L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off: Tasting the top 50

It ain't easy being a cookie judge. But Food Editor Russ Parsons, Times Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter, Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock, Cordon Bleu dean Lachlan Sands and Cordon Bleu student Katherine Berg rose to the occasion -- to choose the 10 best cookies from the 50 finalists in the second annual L.A. Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off.   

Candy cane cookies, double-chocolate cookies, macaroons, ginger snaps ... the judges tasted and carefully considered them all. The cookies, baked by students at the Pasadena Cordon Bleu culinary school, were judged by flavor, texture, richness, visual appearance and holiday spirit. The top cookies were the clear front runners, so no tie-breakers were necessary. The 10 highest-scoring cookies will be announced on the Daily Dish Monday, and the recipes will be published in the Food section in December. 

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Photo credit: Noelle Carter

Fashion + Food: Band of Outsiders is cookie-crazed

"If you don't like cookies, you might not have a soul," reads the header of Scott Sternberg's cookie blog.

Sternberg is the designer of the Los Angeles-based clothing company Band of Outsiders. When he's not dressing up celebrity friends in his label's latest getups, Sternberg likes to blog about cookie finds far and wide.

His reputation for being a cookie connoisseur has caught on; for the last two Fashion's Night Out events, Sternberg has teamed up with Momofuku Milk Bar pastry chef Christina Tosi to brainstorm cookie concoctions. This year's creation was a Mexican wedding cookie made of peanut butter and toasted, ground pecans, dished out at Opening Ceremony's FNO party at the Ace Hotel. 

Last week, at the Mandrake Bar in Culver City, Band of Outsiders hosted a book signing for the anticipated release of Tosi's "Momofuku Milk Bar" cookbook, which unleashes Tosi's cookies, pies (crack pie, anyone?), cakes and ice creams in recipe form.

Sternberg's personal favorites include Momofuku Milk Bar's blueberry and cream cookies as well as its corn cookies. Also on Sternberg's cookie-obsessed mind is his mom's fresh mandel bread.

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Photo: The Gold Gilt Gangster cookie from last year's Fashion's Night Out event. Credit: Cookies.bandofoutsiders.com

Best store-bought cookie? Tate's, says Consumer Reports

In a survey of packaged chocolate-chip cookies, published this week in Consumer Reports, Tate's Bake Shop came out on top.

Consumer Reports taste testers tried 18 store-bought and fast-food cookies, including Nabisco's Chips Ahoy, and deemed Tate's "excellent" for its buttery flavor, homemade taste and smooth chocolate chips. 

Three fast-food cookies -- from Starbucks, McDonalds and Subway -- were rated "very good"; they were "soft, buttery and chewy." Dunkin’ Donuts Triple was rated a little lower because it was "slightly tough" and had "gritty chips."

The lowest-rated? Weight Watchers, the cookie with the least fat and fewest calories, "was soft and chewy but felt chalky in the mouth and had small, gritty chips and a strange, nonfood off-taste."

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Photo: Betty Hallock

The Sweet Tooth: Fall treats, L.A.-made

Forget the bagged Halloween candy. Get your sugar fix with these seasonal sweets, all handcrafted in Los Angeles:

Compartes Chocolatier's spicy Mexican hot chocolate skull pops are made from single-origin dark chocolate and infused with spices like cayenne and cinnamon. The pops, hand-painted with gold glitter, cost $5 and can be purchased at the chocolatier's Brentwood location. 912 S. Barrington Ave., Los Angeles, (310) 826-3380, compartes.com.

Pasadena artisan creamery Carmela is making batches of pumpkin spice ice cream, currently on the farmers market-inspired menu. Co-founder Jessica Mortarotti suggests serving the ice cream as a float with a good spicy ginger beer (see below). 2495 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 797-1405, carmelaicecream.com

I Heart Pies is a Los Angeles-based pie company specializing in sweet and savory pies made with simple, fresh ingredients. In addition to the traditional pumpkin and pecan pies, its fall offerings include playful flavors such as purple forest pie, made with Dutch spice cookies and black currants, and cracker jack pie with a rich, salted caramel mousse, a layer of peanuts and chocolate mousse in a cookie crust. Pie prices are $16 to $25 and can be purchased at the North Hollywood farmers market on Saturdays or online at iheartpies.com.

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Photo credits: Compartes (top) and Jessica Mortarotti (bottom)

Caitlin Williams Freeman and SFMOMA's latest edible art offering

Caitlin Williams Freeman is the in-house pastry chef at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's rooftop cafe. The former UC Santa Cruz photography student co-founded Miette. Then in 2001, in what she thought would be a temporary stint, she started making pastries for her husband James Freeman's Blue Bottle Coffee locations.

When his company landed a spot on SFMOMA's rooftop, Williams Freeman used the opportunity to channel her love for paintings and photography into her baking. Now the cookies and cakes available -- for visual and literal consumption -- at the coffee bar pay homage to artworks on view in the museum's galleries.

Constantly coming up with new ideas for art-inspired desserts, edible spinoffs have included a Katharina Fritsch ice cream sandwich, with poodle-shaped chocolate cookies sandwiching vanilla ice cream; a fudgsicle-take on Ellsworth Kelly's Stele I (located in the sculpture garden); and a Thiebaud cake inspired by the museum's large collection of Bay Area artist Wayne Thiebaud's paintings.

The latest addition to the menu is a popsicle created in reference to Santa Monica-born artist John Zurier's painting "Arabella," included in the "The More Things Change" exhibition, on view until Nov. 6. The popsicle, made of fresh spearmint ice milk and strawberry, costs $5 and will be available up until the exhibition's closing day.

The next dessert in the works will be ...

Speculoos slowly spreading through L.A.

