Over the holidays I found myself across the country in Tennessee and inside the “world’s largest knife store”. While they did have more knives than a person could ever imagine, they also had some unrelated items such as a full kitchen section. I didn’t mean for it to happen but I stumbled upon some box mixes with new brand names that I have never seen in my local stores on my side of the country. Knowing my suitcase was way too full to take all of these mixes home, I limited my purchase to two and upon arriving back to the cabin we were staying in, I started making these espresso chocolate chip cookies immediately.
This cabin’s kitchen was extremely limited but I did find enough tools to make do. I was definitely out of my element in this odd kitchen though. Jumping into this box mix, all it requires is a stick of butter, melted, and an egg. Aside from preheating the oven, the first step of this mix is to combine these ingredients with the box mix. I didn’t realize that inside the box was three packages. One powder bag labeled “sugar cookie mix”, one bag of chocolate chips, and a bag of instant coffee. I combined everything at once and mixed it together but if I had realized these were separate bags I would’ve mixed the instant coffee into the hot melted butter to get it to dissolve and provide more of a coffee flavor rather than mixing in bits of instant coffee granules.
The dough came together nicely and tasted like coffee and chocolate chips but the coffee flavor was mild. It had to chill for at least ten minutes in the fridge and while it did I started searching this strange kitchen for a scoop or measuring spoon or something to create equal cookie dough balls but unfortunately in this bare bones kitchen, there was nothing of the like. I ended up using a large spoon and eyeballing the scoop size and then rolled them into balls. I got 20 cookie dough balls in total. The package claims that there are 24 servings so my size may have been a little off but not too bad.
I put a pan of 12 cookies into the oven at 350 to bake. The box called for 10-12 minutes and at 10 minutes I found the cookies were perfect. So this new brand has already impressed me by providing an accurate bake time and a decent amount of cookies. I mean come on, who wants to buy a box mix for only 12 cookies? Not me! This also feels like the best time to break the news of the price to you. I paid $8 for this box mix which is a lot of money for a mix. It was a novelty store and I can believe that they jack the price up because they can. And again, this mix is not in stores near me so I’m not sure what the usual retail price would be, on amazon every mix by this brand is priced at $15 which is insane too but Amazon is always jacking up the cost of grocery items in my opinion. Rarely is it cheaper to buy a box mix on Amazon than in a grocery store. Regardless, I don’t like any of those prices, even if this somehow is the most knock your socks off amazing cookie.
This cookie baked well, looked good, had a really good consistency, but the coffee flavor was lacking in my opinion. I really think that if I had done this different and put the instant coffee in the melted butter it would have helped with that. This was a good cookie, just not great. I would eat it again and I would be interested in trying it again with that extra step but at the price I paid, I wouldn’t buy it again. If it ended up in a store near me and was priced more reasonably, I’d give it another try.
Leave a Reply