Double chocolate is double joy

When one of your favorite pastry chefs insists that you try a cookie, you try a cookie. That’s how I found myself with a 10-ounce “very dark and full of chocolate chunks” cookie from Max Brenner in my hand.

Pichet Ong, pastry chef of the once-was, soon-to-be-again delicious bakery Batch, is currently revamping the dessert menu for the international chocolate chain. After a much-too-healthy lunch together, he kept insisting that I try a dessert. I was honestly stuffed and kept demurely declining, but on the way out, I was finally persuaded (Shocking, I know). I opted the double chocolate chip cookie, and it was nothing short of heaven.

It was as rich and chocolaty as you’d expect. But the texture—at turns melty and crunchy—was better than I ever could have hoped for. Lots of chocolate chunks, indeed.

Luckily I had Alex’s help to power through this beast. It’s a beautiful cookie, but a bit much for one belly, no matter how well versed in rich chocolate it is.

Ladelicious

My friend Alex is a soul sister in many ways. Her devotion to sweets is just one of them.

She had told me that the almond croissant she had at Ladurée last year was one of the best things she’s ever eaten. Naturally I had to try one—especially seeing as I walk by the Champs-Elysée tea salon every morning.

The 2,70 euro pastry—about twice the price of your average almond croissant—that I found is not just a regular old almond croissant, but rather a croissant aux noix, filled with walnuts and hazelnuts in addition to almonds. It was, true to Alex’s word, divine.

It didn’t have that showy powdered sugar top, but was slick with a sugary glaze. The sweetness of this glaze and the richness of the butter started duking it out with my first bite. But wait—with the second bite, the savory nuts kicked in. Magic. There was some serious heft between the fresh doughy pastry layers, making it rich and sweet, but not in a headrush sort of way.



I wanted to hate Ladurée when I came here because it seemed so in your face, with all the tourists rabidly toting the pastel green bags. But I can’t. I can’t hate a place that delivers such pretty and perfect pastries.

Sweet Freak scoop: Hot Chocolate Festival comes a day early

Just as I was reminding Alex that we're six days out to City Bakery's month-long Hot Chocolate Festival, I got a message from Maury: the festival not only starts a day early, but is staying open late to celebrate.

The 17th annual festival kicks off this Saturday, the 31st, at the normal opening hour of 7:30 a.m. But just in case you're too busy shopping sales, catching the Oscar nominations, taking in Marlene Dumas at Moma, or sleeping off Friday night's soirées, City Bakery will remain open until midnight in celebration of the festival. That’s 16 ½ hours of decadent hot cocoa, followed by a month of experimental flavors like banana peel, beer, ginger, caramel and, Maury's favorites, bourbon and vanilla bean.

What's more, they're introducing "Lights Out Hot Chocolate" this year. Every day at 3 o'clock, the mezzanine lights go off and the candles get lit creating not only a moody way to sip your cocoa, but also a sweet way to save energy. How do you like that, Mr. President?

3 West 18th Street between Fifth and Sixth Aves
212.366.1414

The cookie that crumbles

It was the name that got me: "Barely Baked Cookie." I flipped the Vosges cookie over and, indeed, saw that dark circle in the middle, telltale sign of under-baked batter.

Since I had gone in to have a Bianca Cocoa—hot cocoa made with white chocolate, Australian lemon myrtle, lavender and vanilla—I disregarded my impulse for the classic chocolate chunk (made with single origin Costa Rican chocolate) and got the Bianca cookie.

It was a beast. On a positive note, it had a sweet, gritty texture; lemony, floral notes; and was chockablock with ingredients like coconut shavings.

But these six-ounce cookies (beasts, I tell you) are shipped from Chicago and kept frozen until on display. Maybe it was still a little affected, for it was hard. A tough cookie, you might say, that sent crumbs all over. Good, but not great.

Verdict: Stick to the bonbons (Alex swears by the organic peanut butter bonbons); it's what Vosges does best.

132 Spring Street
212.625.2929

A tart for a cookie

Maury, do you know what it’s like to look forward to peanut butter cookies all weekend and then to show up at City Bakery, and they’re not there? It’s cruel. So cruel.

But at least I was prompted to try something new: the open apple lemon tart. Which enabled me to rebound from my bitter disappointment.

Piled high, the tart, lemony apples have just a little bite, yet are soft and chewy. Big crunchy crystals of sugar are the yin to the tart apples’ yang. And beneath it all is a beautiful thin crackling crust.

Alex took solace in a wonderfully sweet oatmeal raisin cookie. I wouldn’t say either of us was forgiving the denial of a much needed peanut butter cookie fix but, like true champs, we made due.

Fun with friends

It's so nice to eat vicariously through a friend with an appreciation for great chocolate.

After sending my friend Alex into diabetic shock from pain au chocolat (Penelope's), peanut butter cookies and cocoa with marshmallows (City Bakery), and doughnuts (Doughnut Plant), it seemed only appropriate to bring her to the Dessert Truck. She and her husband Nick live in San Francisco and introduced me to the salted caramel ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery, after all. Tit for tat and all that.

So after a divine dinner at Centro Vinoteca (where, omg, we passed on hazelnut cake with nutella mousse?!), we walked over to University and 8th. Unlike my first visit when I felt gluttonous just ordering hot chocolate with my chocolate bread pudding, this time I was able to sample three whole desserts.

The chocolate bread pudding, which I snitched a taste of from Alex, is still shamefully rich and deliciously spongy. The goat cheese cheesecake was a little too hoof-y for me, but Nick seemed to enjoy it plenty. Me, I got to sample the weekly special: chocolate truffle cake with praline crunch, and the praline crunch made the dessert.

So that leaves the slow-baked apple, chocolate and peanut butter mousse, and vanilla crème brulee as unexplored menu items. Alex, when are you coming back to NYC?

University & 8th
Every night except Monday