Carpe Cookie

A grade-A cookie lover's account of the best – and sometimes worst – cookies around.

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Almond Meringue at The Bread Peddler

Posted by on Aug 24, 2010 in Gluten Free and/or Flourless, Meringue, Almond | 1 comment

Note: This meringue is sitting on a dinner plate, not a saucer, not a salad plate. What I’m saying is: this is a big-ass cookie.

The Bread Peddler
222 Capitol Way North – Olympia, WA
$1.35

Meringue, probably more than most cookies (and pie toppers, for that fact), is divisive.  I have friends who ADORE meringue, and others who tell me that it is not so much different than eating a stick of sidewalk chalk. I am not sure if I know anyone who sits on the fence with meringue, anyone who says: “eh, it’s alright.  I can take it or leave it.”  A person will either take it – with gusto, or leave it – happily. And like all matters of taste, there is no accounting for it. We likes what we likes.

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Shortbread at Fresh Flours

Posted by on Aug 10, 2010 in Shortbread/Sugar Cookies | 0 comments

Fresh Flours
6015 Phinney Ave. N
Seattle

$ ? (not more than a buck apiece, possibly less)

chocolate almond shortbread & green tea shortbread

Dear Fresh Flours bakers:

Buy a bag of salt. Please. Your cookies are very pleasing to the eye, as are the rest of your wares. I have no doubt that top notch ingredients are at play here, but they are totally lost on me because I CAN BARELY TASTE THEM.  Because you don’t use any G-d blessed salt – the most fundamental of all flavor enhancers. What gives?

Regretfully,

Joanna

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Almond Horn at Whole Foods

Posted by on Jul 20, 2010 in Gluten Free and/or Flourless, Etc., Almond | 12 comments

Whole Foods Market
Portland – various locations
$1.99

Is it a cookie? Or is it a confection?  It’s sitting behind the glass next to all the other cookies,  but I’d say this one sort of rides the fence being that a) it contains not a lick of flour (not that flour is a requirement for cookie classification) and b) enclosed within its thin, almond-encrusted sheath, is a dense, slightly sticky mass of sweet, sugary marzipan – behaving more like candy than cookie, imo.  Its ingredients are: sugar, almonds, almond paste, egg whites and salt.

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