the bakery sold definitely got my brain a-thinking for when we start the cookies and cakes module in school.


Milk Bar cookies

Tonight, because of the cold and rain, we were looking for something sweet and comforting to have after dinner. I had heard about a bakery called Insomnia Cookies from a friend at school and so Collin Murray and I knew we were in the neighbourhood and we decided to make it a mission to find the place. Insomnia Cookies is basically a bakery that is primarily set up in college towns and caters to students studying late at night. They are open till 3am, deliver to nearby NYU and have very reasonable prices and pretty tasty cookies. The other neat thing about Insomnia, which is actually supposed to be a neat thing about Milkbar but we didn't taste it, is that they serve their cookies warm. What I think they do is only bake the cookies half-way and then keep them in a very warm oven with the hope of them cooking all the way through but not overcook and that they will still stay warm and soft. We tried the chocolate chip, smore, oatmeal raisin and white chocolate macadamia nut and they were pretty tasty. Like the cookies at Milkbar, these cookies were very sugar-y and also very butter-y -- I think this is part of the way that they make them So soft and So chewy but it makes them a little bit greasy at the end of the cookie.


Insomnia Cookies (not including the smore which Collin Murray and I shared on the way home...)

After the cookie tasting I have a lot of ideas for mix ins when I bake cookies but I also want to know from you, my faithful blog readers, what your favorite cookie is to munch on when it is cold and icky outside? Please share, don't be shy. Give me some ideas for cookies to make, research, photograph, eat, and blog about -- let's get involved in the blog! And have a glass of milk on the side.