Dominique Ansel Bakery, Las Vegas - Part 1

Dominique Ansel Bakery, Las Vegas - visited October 23, 2022

I've been meaning to do this write up for awhile but time kept getting away from me. By now I've amassed so many pictures from Dominique Ansel's new bakery at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas that I can't do justice to all of it in one blog post. Hence, this is the beginning of a multi-part series because let's face it, I'm a huge fan girl of the man and his baking talent so I'm happy to rhapsodize multiple times about everything I've eaten and seen.

I'll start off by saying yes, his stuff is pretty fancy and, to some, rather expensive. I believe in spending for good food, especially great desserts, so that doesn't bother me as thankfully, I can afford this level of high end desserts and I don't spend my money on much else, besides travel. And YOLO....

I had moved to Las Vegas in the middle of 2022 (summer, triple-digit temps for weeks on end, I don't recommend it as an intro to Vegas) just as I was recovering from Covid. Not an auspicious beginning. But my outlook brightened in the fall, not just because of cooler weather, but also my favorite baker opened his new bakery less than a 30-minute drive from where I lived. Woot!

I didn't go quite on opening day as I figured that way lay madness and long lines but I was there only a few days later. The lines weren't quite as long but the small corner carved out of Caesar's Palace casino was pretty hopping. The bakery also had retail shelves where you could buy his cookbook as well as assorted DAB paraphernalia and more of his packaged treats. But for the initial visit, I focused on what was in the display cases.

My taste buds aren't as fancy as I would like and some of the more exotic flavors aren't my thing at all. But still, I enjoyed looking at all the fancy and appreciating the creativity and meticulous care that went into creating the mini-masterpieces. For Las Vegas, he created a special set of 7 desserts that are only available at the Dominique Ansel Bakery, Las Vegas. And they are mind-bogglingly beautiful. The pictures don't do them justice, both individually and as part of the set that makes up the display cases. If you ever get a chance to visit this bakery in Vegas, your eyes will get, well, an eyeful, of gorgeous patisseries.

If all that fancy is not your thing and you have more plebian taste buds, nothing wrong with that and there are options for you (and me) as well in the form of macarons (not for me), pain au chocolate and croissants (me, me) and cookies (also me).

I knew from my prior visit to the NY location of Dominique Ansel bakery that my favorite is the DKA - Dominique Kouign Amann. I was so happy to be able to get it again. I've had good kouign amanns elsewhere but the DKA is still by far my favorite version of it.   

I didn't buy the 4-pack, although don't think I didn't consider it. But they're best eaten the day they're purchased and even I can't eat more than 1 a day. So I bought a single and took it home to eat later. It was as good as I remembered from New York, with that crunchy-sweet caramelized outside and flaky layers. DKAs have spoiled me for croissants. Whenever I have a choice, I go for the DKA every time.

Now, of course, he's more famous for his cronuts and each bakery gets a new flavor every month. I didn't try the opening month's flavor and I've forgotten exactly what it was except it was some kind of jam. I'm not a fan of jam or any-berry-not-in-their-original-state so I didn't get it. Also because I had a single-minded focus on the DKA. But still, the cronut was pretty to look at. 

I did get my mom and my sister the Goldfish since it was flavored with calamansi (a popular Filipino flavor) as well as mango, my sister's favorite. I didn't try it but they said it was good. After they were finished, the poor goldfish look well and truly speared so I didn't take a picture of what it looked like once they were done; there wasn't much left, haha.

My sister before she killed the poor fish

Chocolate Cutout Cookies (Stamped Cookies #30) by Attainable Sustainable

Chocolate Cutout Cookies (Stamped Cookies #30) - made dough March 4, 2023 from Attainable Sustainable

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Embossing dust

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and sugar until combined. Add egg and vanilla and mix to combine.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture on low speed until just combined. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.
3. Roll out dough between two large pieces of parchment paper to 1/4" thickness. Chill another 30 minutes.
4. Lightly brush embossed rolling pin with embossing dust, shaking off any excess. Remove top portion of parchment paper and roll over dough with embossed rolling pin. Cut out into desired shapes. If dough is too soft, return to refrigerator to chill another 30-60 minutes. Refrigerate or freeze cut out cookies for at least an hour.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space cut cookies. Bake 7-9 minutes or until edges are set. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

You can tell from the pictures that I had mixed success with this recipe. The impressions didn't hold nearly as well as the brownie stamped cookies, especially after being baked. Even worse, you can see some "burned" spots in the design. No, I didn't burn the cookies. That's from the embossing dust where I used equal parts cocoa powder and flour to dust the embossed rolling pin and cookie stamps I used to stamp out this dough.

