Le Cookie Quotidien: Fork shown for scale.

Alex Israel writes in about one of my standby's, the prodigious chocolate chip megacookie from Le Pain Quotidien (a.k.a. overpriced fake french place with awkward banquet table, loud babies, and free Nutella if you know to ask for it):



Le Pain's chocolate chip cookie is, in a word: huge (five cookies in one, at least). Other words I'd use to describe it: thin, crispy, and of course, organic. I feel that I too often face the "fork" in the cookie road: thin vs. thick (which often translates into enough vs. not enough to satisfy a cookie craving). At Le Pain, this regrettable binary dissolves into a kind of perfect cookie compromise: thin and giant. Goodbye fork--Hello cookie!

"Le Pain" is for cookies, and that's good enough for me!


Well then it's good enough for me too, dude.

It's a Cookie Affair

It's always nice when family checks in to remind you that you're still a complete child (writing a blog about cookies is of course no indication of this at all).

Nicole's Nana, Elaine, sent over a batch of her famous Potato Chip Butter Cookies in this:



That would be one of those return address stickers that come free in the mail with your contribution to the local Rotary club or annual Policeman's ball. Genius. Apparently Nicole hadn't returned Nana's tupperware the last go 'round and she was not very happy about it. The cookies?



Insane. Ridiculous. Perfection. Sugarbutterballs with a salty potato chip crunch biting through their sublime smoothness. While I cannot overstate how effing good these were, it must be noted that these go beyond fattening. These ARE fat - you eat them and a portion of fat the exact size and shape of the cookie will appear somewhere on your body within 48 hours.

Not to be outdone, Maureen - aka my Mom - was in town the next week and brought these little guys by the studio:



However much I wanted to resent her for giving me exactly what I wanted exactly when I wanted it and therefore negating any sense of adulthood or self-sufficiency I had developed over the past 35 years, they were so good that I just shut up and ate like 10 of them on the spot. I mean, they were still WARM for god's sake. The woman doesn't screw around.

We love you Mom and Nana,
xxScott & Nicole


.

Cookie, Interrupted.

Okay, I SUCK. Busy few weeks trying to do things that (gasp!) don't involve cookies, namely:

1. Watching Lost.



Lost had its big series finale a while back, which meant I could finally start watching it from the beginning. You see, I prefer my low culture entertainment to be completely time-shifted - not by Tivo's wimpy standard of a few hours or days, but by at least several years.

Lost is everything I dreamed it would be and more. Science fiction - and the dime story mythology that supports it - has an obsessive effect on me. I watched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy at least 32 times between February and December of 2004. And I have no memories of two entire days last week that don't involve an island, Matthew Fox, and a thick waft of black smoke that makes jungle trees bend.

It's important to note that I'm on Season 3 episode 13 and there's yet to be one cookie sighting on the Island, and these people totally have real food by this point:



Coincidence? Hmmm....


2. Not getting fat.



I have nothing to do with this photograph. That's what you get when you type "fat cookie" into a google image search. I swear.


3. Making clothes.

Lately I've been feeling a lot like this guy:



Someone's gotta make the friggin donuts. I realize I'm mixing dessert metaphors now, but while I'm at it, I can't NOT post this:



Alright dude, focus. Back to cookies.

Girl Scout Season, Part 3: Goodbyes.

Girl Scout Cookie Season seems to have come and gone. So, at this point we can be honest: the cookies are bunk. I don't remember them sucking this much. They're like weird, chemical-laden facsimiles of the GSC's I remember, with super lame names that I'm too embarrassed to type here. They should do a collab with Whole Foods next time and hire Yoko Ono to come up with the names.

Anyway, I came across this video, which is about saying goodbye Girl Scouts Style:



Well, she sure makes that all sound like fun. The word maudlin came to mind when watching this, which is okay because I really like that word.

Alright, until next year my little green scouts...

Halfsies

This is a plate of cookies:



This is a plate of cookies when two perfectly insane people share it for dessert:

Mile High Cookie

What better way to pass the time on an 8 hour transcontinental flight while dangerous plumes of Volcanic ash loom underneath than a cookie?



This Delta freebie - a surprisingly perfect, consistently crunchy graham cracker cookie - almost made me forget that the world was coming to an end a few miles below.

Girl Scout Season, Part 2: Thin Mint Photo Shoot.

Dave Franco: actor, Thin Mint fan.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Cookie

Konnichiwa, cookie lovers. Apologies for my extended absence. I spent a week or so in Tokyo and, as my dear Japanese friends would say, got the jet rag. Alas, I am back in action with a report from the trip.

Needless to say, this ain't cookie country folks. Generally, this is what you'll find while walking around:



Or, on equally colorful note:



That would be a truck passing by on the way to Starbucks my first morning. I couldn't tell if it was a mere advertisement or if they were actually cutting hair in Edward Scissorhands shapes INSIDE the moving truck, which of course would be amazing.

Anyway, by lunch on the first day I needed a taste of home so headed straight for Opening Ceremony in Shibuya. The shop is so completely impressive and cool; floors and floors of OC goodness with a new restaurant in the basement called Potluck. A warm feeling overcame me when I saw this at the counter:





Um, I think they meant to write "DRY CRACKERS". Buzzkill.

A few days later, the guys from Honeyee.com came by Guthrie for a Polaroid polo shoot. This is Suzuki-san, the editor-in-chief, who is much cooler than me:



And these are the cookies he brought as a kind offering:



A for effort and of course design (sailboats!). C minus for taste and texture. At that, I ate the entire box. No joke. This was the closest thing to bread I'd seen in almost a week and had to take advantage of the situation.

