The Erace brothers, Adam and Andrew, purveyors of local fine foods at Green Aisle Grocery down on East Passyunk Ave. in South Philly, have magically made Momofuku Milk Bar cookies available to Philadelphians who don't have the extra half day to venture to David Chang's renowned New York bakery, Milk Bar, headed by pastry chef Christina Tosi.Fresh baked Momofuku Milk Bar cookies are FedEx-ed weekly to Green Aisle, and sold individually or in containers of six. I arrived at the South Philly grocer mere minutes after Green Aisle tweeted the arrival of the cookies (Green Aisle is great about tweeting new arrivals and specials, so be sure to follow them), and snagged one of each of the five varieties of cookies available — Corn, Chocolate Chocolate, Blueberry and Cream, Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow, and Compost Cookie — to put the cookies to the taste test and see if they lived up to the hype.
Let's just start with my favorite cookie out of the bunch, the Corn cookie. This soft, yellow cookie tastes not like corn bread, as you might imagine, but like the sweetest creamed corn you've ever had, but the cookie is not the over-sweet sugar bomb that some of the other Milk Bar cookies are. The Corn cookie is a unique and compelling flavor you won't find at most bakeries, so comes out top winner.
The Chocolate Chocolate cookie has a deep chocolate aroma, is moist and chewy — like a cookie and fudge had a baby — with hints of salt enhancing the bitter and sweet. If you are a lover of chocolate, and want a deep chocolate flavor without the distraction of chocolate chips, this is the cookie for you.
The Blueberry and Cream cookie is sweet and chewy, studded sparingly with white chocolate chips, and perhaps too sparingly with dried blueberries. The "cream" part of the cookie is achieved by adding milk powder, but the "cream" did not shine through the sugar and butter. I guess I was hoping for more blueberry and cream.
The Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow cookie has crispy, toffee-like edges (due to the high sugar and butter content, many of Momofuku's cookies have toffee-like edges), and the soft center is studded with chocolate chips, crunchy little bits of cornflakes, and crispy/bendy melted marshmallow blobs. This cookie is incredibly sweet. I would have loved this cookie as a kid, but as even a sugar-loving adult, this cookie is a bit much.
Out of the package, the Compost cookie smells like coffee, and that's because there are coffee grounds in the cookie. Also in the cookie are chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, graham crumbs, pretzels, and potato chips. Besides the hint of coffee, the Compost cookie and the Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow cookie are almost identical in that they are overbearingly sweet, soft cookies chock-full of sweet and savory goodies. Again, I would have loved this cookie as a kid.Honestly, all of the Milk Bar Cookies taste great. And it's no wonder, because butter jockeys for first (!!) and second place in the ingredient list for every single cookie. I think Momofuku Milk Bar cookie receive such high praise because they are overly decadent with butter and sugar. The only cookie that truly impressed me was the Corn cookie, because it's unique and captures the flavor of fresh, sweet corn so well.
At $3.25 each, you can sample all of the Momofuku Milk Bar cookies, and decide on a favorite yourself. Just be sure to get to Green Aisle soon after Fed-Ex drops off the delivery, because they go lickety-split!
Green Aisle Grocery
1618 E. Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19148
215-465-1411
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