The darker bits was the cocoa powder turning darker during baking. When I'm embossing or stamping chocolate cookie dough, I don't like to just use flour or powdered sugar because it sometimes leaves a whitish residue that doesn't bake out. But as you can see, the cocoa powder in this particular base didn't fare much better.

Which is a shame as these actually tasted pretty good. They're not as pretty as they taste but the flavor was good, the texture was soft with just the slightest crispness on the outside shell. I might have to try this again and skip the cocoa powder in the embossing dust and just sparingly use the flour or powdered sugar to prevent sticking. 

Crumbl copycat Chocolate Chip Cookies from Cookies and Cups

Crumbl Copycat Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough March 11, 2023 from Cookies and Cups

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon cornstarch

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 cups milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar on medium speed for 3 minutes.
3. Add eggs, vanilla, baking soda, salt and cornstarch; mix for 1 minutes, scraping sides and bottom of bowl to keep mixture even textured.
4. On low speed, add flour in 3 additions, mixing until just combined after each addition. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Portion out rounded 1/3 cup cookie dough (4.2 ounces) and roll into a ball. Break dough ball in half, pressing the smooth sides together so that the jagged edges are on top. Evenly space on prepared sheets, 3 inches apart.
6. Bake for 10-11 minutes, until edges are set and tops are slightly golden and no longer look raw. Do not overbake. Remove from oven and press additional chips on top of baked cookies. Let rest on baking sheets for 5 minutes then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Since I enjoyed trying the real Crumbl cookie and a copycat version at the same time like I did with the Kentucky Butter Cake, I thought I'd try it again with the Crumbl milk chocolate cookie and a copycat version. Unlike the KBC, which appears sporadically, Crumbl offers the milk chocolate cookie nearly every week so it was easier to do a comparison since I could get the OG Crumbl milk chocolate any time.

I didn't make this exactly as the OG cookie was meant to be since I didn't use Guittard milk chocolate chips but instead chopped up Trader Joe's Pound Plus milk chocolate bar. I was also more generous with the milk chocolate chunks than Crumbl tends to be with their chips.

The final verdict is I liked both. The copycat wasn't quite like the Crumbl OG cookie, differences in milk chocolate aside. I liked the texture of the cookie part of Crumbl's cookie a tad better but I thought the copycat version had better flavor. Where Crumbl's cookie seems more sweet, this copycat version had more of the brown sugar caramel flavor. That was likely helped by the fact that I chilled these overnight to let the flavors meld and develop more.

Crumbl OG Milk Chocolate

Crumbl OG Milk Chocolate

Crumbl OG (left) and copycat (right)

Regardless, unless you're dead set on an exact Crumbl copycat, this was a great cookie on its own. You would still get a great cookie if you made this instead of buying Crumbl's cookie. 

Inside the copycat

Chocolate Nutella Cookies from Modern Honey

Chocolate Nutella Cookies - made dough February 20, 2023 from Modern Honey

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup chocolate Nutella spread

2 large eggs

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks

additional Nutella for dolloping into the dough

sea salt for sprinkling

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until well combined and creamy, about 4 minutes. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl to keep mixture even textured.
2. Add Nutella and beat for 1 minute longer. Add eggs and beat to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture in 2-3 additions, mixing on low speed after each addition until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks.
4. Dollop additional Nutella over the top of the dough before scooping. Portion dough into golf-ball-sized dough balls, leaving swirls of Nutella in each portion, cover and chill for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space dough balls on prepared sheets. Lightly sprinkle with sea salt if desired. Bake for 9-12 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw or shiny. Do not overbake. Let cookies rest on baking sheets for 10 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate and Nutella lovers, oh em gee, this is the cookie for you. I loved this cookie. I had to eat the taste test cookie in several sittings because it's rich but my love remains unfazed. The edges are crisp and the texture is just baked Nutella fudge but better. I amped up the richness by dolloping Nutella over the top of the dough before I scooped it. I left the swirls of Nutella in each cookie dough ball and dolloped more Nutella once the top layer of the dough had been scooped. I also suggest using chopped chunks of chocolate rather than chocolate chips as they'll have a softer bite once the cookie is baked and cooled to room temperature. Delicious.