On the last night, when all hope was lost, my buddy Kun's sister Yuri presented me with this little jar of goodness:




These were perfect little crispy cookies of the olive oil (vs. butter) variety, and my carbohydrate deprived Japanese friends and I ate them up before we could say:



Arigato Gozaimasu Yuri!!!

And back at the home office...

Dear Intern Who Made The Trader Joe's Run Last Week,

Kudos on stocking up the kitchen upon my return from New York.



Word of note: when your boss writes a cookie blog, perhaps you should consider a cookie option on your grocery list.

Warmest,
SS

Girl Scout Season, Part 1

Walking to a casting this morning, I noticed this:



Game on, bitches.

Find out where to order here.

Marina Del Cookie

Dave Franco reports from our Spring look book shoot in the Marina:



(Minor bag malfunction.)

Downward Facing Cookie

Left the office for a company lunch last Thursday and on the way back we made a quick stop at Golden Bridge for cookies. Golden Bridge is to Yoga in L.A. what a Mega Church is to Jesus in, well, L.A.

Full disclosure: I hate yoga. This is primarily because I suck at it. Needless to say, you'd be hard pressed to find me there in patchouli paradise if it weren't for trusty Nicole, who swears by their chocolate chip cookie.

So, here we are at the counter:



Maybe it's just me, but it's not the most JOYFUL row of cookies. Wheat free! Vegan! Yipee! Anyway, I go in for my gluten-free choco chip (right, foreground):



Now, I don't know what "gluten" is exactly, but I suspect there's a direct correlation between it and a little something I like to call "flavor". On a positive note, the texture was awesome. Chewy like soft caramel without being sticky, and full of super doughy craters, I finished the damn thing before I even knew it.

Namaste, Nicole.

Hyperbo-Cookie

Stopped by Starbucks this afternoon for an iced coffee (yes, people, you read right: ICED. Los Angeles is a special place in the winter) and immediately noticed this:



OUTRAGEOUS, huh? Fine, you've got me. Now explain yourself:



Oh, Natalie. I do appreciate the effort, but you've got to do better than that. I've tasted it by this point and it's nothing more than a decent oatmeal raisin cookie with, like, 50 too many raisins. Yuck.



For some reason, it also brings to mind what that red headed guy from thirtysomething would look like if he were a cookie:



Wait, wasn't he also Poindexter in Revenge of the Nerds?



This cookie IS outrageous.

For Your Cookie

A live report and photo feed from Bettina Korek at the Tower Bar:



"Ice cream sandwhich at the sunset tower. This is a very good use of chocolate chip cookies. It's been on the menu a month and, according to the waiter, has surpassed chocolate cake in popularity. Very into this."

Clearly, B. Enjoy.

Koo Koo Doodles

What do super tasty, marginally healthy roasted chicken dinners with yummy sides of mac and cheese, roasted garlic potatoes, and...err, can I get two helpings of mac and cheese please?...have to do with cookies, let alone SNICKERDOODLES? In this case, I say WHO CARES? Koo Koo Roo offers up a splendidly buttery take on the classic doodle that almost usurps the need for a chicken dinner altogether. Light on the cinnamon, heavy on the dairy, they bake these to premature, doughy perfection. As with any franchise cookie, one has to expect a certain level of inconsistency, but that's nothing a simple middle-cookie-touch-test can't help overcome. I'll take two please.

Cookie Monster: Take One.

September 2009, NYC.
Band of Outsiders x Momofuku Thai Cookie.
More on them and that later.

Cookie Collab: The New Taste in Space

Pepperidge Farms x Star Wars.

Jacques Cookie

Three dimensional, circular shaped Rorschach test or totally awesome blend of buttery shortbread and not-too-dark dark chocolate?

You decide. Click here to order.

"Me, I like the two kinds of cream inside."

The Good, The Bad, and the Cookie

The allure and romance of Italy is completely lost on me. Granted, I'm there almost once a month for pure work so a certain level of jaded is to be expected. Also, I'm oddly not much of a foodie (barring obvious cookie obsession) and just don't get all that excited about local Italian food and the idiosyncratic distinctions from one boring town to the next. On a recent night out in Treviso, my Italian production partners took me to one of those local restaurants that are apparently "the best in the town, amoré!" but somehow always look like the lobby of a Howard Johnson's. This one did stand out for it's "meat truck" (let's save that for another blog) and a delicious trio of almond biscotti-style cookies served for dessert. Hard and crunchy but somehow light and easy, these little guys almost made me want to go back to this craphole.

"Keep your eye on the cookie, kid."

Keebler Elves, 1980.

Cookieberg

The Jews tend to excel at most things they attempt, which seems to have caused them (us!) a world of hurt for, like, THOUSANDS of years now. Cookies have never been our strong suit, though. These bright blue buggers come to us via Alex Israel, a friend and cookie blog correspondent, who has this to say:

"My mom Lonnie has been whipping up these basic sugar cookies in festive Hanukkah shapes (menorah, driedel, star of david) for as long as I can remember. They go very well with Latkes, and I always try to find the ones with the crispier burnt edges. This year I recalled them tasting especially good--but I have a feeling that I say the same thing every year. These cookies just might be the 3rd miracle of Hanukkah."

Mazel Tov, Mrs. Israel.

Where the Wild Cookies Are

A friend of a friend sent these in when she heard about my master plan for the Cookie blog:



Alright, YUM. These puppies were like an entire meal in a cookie, yet I somehow ate about 10 of them in under 3 minutes. Good sign.