Nuvrei Patisserie
404 NW 10th Avenue – Portland
$2
Nuvrei, a Portland bakery supplying superior almond croissant, berry brioche and an exceptionally fantastic flourless chocolate chewy cookie to the city’s best coffee shops, has opened a retail café above their bakery in The Pearl District. In case you’ve never had a Nuvrei item in your mouth before, let me spell it out for you: this is great news.
Two Tarts Bakery
2309 NW Kearney Street – Portland
75¢/each
I’ve had it in mind to talk about Two Tarts for ages. I’ve been enjoying them ever since they first started plying their tiny wares 3-4 years ago at The Portland Farmers’ Market. They’ve since opened a small retail shop on NW 23rd Avenue, and continue to sell at the market, as well.
The problem is this: if I am to tell you about about Two Tarts, I am required to talk about not less than 10 different cookies at once. And it turns out that as much as I love to talk about cookies, I’m pretty lazy. So I’m compromising and talking about only three different Two Tarts cookies. It’s a start.
Pix Patisserie
3901 N. Williams- Portland
3402 SE Division – Portland
$2
NOTE: Passover-friendly No flour, no leavening. Contains only almond flour, egg whites, sugar, butter, flavoring.
I hate to begin on a negative note, but I feel the need to preface this review with this piece of information: I don’t like Pix very much. I’ve tasted many desserts from this much raved-about Portland dessert mecca over the past several years that have been either stale or tasted like refrigerator (or both), or were just simply not delicious. (Don’t even get me started on the piece of crap “ghetto cake” (their words, not mine) that my friends and I picked up on New Year’s Eve. Unless you really want to hear about it, in which case I’ll happily explain. Read more »
Peanut Butter* Cookie Salon
Date: March 15, 2011
Attendees: Sarah V.B., Brooke M., Giovanna Z., Beth S., Joanna M.
*The theme was actually “Nut Butter/Nut Flour, but in the end it was peanut butter dominated affair, with only 2 of the 9 cookie being non peanut butter (almond flour).
Top row – from left
• No flour peanut butter – Sarah
• Grand Central Bakery Cookbook (with chocolate chips)- Sarah
• Grand Central Bakery Cookbook (w/o cc) – Sarah
• Food and Style Sienese Almond Cookie – Beth
• New Seasons Grocery Store (purchased from in-house bakery) – Brooke
Cravin Raven Bakery
8339 SE 13th Avenue – Portland
$2
Do your salivary glands dry up at the mere mention of the phrase “gluten free”? If so, please stay with me. This is not the bland, impossibly dry, sawdust-and-cotton balls-tasting biscuit you may once have had the displeasure of meeting. It’s good. Really.
Read more »
Note: This meringue is sitting on a dinner plate, not a saucer, not a salad plate. What I’m saying is: this is a big-ass cookie.
The Bread Peddler
222 Capitol Way North – Olympia, WA
$1.35
Meringue, probably more than most cookies (and pie toppers, for that fact), is divisive. I have friends who ADORE meringue, and others who tell me that it is not so much different than eating a stick of sidewalk chalk. I am not sure if I know anyone who sits on the fence with meringue, anyone who says: “eh, it’s alright. I can take it or leave it.” A person will either take it – with gusto, or leave it – happily. And like all matters of taste, there is no accounting for it. We likes what we likes.
Fresh Flours
6015 Phinney Ave. N
Seattle
$ ? (not more than a buck apiece, possibly less)
chocolate almond shortbread & green tea shortbread
Dear Fresh Flours bakers:
Buy a bag of salt. Please. Your cookies are very pleasing to the eye, as are the rest of your wares. I have no doubt that top notch ingredients are at play here, but they are totally lost on me because I CAN BARELY TASTE THEM. Because you don’t use any G-d blessed salt – the most fundamental of all flavor enhancers. What gives?
Regretfully,
Joanna
Whole Foods Market
Portland – various locations
$1.99
Is it a cookie? Or is it a confection? It’s sitting behind the glass next to all the other cookies, but I’d say this one sort of rides the fence being that a) it contains not a lick of flour (not that flour is a requirement for cookie classification) and b) enclosed within its thin, almond-encrusted sheath, is a dense, slightly sticky mass of sweet, sugary marzipan – behaving more like candy than cookie, imo. Its ingredients are: sugar, almonds, almond paste, egg whites and salt. Read more »
