Gooey (and Delicious) on the Inside

When I lived in Paris, one of the things I missed about American sweets was the utter absurdity. Twinkies. Magnolia cupcakes. Cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookies. As lovely and divine as a macaron or chocolate éclair is, sometimes you just want to sink your teeth into something over-the-top decadent.

Enter Gooey on the Inside. These cookies are like the chubby, eccentric love child of Levain and Momofuku: hefty, chockablock, slightly mad, but all kinds of delicious.

And, as you’ll soon see, their mad creator, Kafi Dublin, has just the personality to make these over-the-top cookies absolutely irresistible.

Q: Give us the skinny on Gooey on the Inside!

A: There are two things that I'm innately good at: baking and fashion. I had enough of working in the private sector around idiots with no common sense, so I said it's time to follow my passion. It was the best decision I ever made! As I am fanatical, obsessive compulsive and detailed oriented, I relentlessly worked on perfecting my recipes because failure was not option and I know how brutal NYC foodies and critics can be. And I was not going to fall prey to such criticism.

Q: Let's play a quick game of association. What's the first word that comes to mind when you hear...

Red Velvet= addicted

Peanut Butter=sticky

Birthday Cake= comforting

Honeycomb=unique

Creme Brulée= sophisticated

Chocolate Chip=childhood

Q: You clearly have a penchant for over-the-top flavors. Where do you get your inspiration?

A: Have you seen my closet?! People who know me, know that I am not "normal.” I embrace my eccentricities! I have never been one to follow the crowd and so there was no way due to my DNA that I could create "simple" cookies. Impossible!

Q: How often do you introduce new flavors?

A: Whenever I get inspired. Whenever I eat something that impresses my taste buds, I always think, “How can I take this item's flavor profile and convert it into a cookie?" Buffalo jerky didn't really work out; foie on the other hand... brilliant!

Q: Are there any flavors that you thought would be delicious but just didn't make the cut?  

A: Buffalo jerky, grilled cheese and green tea. Yucky!

Q: Who are some of your baking heroes? 

A: I don't really have any except for my mother. All my memories of " the best things I've ever eaten" come from my mother.

Q:  Where can people find you and your madly delicious cookies? 

A: Currently, they can be purchased on my website: www.gooeyontheinside.com
Starting May 25, until October, I will be at the Hester Street Fair. I'm hoping to open a little dessert "nook" in NYC in the near future.

Cookie monsters

It's been a slow, steady descent. Ever since Paris, My Sweet launched, I have been on a tear. There have been launch parties (macarons! brownies!), promotional tours (cookies in Philly! candy in San Francisco!), and gifts galore. There has not been a lot of restraint.

I'm not a girl to say no. Especially to freshly baked cookies that come wrapped in a bow. Specifically, Levain's six-ounce juggernauts of richness, sweetness and insanity.

Chocolate peanut butter chip: rich and savory. Good protein, right??

Oatmeal raisin: perhaps the sweetest, heaviest specimens ever sampled.

Double chocolate. Double dark chocolate. Like a sweet punch to the gut.

And good old chocolate chip. With walnuts to lend some seriousness.

At my various book events, people often ask what my favorite sweet in New York City is. It's a tough question with no single answer. It depends on my mood, the time of day, how chubby I'm feeling, what neighborhood I'm in—many things. But I always come back to Levain. Connie McDonald and Pam Weekes have created something deliciously decadent and all-around wonderful in Levain.

Is there one best chocolate chip cookie in New York?

It’s almost embarrassing how many great chocolate chip cookies there are in Manhattan. When you go to other towns and cities, bakery cookies are often hard and crunchy and lack imagination and strong flavor. Here in New York, there are infinite delicious options. I’ve always been torn between three top contenders:

City Bakery

Levain

And Momofuku

How does one make a choice between these three?

City Bakery’s lovely, dreamy, crunchy, creamy, soft and sugary saucer-sized beauties have it all: crispy edges, melty middles, and a buttery-gritty texture that’s balanced by giant hunks of smooth dark chocolate. They have just a hint of caramel flavor. They’re real cookie monsters.


Levain’s are six-ounce mounds of cakey, chocolate-studded, slightly undercooked heaven, with savory toasted walnuts mixed in. If City Bakery’s are cookie monsters, Levain’s are cookie monsters on potent steroids.


