Destination #4: My Trip to Candy Mountain

After the butter fritter and ma po ground pork swimming in oil, I decided I needed to lower my cholesterol with some healthier eats. What better cleanser than cookies.

Riding my bike to Hayes Valley, I was sweating while speeding down hills in the 75 degree sunshine, but it could've been 50 degrees and raining when I walked into Miette, my #4 destination, and I wouldn't have noticed. I had to stop myself from singing and doing a little jig in the most adorable, happy, colorful, delicious looking candy shop I had ever been in. Behind the clerk were jars full of multi colored candies. The treats were the only decor the place needed.

On its own pedestal was a plastic tube of the famous ginger snap cookies, #49 on the top 100 list. I bought a tube and gleefully skipped out the door looking like an idiot.

There was something about this cookie. Although lovely and buttery, there was something more, and then it hit me: CARAMEL. What is caramel, really, besides butter and sugar cooked together? But somehow, when a baker slightly burns sugar and simmers it in a pot of butter, the chemical reaction creates a whole new dimension of sweet fat. The flavor of this cookie was bold and nutty with the spicy ginger biting through. Miette prides themselves on using three types of ginger in these cookies (crystalized, fresh, and powdered) so being the ginger fiend that I am, I was one happy kid.

The texture of the cookies, I must say, was perfect. They weren't soft baked (which can sometimes be great, but can sometimes be the sign of a cheap grocery store cookie) and it wasn't so light and crisp that it crumbled in your hand. It had a firmness to it, and a lovely crunch. Yet still, the crystalized ginger gave each cookie a subtle and surprising chewiness.

I will be honest and say I don't quite understand how a ginger snap made it to a list of 100 things to try before dying. I LOVE cookies, but I wouldn't consider any ginger snap to be such a vital part of life. But it was damned good, probably a perfect ginger snap, so what the hey.