Crumbl Cookies review #17 - Salted Caramel Cheesecake, Pecan Pie and Pina Colada

Crumbl Cookies review #17: Salted Caramel Cheesecake, Pecan Pie and Pina Colada, May 10 and 14, 2022

It was a 4-pack week again this past week but only because I was visiting my sister and my niece, ergo, more people to share with so I "needed" to get more cookies to try.

The lineup for the week of May 9, 2022

Although, in truth, I only wanted the Salted Caramel Cheesecake and the Pecan Pie. We got the Peanut Butter Bar for my niece's boyfriend and the milk chocolate chip was for her.

Not that we didn't split the other two cookies because we did. Which was just as well so I could keep my Crumbl cookie eating under (a little) control.

I was a little leery of the cheesecake cookie because I'm not a fan of cheesecake. I don't like the tang of cream cheese and the calories aren't often worth it. But, as with some Crumbl cookies, they can change my mind.

Salted Caramel Cheesecake

Case in point, I thought the Salted Caramel Cheesecake was excellent. I loved the cookie base; it was perfectly baked and nicely chewy but still soft without being mushy. The cheesecake topping was lighter than the typical cheesecake filling and didn't have as much "tang" or sourness to it. The salted caramel drizzle was good although, as a caramel fan, I wouldn't have minded if it had been used to flavor the topping a bit rather than just drizzled over the top. But, still, it made for a pretty and tasty cookie. I know cheesecake is supposed to be served chilled but I liked this all the more because it was served warm.

Pecan Pie

Now, let's talk Pecan Pie. This cookie was also amazing. At the risk of sounding immodest, it was like a larger, softer version of the Butter Pecan Tartlets I traditionally make around Thanksgiving as a family favorite dessert. This was delicious. I loved the cookie base and the filling really tasted almost exactly the same as from my tartlet recipe.

The only thing that might make it a bit better is for them to toast the pecans for the added crunch and flavor. Otherwise, I hope they bring this back in the fall as a 4-pack of these would make a great addition for the Thanksgiving table if I'm too lazy or busy to make the tartlets.

You'll notice the Pina Colada cookie wasn't part of the original 4-pack we got. That's because I went back yesterday (Saturday) to get it. I wasn't planning on it because I was supposed to stick to 2 flavors a week but since I shared the Salted Caramel Cheesecake and the Pecan Pie with my sister and my niece, thereby technically eating less than 2 cookies this week, I went back for the Pina Colada.

Pina Colada

I got this one mostly out of curiosity. I'd read such mixed reviews online about it. Some people hated it, thought it tasted "chemical", that you couldn't taste the pineapple, and that it was mostly a coconut cookie. Other people loved it, said it was their favorite cookie, loved the coconut and so on. The only common feedback both groups shared was a general agreement that it was "too sweet".

Okay, given the disparty in opinions, I had to judge it for myself. I'm not normally a fan of fruit cookies. I love pineapple but prefer it in its base state of just as a fruit to be eaten as is, not mixed into other things. Once I got this, I tried a bite chilled and a bite at room temperature. I prefer room temperature.

I do have to agree with the reviews that this is one sweet cookie. I couldn't really taste the pineapple either and even the coconut was subdued under the sugar. I liked the texture of the cookie though. I didn't think it had a chemical taste but I also dumped the maraschino cherry as soon as I got the cookie home. They need to cut back the sugar in the frosting to save this cookie. I didn't think it was horrible but I wouldn't get it again when it comes back around. I'm glad I tried it though so I could see for myself.

Milk Chocolate Chip

Peanut Butter Bar

I can't review the Peanut Butter Bar since I didn't eat it. But my niece said her boyfriend liked it, that the cookie was soft and she (a peanut butter fan) would've preferred the cookie without the fudge frosting as she liked just the peanut butter cookie.

So that's last week's wrap up. Looking forward to the announcement of this coming week's cookies at 5 pm PST tonight. Because that's how obsessions are....

Crumbl Cookies review #16 - Hazelnut Mudslide

Crumbl Cookies review #16 - Hazelnut Mudslide, May 7, 2022

Confessions of a Crumbl Addict: yeah, that's my dramatic way of saying I did pay a second visit back to Crumbl last week in time to get the Hazelnut Mudslide. 

Full responsibility goes to the person online who compared the Hazelnut Mudslide to a Ferrero Rocher. How could you do that to me? Okay, fine, I'm actually the one who drove to Crumbl, ordered the cookie and ate it. So I guess full responsibility is mine. But still, you damn enablers, lol.

