A Deep Dive Into FoCo Cookie Goodness
Let’s be honest — the best part of FoCo is the cookies. Whether you eat them plain, with a glass of milk or as part of an ice-cream sandwich, they are somehow always so so good. How does this happen? How does the process work? Is it because of the bakers making them or something in the dough?
I began my mission at FoCo at 7 p.m. — I ate my meal quickly and wandered over to the general vicinity of the cookies. There were already hordes of students lurking near them, awaiting a new batch… savages.
When the FoCo cookie guy brought out a fresh tray, I jumped at the chance to solve the mystery once and for all. Unfortunately, he was very frazzled with his baking, and my questions overwhelmed him during the dinner rush. Instead, I switched tactics. Could I do his job just as well? If I were to make the cookies, would they taste differently?
So I began phase 2 of my mission in the McLaughlin kitchen. The FoCo cookie guy gave me five pieces of dough. I smuggled them out of FoCo very carefully, wrapping the plate in my friend’s jacket to ensure the cookies made it home safely. They did — what a relief.
The dough itself was pre-molded into balls. I was expecting something extraordinary, but they looked fairly average, like something from Nestle Toll House.
The pressure was on. I pre-set the oven. I greased the pan. I lined three cookies on the tray (four would have made it asymmetrical, and who doesn’t love raw cookie dough?). And, very carefully, I eased the cookies into the oven.
Next, I waited. The cookies baked for probably 13 minutes. I pulled them out of the oven. The moment had arrived.
I enlisted two very trustworthy friends (the same friends who had already eaten the fifth ball of dough before it even made it to our kitchen) to judge the cookies. The three of us bit into our cookies together. I expected something fairly good, but not quite up to the FoCo cookie guy’s level. I was wrong.
To be honest, the cookies tasted exactly the same as the ones at Foco. This was probably because I didn’t actually make the dough. Come to think of it, I didn’t really do anything besides put them in the oven.
But this was still an eye-opening experience — while it exposed my hidden talent for baking and showed me that I should probably work at FoCo sometime in the future, it more importantly brought me closer to the cookies themselves. I know the process behind them now. I know the love and affection required to nurture the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
So the next time I fill my (Dart)mouth with a Foco cookie, I’ll remember the steps that brought that dough to life.