slides: Best Bites: Portland’s Top Five Chocolate Chip Cookies

Monday, October 06, 2014

Amanda Benson, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Back to Eden Cookies

We all have our own version. Most likely a family member gave you your first chocolate chip cookie and you’ve been hooked ever since - eating dozens each year - scooping raw batter out of the bowl like a five-year-old or burning your tongue when they first come out of the oven.

You began to understand what makes “homemade” homemade, and somehow everyone’s idea of a chocolate chip cookie is different and distinct. It’s as if you could pick out your mom’s cookie from a line-up of rogues. They became tools of comfort in our later years as you went through break-ups or stressful exams, and eventually became an obsession.

Not having that smell in your kitchen is no longer living.

See Slides: Portland's Top 5 Chocolate Chip Cookies

Most Portland bakeries carry their own cookies, like their version of a calling card, distinct in the ways we remember the cookies from our childhood. Judging the best is no easy job. The criteria were tough because satisfying everyone’s needs during a tasting of 19 cookies showed their true “cookie-colors.”

Some participants preferred crunchy to chewy, and some leaned toward a higher chocolate to dough ratio. Some think it’s an abomination to even consider nuts. What it ultimately came down to was compiling a list of five diverse cookies - those that would make satisfy someone and still have them appreciate the rest of the contenders because really, it was about finding a solid chocolate chip cookie – the holy grail of fond memories.

Amanda Benson received an MFA in nonfiction in California before heading to New York to study at the French Culinary Institute. She has worked in kitchens in both Brooklyn and Portland. She continues her education by eating and writing about food.

Banner Photo Credit: iStock

Related Slideshow: Portland’s Top Five Chocolate Chip Cookies

Most Portland bakeries carry their own chocolate chip cookies, like their version of a calling card. Here are our five favorites.

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#5

Back to Eden’s Gluten-Free, Vegan Chip Cookie

Taking traditional pastries and sweets and turning them into gluten-free and vegan, treats makes co-owner and executive chef Garrett Jones seem like a mad scientist. After trying many gluten-free or vegan cookies, Jones’ chip cookie was the clear winner of the GF/V category with a cookie that tastes original and moist.

When transitioning to a gluten-free bakery in 2012, Jones said that the cookies were one of the last recipies to flip – the chip cookie being the more difficult to pin down:

“For some reason the chip cookies were not working out by simply replacing the wheat flour with our GF flour like many other recipes, so I started from scratch. I created an entirely different cookie than the super traditional ones we used to sell and honestly, I like them better.”

With maple syrup as the main sweetener in this cookie, it gives the chip cookie a graham cracker flavor that is unmatched by any other bakery and makes them one of Back to Eden’s top selling favorites.

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#4

Sweedeedee’s Chocolate Chip Cookie

Sweedeedee made the list as the cakiest of the bunch along with slabs of chocolate folded in and layered like rock formations. A place more famous for its pies than cookies, their chocolate chip cookie creation still holds a place of honor. A great addition to their jam-packed breakfasts and lunches of corncakes and sandwiches made on in-house bread, the Sweedeedee chocolate chip cookie makes a meal complete.

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#3

Little T Bakers’ “Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever”

At $3.50 a pop, this cookie is not to be taken lightly. Loaded with woodblock chocolate and locally grown Oregon hazelnuts from Freddy Guy’s Hazelnut Orchard in the mid-Willamette Valley, you are about to get schooled on how a chocolate chip cookie becomes godlike.

The texture of the chocolate perfectly matches the texture of the dough, which is also flecked with woodblock chocolate. You’re not sure where dough begins and chocolate ends. It’s a cookie you taste and wonder: “How did they do this?” If you’re not a huge fan of nuts in your cookie, they also have their more modest, and yet just as delicious, regular chocolate chip cookie. Many of you may find this blasphemous, but when Little T labels only one of their pastries with “Best Ever,” you better believe.

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#2

Pearl Bakery’s Chocolate Chunk Pecan Cookie

This cookie looks very unassuming, but when split open, another world appears: a mosaic of pecans, chocolate pieces, and a crunchy outer layer to a tender middle of cookie dough make up the bulk of this beast of a cookie.

It’s something that reads like a New Orleans style pecan praline stuck in a chocolate chip cookie’s body. Hints of brown sugar and orange peel make this cookie unpredictable and exciting to eat. Certainly Pearl, who has housed some of Portland’s celebrated bakers, has made a cookie that contends for the top year after year.

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#1

Alma Chocolate’s “Oh My God” Chocolate Chip Cookie

Alma has been handcrafting bon bons, barks, infamous chocolate icons and baked goods in their Northeast location since 2005. As chocolatiers, it seems pretty obvious that they could turn out a cookie that makes you say “oh my god” as you eat it.

This cookie is by far the chewiest on the list - the dough gives off a salty-toffee, beautifully fatty, taste with studded bits of espresso-bitter chocolate chips making it well balanced and as thoughtful a baked good as you can eat in three quick bites.