Super Soft Sprinkle Pudding Cookies from Cookies and Cups

Super Soft Sprinkle Pudding Cookies - made dough March 4, 2023 from Cookies and Cups 

3/4 cup butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 3.5-ounce packet instant vanilla pudding

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sprinkles

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
2. Add egg, egg yolk and vanilla; beat until just combined.
3. Add baking soda, salt and instant vanilla pudding mix; beat until combined, about 30 seconds.
4. Add flour and mix on low speed until just combined. Beat in sprinkles on low speed until disbursed. Do not overmix.
5. Portion into golf-ball-sized dough balls and flatten slightly to thick discs. Cover and chill for several hours or overnight.
6. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly spaced dough discs. Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are softly set and light golden brown and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

I am surprisingly finding some good recipes with sprinkle cookies. Notice I say "with" and not "for". That's because I'm loving the cookie part without the sprinkles. I'm just not a sprinkles fan. But the flavor and texture of these were excellent. Like a really good sugar cookie. So yes, I'll be making these next time without the sprinkles.

Crumbl Cookies review #32 - Cookie Dough

Crumbl Cookies review #32 - Cookie Dough cookie, visited March 11, 2023

I was going to skip going to Crumbl last week as initially I wasn't interested in any of the flavors. With the exception of the Oreo-based cookies, I find Crumbl's chocolate cookies too rich so I didn't want the Dark Dream. Not a peanut butter fan so pass on the Ultimate Peanut Butter and I'm also not a fan of blueberries in cookies although I like blueberries on their own just fine. I was going to pass on the Cookie Dough but it had such rave reviews, I thought I'd give it a try. 

My own review of it is mixed. I loved the cookie base itself. It's supposed to be served as a chilled cookie but I don't like chilled cookies (most of them have a drier mouthfeel when chilled) so I let it come to room temperature first. Look at that inside texture. That's exactly how I like my cookies. And when Crumbl serves a cookie chilled, it avoids being in the warmer too long and drying out, which is an issue I have with most of the Crumbls in Las Vegas. That's not a problem with chilled cookies since they don't sit in the warmer but are dressed and chilled until they're purchased.

While I loved the cookie base, the frosting didn't do it for me. It's a buttercream frosting that's a cross between the more dense frosting that their cream cheese usually is and the light airy texture of their whipped cream frosting. I prefer a more dense frosting, even if I end up scraping some of it off the cookie. I didn't like this frosting's texture at all; other people raved about it but it's just not my thing. Maybe I would've liked it better chilled but then I wouldn't have liked the cookie as much. 

But I'd get this again and just scrape off the frosting because look at that cookie. The brown sugar flavor was also on point as well as the texture. 

Nutella Hazelnut Chocolate Truffles from Sweetest Menu

Nutella Hazelnut Chocolate Truffles - made March 1, 2023 from Sweetest Menu

200 grams (1 1/3 cups) dark chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup Nutella
1 cup skinless hazelnuts, toasted and chopped fine

1. Heat cream in small saucepan over low heat until hot but not boiling. Place chopped chocolate in medium bowl. Pour hot cream over chocolate, covering completely.
2. After two minutes, slowly whisk until completely melted and smooth. Add 1/2 cup Nutella and whisk until combined and smooth. Add remaining 1/2 cup and repeat. 
3. Chill in refrigerator for 2-3 hours or until set.
4. Scoop small teaspoons of chilled mixture and roll into balls. Roll in chopped hazelnuts, coating completely. Store in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Truffles are technically easy to make. Heat cream, pour over chopped chocolate, whisk to smoothness, add any flavorings, chill, scoop and roll in coating if desired. Simple right?

And it was simple. I just don't know if I loved the end product. Truffles are essentially chilled ganache. I'm not a big fan of ganache, too chocolaty (I know, I know, blasphemy), too rich. I tried to stack the odds in my favor by making a nutella version of this but the chocolate overwhelmed the Nutella. I also rolled them in chopped toasted hazelnuts to cut the richness and add some texture and that partially worked. There was nothing wrong with these; they're simply too "dark chocolate flavor" for my taste. Next time, I'll make them as milk chocolate truffles instead.

Crumbl Milk Chocolate Cookie - the "real" recipe?