I am surprisingly not a big fan of Crumbl's chocolate cookies with the rare exception of the Chocolate ft Oreo. Either the chocolate doesn't taste like anything special, i.e. I could make it myself like with the Triple Chocolate or it's a little too rich like the Peanut Butter Buckeye. So I was pleasantly surprised that I did like the chocolate cookie base of the Hazelnut Mudslide. Even more surprisingly, I liked the hazelnuts on the cookie. Since they were on the outside, the nuts retained their crunch (if you bake nuts inside the cookie, they steam and soften). And okay, it didn't hurt that there was a flood of nutella on top of the cookie.

When warm, the cookie was a little too fragile to eat. Chocolate sets when it cools so I ended up liking this cookie better at room temperature. Not chilled as the coldness of the cookie loses some of its flavor to my taste buds but at room temp, it had the perfect fudgy texture and the full flavor of both the chocolate and the Nutella. I liked this cookie and I'd probably get it again if there were no other flavors I wanted to try that week. Not sure I'd quite say it was a Ferrero Rocher but it's still a good cookie.

 

Pork Tenderloin with Honey Garlic Sauce

Pork Tenderloin with Honey Garlic Sauce - made May 3, 2022 adapted from Recipe Tin Eats

2 pork tenderloins, 1 pound each (I used 3 thick cut pork chops)

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 cup honey

1. Set instant pot to saute setting and let heat. Add olive oil.
2. In a small bowl, combine garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper. Sprinkle over pork tenderloins.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together cider vinegar, soy sauce and honey; set aside.
4. Add pork to instant pot and sear until golden all over. When pork is almost seared, push to the side, add garlic and cook until golden. Pour sauce over pork, turning pork to coat with sauce. Cover with lid and set in sealing position. Set for 20 minutes on manual setting. Let natural release for 10-15 minutes then release remaining pressure.
5. Transfer pork to serving platter, cover loosely with foil and let rest 5 minutes. Put instant pot back on saute setting.
6. Meanwhile, transfer 1/4 cup of the sauce and whisk in 2 tablespoons cornstarch to make a slurry. Add slurry back to sauce in instant pot and stir until thickened and bubbling, 3-4 minutes. Add back in pork tenderloins and coat completely with sauce. Serve warm.

You know I like to throw in a random "real food" recipe onto my blog once in awhile to keep y'all guessing "does she really only eat sugar?" "can she actually cook?" Maybe, sometimes, it depends.

Of course, cooking not being my forte, I felt free to completely disregard the original title of this recipe and used thick cut pork chops instead. Because I had three leftover from the Costco pack I bought weeks ago and something had to be done with them. I also completely disregarded the original directions to bake these in the oven and instead, I seared them in my instant pot then instant pot'd them for 20 minutes. Oh and I also doubled the rub recipe because I needed to use my Penzey's spices at a faster clip. In other words, the only thing I stayed faithful to in this recipe is I used pork, lol.

Despite all that, these turned out pretty well. Nice flavor and the 20 minutes in the instant pot ensured these thick cut pork chops were chewy but tender without giving my jaws a workout to eat. It's the kind of dish I wish I had rice to eat it with so it could sop up the delicious sauce but alas, I ran out of rice a couple of months ago and haven't replenished my supply so I inadvertently went high protein/low carb on this one. 

Crumbl Cookies review #15: Pink Velvet and Lemon Glazed

Crumbl Cookies review #15: Pink Velvet and Lemon Glaze - May 2, 2022

Back in the groove of my weekly Crumbl visit. I gave last week a pass because I wasn't interested in any of the flavors. I might not have been the only one as, for the first time since my store opened (that I'm aware of), it looks like they had plenty of last week's flavors on offer (2nd column from the left, top to bottom: classic oatmeal, brownie batter, peanut M&Ms and confetti cake). Of course, I don't normally go on a Monday either so maybe that's not unusual to have all of them still available. I've gone twice on a Monday before this and they had one or two of the prior week's flavors available but not all of them. Until this week.

In any case, still not interested in last week's flavors so I homed in on my choices for this week: pink velvet and lemon glaze. I have no idea what "pink velvet" is as I've never had it before. I'm not sure what flavor it's supposed to be. You know how red velvet is like chocolate? Pink velvet is not chocolate based. In fact, it seemed like a vanilla sugar cookie colored a pretty pink.

That said, I loved this cookie. It was baked to perfection, not too underbaked and mushy, even when warm, and not overbaked and dry. It was a bit like a thick, soft shortbread which is a little bit of an oxymoron since shortbread is supposed to be more crisp in texture. 