And Momofuku’s cornflake-marshmallow-chocolate chip cookie is sticky, chewy and crunchy; sweet and chocolaty; the bottom side rimmed in caramelized beauty.


I’ve always found it difficult to decide which I love most. So I put the test to a few willing guinea pigs. Guess what?

One went for City Bakery.

One for Levain.

And one for Momofuku.

What's your favorite chocolate chip cookie in the city?

Make My Cake a Cobbler

It’s not often that I’m in Harlem. But when I am, I always make an excuse to visit Make My Cake (and when Levain opens around the corner this week, it, too, will be on the diet-busting-in-Harlem list). The bustling bakery has been around since 1995, serving ooey-gooey, over the top Southern specialties like hot cross buns, red velvet cake, and cobblers.

Unlike crumbles and crisps, cobblers usually have top and bottom crusts—sort of like deep-dish pies. Sometimes they’re made with pie dough, other times (and/or regions), with thick, cakey biscuits.

Make My Cake’s family recipe uses the former. Their giant pan of blueberry cobbler was crisscrossed with lattice shortbread crusts.

Amply dished into a plastic container, there was no thought to its presentation. It was all about the contents.

Wickedly-sweet, syrupy blueberry filling. It coated my belly. Filled me up. And felt like a sloppy-sweet embrace.

Sweet Freak’s irresistible cookie diet

Six cookies a day, plus steamed vegetables for dinner? Sounds totally sensible to me.

For anyone looking for a local alternative to Dr. Siegal’s Cookie Diet, it’s your lucky day. Be sure to follow this highly addictive New York regimen—don’t be afraid to walk, jog or bicycle from bakery to bakery—and watch the magical transformations occur.

1. For your first, most important meal of the day, Sweet Freak recommends you start with something substantial in your belly. Like a six-ounce dark chocolate peanut butter chip cookie from Levain.

2. Do good for the environment as your do good for your waistline. Birdbath’s coconut cookies are refreshing, buttery, delightful reinforcements.

3. Bigger is better. Thus the cookie diet, friends. Sashay up to Petrossian for a chocolate chunk cookie as big as your head.

4. Momofuku’s compost cookie. With “everything” inside, you’ll ingest extra vitamins and other good stuff.

5. Craving chocolate? Go ahead, you’ve earned it! Go straight to Max Brenner for a rich, chunky double chocolate chip cookie.

6. The protein inside City Bakery’s peanut butter cookie will give you that little stamina push you need to fight the mid-day slump.

7. Seeing as you have a sensible dinner ahead of you, keep things light: skip the dairy. This Chick Bake’s vegan ginger molasses cookie is spicy, cakey and oh-so-delicious.

And now you have dinner to look forward to.

The untouchable chocolate chip cookie

Considering how often I wax poetic about Levain, I figured it was time to do a proper posting for the bakery. And since I had another rendez-vous with the boys, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to spread the gluttony between three bellies.

Let's be honest: I am a terrible photographer. And these cookies especially didn't photograph well. But that doesn't matter. What matters is the taste, and the verdict is in.

Levain's walnut chocolate chip cookie is the best. And I don't even like nuts in my baked goods.

I love Momofuku's over-the-top ingredients and butter content. I love the chocolate quotient from Jacques Torres and Petrossian. But the size, weight, cakiness, chewiness, and ratio of batter to chips is sheer perfection. These were still warm when I picked them up. It just doesn't get much better. Three bellies can't be wrong.

The dark chocolate chocolate chip and dark chocolate peanut butter chip are also kickass.

167 West 74th Street at Amsterdam
212.874.6080

He saved room for dessert

NYC Food Guy is no slouch. He covers more ground, eats more meals, and shares more mouth watering reviews and photos than any gastro-New Yorker you know. In other words, he knows his stuff.

So how does he like to top off a great meal?

1) Tuck Shop's Lamingtons & Vanilla Slice - Tuck Shop is the best and only Australian bake shop I know. Lamingtons are two pieces of sponge cake with jam in between, rolled in chocolate and rolled in coconut. Think a gourmet Hostess snowball minus the marshmallow and overwhelming sweetness. When these are fresh, they're awesome.


Vanilla Slice may look like slop but it also may be the best dessert I've ever had. Dense and creamy vanilla custard is sandwiched between two pastry puffs and topped with vanilla icing. It lives in the fridge so the icing ends up resembling that of a black and white cookie. If you like Vanilla, this is your heaven.
Read NYCFoodGuy's full review, packed with photos.