1/4 the recipe - revised, made February 17, 2023

8 ounces salted butter
4 ounces granulated sugar

6 ounces brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

16 ounces all-purpose flour

1.25 tablespoons baking soda

1.25 tablespoons baking powder

1 tablespoon vanilla extract (my addition)

11 ounces milk chocolate 

1. Preheat oven to 290 degrees F. (I baked at 350 degrees F).
2. Cream butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar together on medium speed for 10 minutes, until light, fluffy and silky.
3. Add 1 egg and mix on low speed until just combined. Add remaining egg and beat on low speed until just combined.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add dry ingredients all at once and mix on low speed until just combined. Mix in chocolate chips until evenly dispersed.
5. Weigh out 5.5-ounce portions of dough, roll into balls and tear each ball in half, pressing the smooth ends together so the jagged halves form the top. 
6. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space cookies. Bake for 16 minutes, rotating the pan at the 11-minute mark. Remove from oven and let cookies rest on baking sheets for 5-10 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.  

I don't have a link to provide to the original source of this recipe as by the time I saw it on a random Facebook post, it had already been passed on from one person and one group to another. As near as I can figure out, it's supposedly been posted on Reddit and from a former Crumbl employee who's no longer under an NDA.

I'm a tad skeptical about that as every NDA I've ever signed didn't have an expiration date. Granted, that was all in the tech industry but I imagine food retail places that have proprietary recipes would be just as protective. So take this with a grain of salt (pun intended) whether this is the "real" Crumbl recipe for their milk chocolate chip cookies.

In any case, the person posting it didn't know the exact measurements of the leaveners so they guesstimated those. There wasn't any vanilla extract in the recipe either so I added it my version. Plus I can't stand baking at such a low temperature so I went with the standard 350 degrees instead of 290. So I guess this is just like any copycat trying to imitate the real thing rather than being an exact recipe of the OG Crumbl cookie.

I scaled down the recipe to be one-fourth of the original since I didn't need that many cookies. I was baking for care packages, not retail sale. The part of the recipe that I did follow "exactly" was beating the butter and sugars for 10 minutes. I normally don't beat for that long but I wanted to see what effect that would have on the cookies as most recipes don't call for beating more than 2-4 minutes.

And of course, I don't go by exact baking times but how the cookies look before I take them out of the oven.

What I found that these were good chocolate chip cookies and the added mixing time created the crisp shell on the outside and meltingly-soft texture on the inside. You can also see the big air pockets inside the cookie that comes from beating the mixture for so long. Not sure I liked this version better than any of the others. It's hard to make a faithful rendition of the original when you're a home baker, even with the "real" recipe. I have a Kitchen Aid, not a Hobart (commercial) mixer and I have a home oven, not a commercial baking oven. So I don't take copycats too seriously. If it's a good cookie, it's a good cookie. If I want the real thing, fortunately, I can buy it.

Crumbl Cookies review #31 - Tres Leches and Cowboy Cookie

Crumbl review #31: Tres Leches (December 30, 2022) and Cowboy Cookie (January 17, 2023)

Tres Leches cookie

Time to resurrect my Crumbl reviews again, mostly because I want to have something to refer to so I can remember which cookies I've already tried and which ones I liked/didn't like. I haven't gone as consistently as I used to and I only took these pictures but didn't note which other ones were on offer that week that I may have gotten. I either didn't get anything else or I got something I'd already had before and reviewed. In any case, time to start "fresh" with new-to-me cookies.

After pouring the milk mixture over the Tres Leches

First up is the Tres Leches Cookie. I'd heard some hype about this cookie, something about being customer's choice? I can't remember but I got one anyway to try it out since it seemed a little different from their norm. It was different all right but not in a good way, unfortunately. The hallmark of a typical Crumbl cookie that I like so much is they're slightly underbaked so they're moist and fluffy if not too underbaked and a great texture at room temperature because they're "fudgy" and dense.

Edges were dry

Not so with the Tres Leches cookie. The idea is it comes as pictured with a side serving of the milk mixture that you pour over the cookie and let it soak in. Would you believe that even after adding the milk mixture, the cookie was still dry? The middle was okay but the edges were dry as the desert. Ugh. I hate dry cookies. I even let the milk soak in for awhile all the way to the edges and waited in case that made a difference. It didn't. So the Tres Leches was a big fail for me. Other people raved about it so they might've gotten a less overbaked/dry cookie than I did. 

Cowboy Cookies

The Cowboy Cookie was better although not my favorite or even my Top 10. There was just too much going on in it, between the chocolate chips, coconut, and nuts. I like coconut which was the cookie's saving grace but I prefer milk chocolate over semisweet (please don't @ me for that, lol) and I don't like nuts in my cookies. Yes, I knew all this when I bought the Cowboy Cookie but I thought I'd try it and give it a chance. I'm glad I did just so now I know - pass on this one next time.

Cowboy Cookie