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- My name is Umber Ahmad,
I'm the chef and owner of Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery
here in the West Village of New York City,
and today I get to try everybody else's
chocolate chip cookies.
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There is a nice number of chocolate chips
which I really like.
It doesn't really smell like anything though,
which is kinda strange.
I shouldn't have to almost
stick my face into it to smell it.
Hmm, oh it's really sweet.
It's really sweet.
Something that I always look for in cookies
is that it isn't just kinda monochromatic.
It shouldn't just be crunchy,
it shouldn't just be dry,
it shouldn't just be sweet.
What I like about this
is you have a little bit of the crunchy and the chewy.
And you can see that even in the difference in color,
it got a little caramelized.
You can see that it's soft because you can't hear it,
but then when I bite into it (snapping),
you can see that it's crunchy so,
I do like that it's got different textures.
Not my favorite,
but I wouldn't turn it away.
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This is a much more sizable cookie.
That looks really big and delicious.
I think there's nuts it it.
Not that easy to break open.
It looks good.
This is the kind of cookie that would be really good warm.
Something that I would wanna have right out of the oven.
You can be mad at a warm chocolate chip cookie,
even a mediocre chocolate chip cookie warm,
like you wanna propose to it.
The less air you have in something,
the less it's gonna dry out.
When you look at a cookie,
or you look at something
and you see a lot of little air pockets everywhere,
so it had a lot of opportunity to be
a little bit on the drier side.
It looks like it has a lot of nuts in here.
The thing about nuts is they suck moisture.
I think the nuts kind of fought with the cookie,
and they might've won.
This would actually be a really good cookie
to put with ice cream,
because it will hold up against the ice cream.
I would love to try this cookie again,
but I like this time warm.
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At first glance, I like the size
and it looks like it's nicely baked too,
because it looks nice and golden.
It smells good.
It actually smells like brown sugar, which I love.
More of a caramelization, and more of a caramel taste.
It tastes a little more homemade.
It's good, I feel like this is a cookie
that could kinda do the trick.
I also would imagine they're sold in packs of more than one.
That's also a cookie that you're gonna wanna
eat more than one of.
The chocolate tastes a little but waxy,
but I'm not really mad about it.
Oh my god, that's so much better.
I don't know what just happened.
I like Subway cookies, who knew?
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This is a big cookie.
Sometimes size doesn't always make it better.
It's really heavy.
When yous see this happening on the outside,
it looks like it's almost bled a little bit on the outside,
that actually excess butter.
That means it wasn't mixed all the way.
If you take this little outside piece,
this is gonna taste almost exclusively like butter,
and the other parts may be a little bit drier.
If you look on the back,
you can see that they use really big chocolate chunks,
which is kind of nice.
So I break it open.
It's really almost caky inside.
But it still looks really nice and moist inside,
and it definitely looks like they used a lot of brown sugar,
so you're gonna get a little bit more caramel taste.
Hmm, it's a little bit too dry for me.
For somebody who like Starbucks,
having a cookie like this
is probably a great idea.
If you're having a cappuccino,
you can dip it and it's not gonna disintegrate.
So size doesn't matter.
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It's kind of a nice size actually.
It's a little bit like the Goldilocks of cookies.
If feels like a sizable weight.
Breaking it open is nice, wow.
That is more chocolate
than I have seen in any other cookie.
So it's not what I remember.
It tastes a little bit more homemade.
This feels like somebody might have made this for me.
I think everybody's mall had a Mrs. Fields.
A lot of what I'm tasting is probably my memory,
more than the cookie itself.
These are a little bit blonde for me.
Blonde is not bad,
but in your cookies you want 'em
to have a little bit of color.
One of the things that we really like to do with cookies,
have them be baked enough
and have them have enough golden color
which this doesn't have.
But it has a lot of nostalgia, so,
it definitely gets points for that.
So I had a lot of chocolate chip cookies today.
If you're gonna make them at home,
I would recommend two things.
You always wanna think
about the balance of sweet and salty.
Before you bake them,
you sprinkle a tiny little bit of Maldon salt.
The other totally great tip, age your doughs.
So you're gonna get better color,
and you're also gonna get a better flavor.
At the end of the day,
no matter where you're chocolate chip cookie comes from,
how much chocolate it has,
or how long it's been aged,
it's gonna be amazing because it's a chocolate chip cookie.
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