But I can't describe it any other way. It wasn't a super soft, fragile-cakey cookie like some Crumbl cookies are but it was firm enough to hold up the cream cheese frosting. Against all odds, I do like Crumbl's cream cheese frosting, as long as it's not too heavy or too thickly piled on, because it isn't tangy like a typical cream cheese frosting. And no, I don't want to know how much sugar that takes. I enjoyed the pink velvet so much that I ate all of it that same day. It was good warm, it was good at room temperature. I normally pace myself and eat half a cookie flavor a day but, yup, I ate the whole cookie that day. Granted, it was over three separate sitdowns with it but the whole cookie was consumed and enjoyed.

Which, of course, meant the Lemon Glaze had to wait. I did have a bite of the lemon glaze in the car of the Crumbl parking lot (what? who doesn't do that?) and, while the glaze made eating the cookie a little messy, it was worth the mess. It was excellent warm and the lemon flavor was on point. I'm so glad they did this as a glazed cookie and not a frosted one. I've enjoyed their glazed cookies tremendously so far.

If I had one suggestion for improvement, it would be to skip the slice of lemon and sprinkle it with sugared lemon zest bits instead. The lemon slice was just weird. The slice I got was too skinny to treat as a lemon wedge to squeeze over the cookie and having the lemon slice sit overnight over the glazed cookie just made a wet patch over that part of the cookie. Not great. But still, I also loved this cookie. When warm, the cookie is soft, gooey goodness. At room temperature, it was a nicely chewy cookie, of a texture I prefer in my cookies: dense, soft and chewy. The lemon flavor of the cookie was also perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the glaze.

I'd definitely get either or both of these cookies again. 

Crumbl Copycat: Iced Oatmeal Cookies

Crumbl Copycat: Iced Oatmeal Cookies - made dough May 1, 2022 from Lifestyle of a Foodie 

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 1/4 cups old-fashioned whole rolled oats

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Icing

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until well combined, creamy and no lumps remain. Add vanilla extra and egg; beat until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together oats, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture in two additions, mixing until just combined after each addition, until no floury streaks remain.
4. Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl to keep mixture even-textured.
5. Portion into 8 equally-sized dough balls and flatten slightly to thick discs. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for 20 minutes.
6. Make the icing: in a small bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Thin with a little more milk until desired consistency. Dip cookies into glaze.

Now that I've tried more of the actual Crumbl specialty flavors, I'm more interested than ever in finding credible copycat recipes of the ones I really liked. As mentioned before, Lifestyle of a Foodie seems to have the most copycats and not only that, but hers are some of the best I've tried. So do peruse her blog directly if you want to go down the Crumbl copycat rabbit hole (and who doesn't?). In some cases, while the recipes don't turn out exactly like Crumbl's, they're still pretty good and sometimes, might even be a tad bit better.

I liked Crumbl's Iced Oatmeal when it came out so I was interested in trying this copycat recipe. And, like so many of her recipes, this one didn't disappoint. It doesn't spread much so if you want a uniform thickness, make sure you flatten the dough balls into thick discs. Mine came out a little puffier than Crumbl's but that was okay (and possibly even preferable).

I only made one cookie in a larger size, similar to Crumbl's and made the rest more normal-sized since I was going to mail these out in care packages, sans icing, since iced cookies likely wouldn't travel well. So I only made enough icing to cover the (large) taste test cookie. It was superb. Chewy from the whole rolled oats and just the right amount of spice from the cinnamon and pinch of nutmeg. I probably pinched less than a usual pinch since I'm not fond of nutmeg but it was just the right touch for my taste buds. The simple vanilla icing was also just the right touch, just like with the original Crumbl cookie. I'd definitely make this again.

The only thing to note is the original recipe said to bake for 10 minutes. In my oven, at the 10-minute mark, I could still see some parts of the cookie top was raw dough so I let it bake a few minutes longer and took it out after 14 minutes. So use the 10 minutes as a guideline, depending on your oven, and go by how it looks before taking it out.

Crumbl Cookies review #14: Caramel Cake, Boston Cream Pie and Red Velvet White Chip

Crumbl Cookies - Caramel Cake, Boston Cream Pie and Red Velvet White Chip - April 18, 2022

L-R: Caramel Cake, Red Velvet White Chip, Boston Cream Pie, Carrot Cake

I've been out of the country for almost 3 weeks and therefore missed 2 weeks' worth of Crumbl specialty flavors (*gasp* #FirstWorldProblems). But apparently that just meant that instead of limiting myself to only 2 specialty flavors when I got back, I would get 3. And since I was already going to get 3, I might as well upgrade myself to a 4-pack because it was cheaper per cookie to get 4. I can rationalize anything. But I didn't want the 4th specialty flavor that week as it was snickerdoodle and I had already tried Crumbl's snickerdoodle and didn't think it was special enough to get again. I was also feeling a little salty that they did a repeat of snickerdoodle within less than 2 months whereas I've been waiting for the churro to make a reappearance since December. Fortunately my Crumbl still had the carrot cake from the prior week so I chose that as my 4th cookie.