2) Houston's Warm 5-Nut Brownie Sundae - I know, it's a chain restaurant. But this brownie sundae has never disappointed me. Not once. A decadent and fudgey warm brownie is studded with peanuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, walnuts and pecans and laid over a pool of champagne custard. A hearty scoop of Sedutto vanilla ice cream on top is then drizzled with caramel espresso sauce. Drag each bite of the sundae through the custard and "marvel at the knee-buckling harmony of flavors making your palate sing."



3) Levain Bakery's Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie - There are a lot of great chocolate chip cookies in this city, but I always come back to Levain. Undercooked just the right amount, these hulking $3.75 cookies embody all that is good in the world of cookies. They're buttery and fresh. They're firm on the outside and chewy on the inside. They're studded with copious amounts of melty semi-sweet chocolate chips and chopped walnuts, and they taste like they were made by Mom. When warm, I don't see how anyone can physically prevent eating this cookie in its entirety.


Get more deliciousness.


4) Sugar Sweet Sunshine's Banana Pudding - Wow, just wow. If I'm ever on the Lower East Side, not eating at Sugar Sweet Sunshine is just not a possibility. Huge bowls of rich, creamy vanilla pudding are crammed with crushed shards of Nilla wafer and hearty slices of ripe banana. It's really the perfect dessert, sweet but not overly so, with a natural, home cooked flavor. The first five times I ate this, my knees got weak. I've since built up a tolerance. (If only it was the same way with Tequila.) Not only is the tiny bakery filled with cozy couches, but the help—particularly the co-owner, Deb—may be sweeter than the desserts.

Check out the NYCFoodGuy review, featuring a great place for a $20 Rib Platter beforehand.


5) Veniero's Italian Bakery Pignoli Nut Cookies - If you like almond paste (also known as marzipan) and also known as the ingredient that makes those little chocolate-rainbow-jelly brownie type things delicious, then you'll love these cookies. The sweet, chewy marzipan inside these light, airy cookies provides most of the flavor but the crisp, buttery pignoli nuts on top balance things out. I could probably sit down and eat about 10 of them. Take them home and pair them with some vanilla ice cream. You'll thank me later.


Here's the NYCFoodGuy review.

Thanks, Lawrence!

5 best smells in the city

New York gets a bad rap for its summertime stank. But I always manage to find pockets where it's nice to inhale reeeeeallly deeply. Here are five.

Kee's: Getting smacked in the face with the scent or her chocolate truffles being made.

Billy's Bakery: Even being outside on the sidewalk when the cupcakes come out of the oven is heavenly.

Amy's Bread (and Fat Witch and Sarabeth's) at Chelsea Market: Bakery after bakery exuding their dreamy fresh baked smells? Dee-lish.

Dunkin Donuts: Every night, my whole neighborhood smells like jelly doughnuts. I will cave some day and get one.

Levain: Mmmmm…. huffing a bag of dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies does the trick every time.

Danger on the UWS

Cupcake, cupcake, chocolate, cocoa, cookie, cookie.

Within a very concentrated area of the Upper West Side are a number of pitfalls for a trying-to-be-good Sweet Freak. Magnolia’s second branch is in a sprawling corner space at Columbus and 69th, awash with sunlight, packed with baby strollers, and churning out bake sheets of pastel cupcakes. They seem a wee bit smaller than the ones downtown, but anything is worth not enduring that god-awful line.

Onward to 72nd Street, walking west—boom: Buttercup Bake Shop. More cupcakes. But not much atmosphere, so it’s time to carry on. (Though it’s worth noting that Krispy Kreme used to inhabit this very same location. Bonus points for the auspiciously sweet heritage.)


Jacques Torres’s new outpost is on Amsterdam, between 73rd and 74th. It’s smaller than his Soho factory, but bigger than his original Dumbo shop, and they’ve smartly tucked a few cushy seats in by the windows so you can snack in-house. The truffles are piled high, the cocoa bar is fired up, and there are some new treats to behold: chocolate-covered lemon pound cake, for one.

And on to the grand finale: around the corner to Levain for whopper cookies. It seems more crowded these days, but it still has the allure of a subterranean hole-in-the-wall that just so happens to have the best cookies in the city. Or at least the heaviest. Seriously: 6 ounces of chocolate-studded goodness. Cookie monsters.