02 December, 2009

Cookie Reviews: Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookie

It is a well established fact that Toaster likes cookies quite a bit. You may even go so far as to be able to call him a connoisseur and you'd not be inaccurate. To better guide your cookie eating through his own experience, Toaster offers the following cookie review:

The other day I had missed the bus and I was hungry, so I walked over the the nearby drive-through coffee house looking for quarters and saw that they had a sign for "breakfast cookies". Now, I eat cookies for breakfast sometimes anyways, so this was nothing novel, but the official legitimization thereof was. As the baked goods that this coffee house sells are normally excellent, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I was presented with a pre-packaged choice of Erin Baker's Peanut Butter, Oatmeal Double Chocolate, or Oatmeal Raisin Breakfast Cookie. Normally I'd go with an oatmeal raisin cookie over most anything else any day, but figured today I'd go for the double chocolate as I'd only slept 2h the night before and could use the extra sugar and chocolate-borne theobromines as stimulants.

It turns out that Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookies are edible.

The cookie itself was moist, chewy, and firm, almost everything a cookie should be (also needs crumbly), but it managed to get their respective parameters mixed up. It was too moist, too firm, and too chewy. There was no crunch to this cookie whatsoever, not even a hint of that perfect outer crustiness that I seek. It was also very dense. I had expected unusual density because it billed itself as a breakfast cookie meal replacement, but this was pumpernickel in the realm of baguettes. Furthermore, despite this being a Double Chocolate cookie, it still managed to taste like peanut butter and the chocolate chips tasted like soy carob despite the ingredients claiming real chocolate.

Examining the packaging more closely, it turns out that this was the dreaded oxymoron Healthy Cookie. No butter in it at all. Just a lot of molasses, special organic wheats, and weird juice extracts instead of sugar. Now, I can understand using raw cane juice or unrefined sugar in a cookie, but relying solely on cane sap and pear extract as sweetener is contrary to the spirit of cookiedom. And it had fiber. Lots of fiber. Toaster is fine with lots of fiber as most everything that is not a cookie, burrito, Tabasco, or whiskey that he consumes is vegetable or whole wheat, but this was like having an ingot of sawdust sitting in my belly for a few hours.

Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookie:
Texture - D
Taste - C
Idea - B+
Cookieness - D

Note - I am going to review other cookies in the future, and I will strive to only do so with brands available in most of the United States or, if homemade, only when I am also able to post the recipe.

1 comment:

Carla said...

I am attempting to devise a breakfast cookie for we cookie lovers that doesn't make me feel bad for eating a cookie for breakfast. Erin's cookies are... Hardly cookies. I've made the sweetness work with honey and molasses, but it's the butter (or, lack of) that makes this so difficult. They are too cakey... They need the soft crispness (oxymoron) of a real-butter cookie! Anyway, all that to say, I really loved your review, and I'm so glad I'm not the only one who doesn't want to plunk down a few bucks for those... Cookie pucks.