Red Velvet White Chip

Anyway, let's knock out the easy one first: Red Velvet White Chip. I had actually tried a copycat recipe of this before I'd tasted the Crumbl version. The original Crumbl version was good but, to be honest, it wasn't Crumbl-spectacular. Maybe because I thought the copycat version was already good. It wasn't an exact copycat but the copycat from Lifestyle of a Foodie was just as good or even better. So no need to spend $4.27 next time on this one. 

And despite my not being a frosting person, I think this one could've used a little more dressing up with a cream cheese glaze.

Boston Cream Pie

Boston Cream Pie: ever since the Banana Cream Pie set my expectations so high, I keep wanting that same nirvana in their cream-filled cookies. It was the only reason I tried the key lime pie cookie but that one disappointed me. I'm sorry to say that while this was better than the key lime, the Boston Cream Pie was no Banana Cream Pie. The ganache was fine and I loved the cookie base. But the vanilla pudding was bland and didn't have much flavor, not even vanilla. It was a light topping that was a cross between a pudding and an airy whipped cream (I don't like whipped cream - it's air with calories). If a cream filling wasn't going to have flavor, I would've at least liked a heavier texture, closer to a real pudding. 

I loved the cookie base though and I confess, after the first taste test of 1/4 of the cookie as it was meant to be eaten, I scraped off the filling from the rest of the cookie and just ate the cookie base. No need to eat more calories than necessary so the filling had to go. I wouldn't get this one again.

Caramel Cake

Then we come to the caramel cake. I loved this cookie but my love is conditional: it needs to be eaten warm and it needs to not be too underbaked. Mine was baked just right with the right amount of sweetness from the glaze. At room temperature, it was still good but I liked it better warm. If/when it comes around again, I'd get it if there wasn't another specialty flavor I wanted to try.

So now I'm caught up on all my Crumbl eating and reviewing.

This week's (week of April 25, 2022) flavors don't appeal to me but for posterity, I'm noting they are: Confetti Cake, Original featuring Peanut Butter M&Ms, Brownie Batter, Passion Fruit and Classic Oatmeal. The confetti cake was a possibility but it turns out the sprinkles are in the cookie itself as well as on top and I don't like sprinkles in my baked goods. So it's no Birthday Valentine. I'm indifferent to Peanut Butter M&Ms and I don't like passion fruit so pass on both. I can rationalize not getting the brownie batter because I haven't been enamored of Crumbl's chocolate cookies (the Oreo cookie one being the exception). The Classic Oatmeal got mixed reviews from the Crumbl fan page (dry, bland, good streusel topping, etc) so I'm also passing on that one and would rather wait for the Iced Oatmeal to make a comeback.

Biscoff Butter Cookies

Biscoff Butter Cookies - made dough April 22 from Chop Notch

3/4 cup Biscoff cookie butter

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar, packed

3 tablespoons milk

1 large egg

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together cookie butter, shortening and brown sugar until well combined and fluffy.
2. Add milk and egg and beat until combined.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt. Add in two additions to cookie butter mixture, mixing after each addition until just combined.
4. Portion into dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space on prepared baking sheets and bake 12-14 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Remove from heat, let rest on baking sheets for 5 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool completely. 

Back to baking new recipes again. Or at least one....for now. As always, this was for military care packages I send as a volunteer for Soldiers Angels. With the warm summer months approaching, I try to look for recipes that don't use butter so there's less risk of the cookies spoiling if they have to pass too long through hot weather before arriving at their (often) desert destination.

This one was perfect as it uses shortening and cookie butter. I also used ultra pasteurized milk to play it safe although there wasn't much I could do about the egg. The dough came together beautifully and was one of those perfect doughs that wasn't too dry or too sticky so it was easy to portion out.

When baked, the texture was also perfect (to me). It didn't spread too much and had a great chewy but soft/not too soft texture. It might be one of the best cookie textures I've had. 

I wish I could say the same about the flavor. For some reason, it didn't quite taste like cookie butter to me, probably because it was "diluted" by the shortening and other ingredients. To amp up the cookie butter flavor, I recommend either drizzling the tops with melted cookie butter or glazing the tops with cookie butter, or, if you want to be even more extra, "stuffing" the middle of the cookies with cookie butter AND glazing or drizzling.

Unfortunately I couldn't drizzle or glaze since I was sending in care packages and any kind of frosting or icing doesn't hold up well in the mail. But next time, I'm going to try stuffing these cookies with cookie butter to amp up that flavor.