L.A is in the middle of a cookie craze. The best ones to try now
Cookies are the new cupcakes.
The frequency of cookie shop openings and the fervor surrounding these new bakeries reminds me of the cupcake craze of the mid-2000s. When Candace Nelson opened the first Sprinkles cupcakes in 2005, it sparked a nationwide obsession with tiny cakes in paper cups.
New York City's Levain Bakery opened a shop on Larchmont Boulevard earlier this year. The Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World shop opened on Robertson Boulevard in July. Beverly Hills Cookies opened on South Beverly Drive earlier this summer, and Smorgasburg vendor Lei'd Cookies opened a storefront in Culver City last week. There's a slew of online-based cookie businesses, such as Crumbl, Brady's Bakery and Last Crumb too.
And the styles of cookies and flavors seem never-ending.
Why cookies? And why now? Kirstyn Shaw, owner of the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World (more on the name later), credits our collective anxiety and need for comfort during the pandemic lockdown.
Read more: The ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe
“Cookies are such an American comfort food,” she said. “The world was very uncertain. I was having a lot of anxiety, so I started baking chocolate chip cookies. I think a lot of people have that same story.”
My colleague Amy Wong and I decided to organize a taste test to see which bakeries are worth the hype and the whopping $6 price tag for some of the cookies. With a never-ending list of styles and flavors to choose from — we tried a Cheetos cookie that tasted like wet Cheetos Puffs and a giant duck egg cookie too — we chose to compare chocolate chip cookies, sampling varieties from nine bakeries. The taste test included cookies from Levain, Bristol Farms, Beverly Hills Cookies, the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World, Insomnia Cookies, Cookie Good, Zooies Cookies, Stuffed and Crumbl Cookies.
Some tasted like stale, store-bought, foil-wrapped cookies. More than a few were overbaked on the outside and straight up raw in the middle. Prue and Paul would not approve and neither do I.
I've highlighted our two favorites below. If you want to see all the cookies, check out our @latimesfood Instagram account.
The OG from the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World, $5
Shortly after being furloughed from her job as a server at the Rose in Venice, Shaw started baking cookies and delivering them to friends and family. She isn’t a trained baker but said she’s been baking chocolate chip cookies since she was 8 years old.
After friends and family encouraged her to start selling the cookies, she launched an online storefront on Shopify in April 2020 to sell the OG, her signature chocolate chip cookie.
The name of the shop, the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World, is quite the flex.
“It started as a joke,” Shaw said.
It was her mom’s birthday in 2020. She was sitting with her family and they were all eating her chocolate chip cookies for the celebration. She paused and announced to the group, “This really is the very best cookie in the whole wide world.”
Read more: Savory cheesecakes are a thing. Here are two to try now
“My sister said that’s what you should call your business,” Shaw said. “Obviously the name was not taken. It’s the longest domain in the world.”
The online storefront proved successful, and by the end of 2020, Shaw was looking for a commercial kitchen space. She found a storefront this summer and opened the Very Best Cookie in the Whole Wide World on South Robertson Boulevard in late July.
Is the name accurate? Shaw thinks so. And if you don’t agree, she’s hoping the name will at least bring a smile to your face.
The OG is a very good cookie, perfectly crisp around the edges with a soft and chewy middle. It’s generously studded with chocolate, with shards of hand-chopped dark and semisweet, both by the Belgian brand Callebaut. There are chocolate chips in the mix too, so that some bites have a gooey chocolate center and others offer a bit more texture, the chocolate not fully melted.
Shaw finishes the cookie with just enough Maldon sea salt to perk up the chocolate.
It’s the kind of cookie that will channel your 8-year-old self, warm, safe and with a little melted chocolate on the corner of your mouth.
Brown butter chocolate chip cookie from Zooies Cookies, $2.45
I was not surprised to find that Zooies Cookies was among my favorites, having been a fan of the Cheviot Hills gas station bakery for years now. But with more than 30 flavors to choose from, I’d never tried the brown butter chocolate chip. I’m usually too tempted by the tarte tatin cookie with its wedges of apple caramelized in butter and sugar, or the Panda, the cookie version of a glass of milk and Oreos.
Owner Arezou Appel is a chiropractor and acupuncture herbalist who immigrated to the U.S. after leaving Iran seven years after the revolution. She taught herself to bake, selling cookies out of her husband’s gas station in San Diego. She opened Zooies Cookies in Los Angeles when her husband acquired the United Oil station on National Boulevard in 2017.
Her chocolate chip cookie was the clear favorite of the taste test. The distinct, nutty smell of brown butter was hard to resist, giving the cookie an edge over the others before we even tried it.
Read more: What we're into: Cookies at a gas station in Cheviot Hills
“Brown butter is liquid gold,” Appel said. “I wanted that specialness in cookie form.”
Like Shaw, Appel uses hand-chopped dark chocolate from Callebaut. She mixes in some Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips to vary the texture and level of richness in each bite. But there’s an extra oomph of chocolate, each of the flecks and melted blobs bolstered by a small amount of decaf espresso powder in the batter. The cookie has a finesse to it, well balanced, not overly sweet and with the toffee notes of brown butter throughout.
Appel, who was early to the cookie business, isn’t surprised by the recent wave of cookie shop openings.
“Cookies have deep emotional roots for me,” she said. “And there’s so much possibility that you can make them for any age group or ethnicity. I’m not surprised it’s growing like this.”
If your favorite cookie is missing from the two above, I'm sure you'll let me know. But if it's a hunk of cookie dough disguised as a properly baked dessert, please don't.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
