Serious Eats: Sweets
Mixed Review: Williams-Sonoma Cookies and Cream Cake
The ice cream, but in cake form.
[Photographs: Lucy Baker]
I've expounded in the past about my love for all things cookies and cream. Just as shaved black truffles always improve savory dishes, crumbled chocolate sandwich cookies never fail to elevate desserts to new heights. On a recent shopping trip to Williams-Sonoma, as I browsed the company's ever-expanding line of baking mixes, I came across a cookies and cream loaf cake ($10.50).
Like most Williams-Sonoma products, it was expensive. But top-quality food is worth a splurge, and the box promised "real cream flavor" and "the aroma of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor." Sure, making a loaf cake from scratch and dumping in some crushed-up Oreos would be easy. Nonetheless, I was curious to try the mix and thought the robin egg blue box with retro design would make it a nice gift.
Often, gourmet mixes require so many add-ins and kitchen utensils, it would save more time and money to pick something up at a bakery. Preparing this mix, however, was simple. It only required one stick of butter and two eggs (plus 1/3 cup water). Everything was combined all at once, then beat with an electric mixer for two minutes until it thickened into a voluptuous vanilla-y batter.
The instructions suggested a baking time of 60 to 65 minutes. True to form, my cake was perfectly puffed and bronzed after exactly 63 minutes.
I cut the loaf into several thick slices. The insides were nicely flecked with chocolate cookie pieces, but for the first time, I realized there were no actual chunks of cream filling. The cookies in the mix were plain chocolate wafers—not chocolate sandwich cookies, as the image on the box suggested.
I took a bite: the cake was light, moist, and had a robust vanilla flavor. While I missed the familiar bursts of sugary stuffing, the Williams-Sonoma mix was still quite tasty. It would be especially good drizzled with warm chocolate sauce, or better yet, topped with a scoop of my favorite ice cream—guess what flavor.