Some say Speculoos is the new Nutella. It looks like peanut butter but tastes like the gingerbread, cinnamon-flavored cookie it's made from, known as biscoff. (You may know the flavor from those cookies handed out on Delta airlines.) The popular Belgian cookie via paste is making its way over the Atlantic and now it's coming to food trucks, slowly but surely.

If you've been fortunate enough to have stumbled upon the spread while abroad, chances are you've returned home with a new sugary obsession to share. Lotus Bakeries introduced Speculoos to the U.S. market this year; but even so, most Americans don't know about it yet. A gradually increasing number of food trucks are looking to change this. Wafels & Dinges in New York sells its own version (called Spekuloos) and offers the spread as one of many waffle toppings, as does L.A.'s Waffles de Liege.

In the height of the food truck boom, will Speculoos ever really catch on, on the street food scene? George Wu of Waffles de Liege believes it will. "If the popularity of Liege waffles grows," says Wu, "more people will get a chance to try Speculoos, and as a result, more people will talk about it and experiment with it on different food; and before long, it'll be a kitchen staple like Nutella."

Fingers crossed, Waffles de Liege's use of the cookie-made-spread will cause a domino effect of sorts among other Southern California food trucks and thus the spread of scrumptious Speculoos.

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Photo credit: Elsie Fang Photography

Test Kitchen tips: Making macarons

Gema sent me an email late last week, looking for tips on making that quintessential French pastry-cum-cookie, the macaron:

Why do my French macarons bake hollow on the inside, rise flat or burn on the bottom?  I have tried dozens and dozens of recipes and I have yet to bake a wonderful traditional macaron?  Please help?

Like so many of us, the mere thought of tackling macarons in the kitchen used to intimidate me. That was until Dorie Greenspan wrote a wonderful article for Food last year demystifying the art. She gives some great tips for making macarons, including:

Weighing in on the Triple Double Oreo

The Booster Shots blog takes a close look at the Triple Double Oreo: 

Arriving in stores as we speak is the new Triple Double Oreo cookie. That's right, we said Triple Double, as in three layers of cookie, one layer of original creme and one layer of chocolate creme.

The calorie count on this Big Mac of sugary treats? About 100 per cookie with 1.5 grams of saturated fat. 

Your thoughts on the Triple Double? Click here and leave a comment.

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Photo: Kraft Foods

Keeping cool in L.A.: Today is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day

Whether part of the food truck scene or as a creamery's menu staple, ice cream sandwiches are a frozen treat geniusly invented to get the best of both worlds -- cookies and ice cream -- in the realm of sweets. Angelenos can get their fix from local producers with flavors, from classic to wacky, to satisfy a spectrum of cravings during summer's warm months. Or, as it so happens, on National Ice Cream Sandwich Day.

Beachy Cream: Made in small batches with local and organic ingredients, Beachy Cream’s ice cream sandwiches are made with a spin on names and flavors sure to fit the SoCal scene: Key Lime Cowabunga, Strawberry Surfer Girl, Surfin' Safari Chocolate Chip and Ginger Wipe Out. These tasty treats can be found on the streets of Malibu, at select stores and online. Beachycream.com. 

Father's Office: A recent addition to the menu, ice cream sandwiches are now offered at the Culver City location. Creations include the hazelnut and foie gras ice cream on oatmeal cookies and the buttermilk ice cream and raspberry sorbet on lemon shortbread. 3229 Helms Ave., L.A., (310) 736-2224, fathersoffice.com. 

MILK: The brightly colored sandwiches are made of fresh macarons and ice cream flavors such as grasshopper (mint chip), Thai tea, rocky road, coffee toffee and red velvet. 7290 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 939-6455, themilkshop.com. 

Sweet Rose Creamery: Located in the Brentwood Country Mart, the shop bakes its cookies on site daily, and ice cream flavors change regularly in accordance with what's in season at the farmers market. Classics include fresh mint with homemade chocolate chip and salted caramel while August's ice cream flavors include melon, summer corn, peaches 'n' cream and watermelon granita, among others. 225 26th St., Ste. 51, Santa Monica, (310) 260-2663, sweetrosecreamery.com.

More after the jump:

A sure hit: espresso shortbread cookies

When I was writing a blog post last week re affogato and typing the word espresso over and over, I got a craving for Claudia Fleming's espresso shortbread cookies. So, of course, I had to make some. 

Whenever I've baked these, guests start off politely by taking just one. And then another. And another. Admittedly, they're not much to look at, but taste-wise, they’re irresistible, especially if you serve them with vanilla or coffee ice cream. The grit and the slight bitterness of the ground espresso beans seems to cut the sweetness of the shortbread. 

Fleming was pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern in New York when Craft's Tom Colicchio was chef there. The recipe comes from her 2001 book, "The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern" (Random House, New York, $40). 

Remember to start the dough early enough: It needs to chill for a couple of hours before rolling out (but you can always cheat by putting the dough in the freezer for a little while). She likes to sometimes dip the cookies halfway into melted chocolate. This I have not yet tried.

Yield: 2 dozen cookies 

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup ground espresso

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until creamy and smooth, about two minutes. Add the vanilla and beat well. On low speed, mix in the flour, espresso, and salt until just combined. Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 300 F. Roll the dough between two sheets of wax paper to 1/4 inch thick (an 8-by-12-inch rectangle). Using a sharp knife, cut the shortbread into 2-inch squares and place them 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets (do not reroll the scraps). Prick the shortbread with a fork and bake until pale golden around the edges, 20 to 24 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack. [UPDATED July 26 at 10:45 a.m. to correct baking time and size]

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Photo credit: S. Irene Virbila /Los Angeles Times