Boston Cookie Takedown

As soon as I saw a posting about the Boston Cookie Takedown, I knew that was how I would be spending my Sunday afternoon. Food event organizer extraordinaire Matt Timms was the man behind the cookie madness. Matt is also responsible for the Lamb Takedown that took place a year ago at The Middle East in Cambridge.

Sixteen amateur bakers assembled inside Allston’s Great Scott to show off their cookie baking prowess. Guests sampled them all and voted for their favorites. The bar, to many a cookie eater’s delight, was pouring milk and was mixing up other fun beverages like Irish coffees and White Russians to help wash down all those cookies.

After the cookies had been sufficiently sampled, Matt took to the stage to introduce each of the bakers and to announce the winners. There were winners in two categories: people’s choice, as determined by the ballots, and a group of winners determined by the judges. The judges of the event were Sarah Sholes who writes the blog Can You Cookie and Adam Ragusea of Radio Boston, shown below presenting the 1st place people’s choice winner with her prize, which included a Le Creuset dutch oven.

Take a look at some of the submissions and then scroll to the bottom to see the full list of winners.

The Melange a Trois made by Ali and Dan, a crispy Rosemary Brown Butter Oatmeal with White Chocolate. These were in my personal top three if not my favorite overall. The texture was unbelievably light and crispy and punctuated by soft chunks of white chocolate. The rosemary added just the right amount of savory and the white chocolate plus salt made for a wonderful sweet and salty combination.

Chocolate cherry cookies made by Trevor. I absolutely loved the huge pieces of dried cherry mixed with chocolate chunks and chocolate cookie.

Angela’s cinnamon bun butter cookies were another favorite of mine but it’s hard to go wrong with any combination of butter, cinnamon and sugar. If you look closely, you can see that the cookies themselves were rolled and cut just like cinnamon buns and then topped with a spiral of cinnamon icing.

Kate’s Chocolate Chip Fluffernutter: a chocolate chip sandwich cookie filled with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.

Michael’s “Nutella? Hell Yeah! Wit Nutz” cookies. I loved the flavor that the nutella lent to the cookie itself. Since it was mixed into the dough, it was subtler. The cookie were the perfect level of chewiness with some nice added texture from the chopped hazelnuts.

Robin’s Ginger-Pipar cookies, which she explained were made with spices used in traditional Latvian gingerbread.

Jenn’s pistachio thumbprint cookies, with a soft and nutty pistachio cookie filled with a dot of frosting.

Katie’s Peanutella cookies: nutella stuffed peanut butter cookies.

Zachary’s Chocolate Heath Bar Walnut Espresso.

Paul’s CMDs (Cookies of Mass Destruction) with two kinds of chocolate, walnuts and cinnamon.

And the winners are…

People’s Choice:
1st Chocolate Chip Fluffernutter
2nd Cinnamon Bun Butter Cookies
3rd Chocolate Heathbar Walnut Espresso

Judges:
1st 3-Nut Sensation
2nd Rosemary Brown Butter Oatmeal W/ White Chocolate  (My fave!)
3rd Chocolate Cherry

Honorable Mentions:
Nuttiest: Pistachio Thumbprint
Most Shocking: Coconut Curry Chocolate Chunk

You can check out Matt’s full lineup of takedowns, which include the original chili takedown and a bacon takedown, on his website. Many thanks to Matt for hosting what is quite possibly the best Sunday afternoon activity ever.