Top Pick Of The Week

March 4, 2008
Updated February 2009

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

Heaven, we’re in heaven ... (to paraphrase Irving Berlin, who never had any of Lisa’s crunchy, chocolate-packed chocolate chip cookies and other baked wonders). Photography by Claire Freierman | THE NIBBLE.

WHAT IT IS: “Home-baked” cookies and bars.
WHY IT’S DIFFERENT: Great recipes, the finest ingredients and skillful baking produce perfect examples of their kind.
WHY WE LOVE IT: One word: Yum! If we knew where to buy cookies and bars that taste this good in our own town, we would head there. Thank goodness for the internet, our global marketplace!
WHERE TO BUY IT: LisasCookieShop.com. Buy everything—seriously. There are only five items (fewer if you don’t like coconut—but it’s hard not to like it in Lisa’s hands).
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Lisa’s Cookie Shop:
Shop Early, Shop Often

CAPSULE REPORT: Lisa Ciriello must be one of the most popular citizens in the charming Victorian town of Warwick, New York. After just one bite of her cookies and bars, you’d be willing to travel hours to greater Warwick (55 miles from New York City), the only place where her products are retailed. Instead, save the time, save the gas, save the plane fare: Shop online and feast in a day or three when the FedEx driver delivers your order.

Oh, what crisp, crunchy, wonderful cookies you’ll receive: Chocolate Chip cookies, Coconut Chocolate Chip cookies and Kitchen Sink cookies. You could make a meal of these cookies and never feel sick, they seem so wholesome and nutritious. (We know, as we’ve done it five or six times while “researching” this review.) Just the fragrance of butter, chocolate and other fine ingredients leaping out of the bag might be satisfying enough for those who feel the need for restraint. The soft, chewy pecan coconut bars and raspberry bars are equally magnificent. And THE NIBBLE staff flipped over the moist, tender Frazzleberry Cookies. Invite your friends for a tea party or coffee klatsch. Lisa is so nice, she won’t mind if you pretend that you made everything yourself (after all, it’s baked to order). Read the full review below to nibble in depth on Lisa’s all-natural gourmet cookies, and plan ahead for Easter gifts, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts and summer camp.

     
THE NIBBLE does not sell the foods we review
or receive fees from manufacturers for recommending them.

Our recommendations are based purely on our opinion, after tasting thousands of products each year, that they represent the best in their respective categories.

 

Bake Your Own Cookies With These Five-Star Recipes

Martha Stewart's Cookies Williams Sonoma Cookies Great Cookies - Carol Walter
Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share, by Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Bake the gamut from perennial favorites to the more creative, like peppermint meringue sandwiches and carrot cake cookies. Click here for more information or to purchase.
The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Cookies, by Marie Simmons. Time-honored favorites and fresh ideas by a double James Beard award-winning cookbook author. Full-color photos of each cookie make this book a delight to thumb through, even when you’re not in baking mode. Click here for more information or to purchase.
Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets, by Carole Walter. There’s something for every taste and occasion, from traditional favorites like Favorite Lemon Squares and Snickerdoodles, to the trail mix–inspired Teton Trailers and chewy Midnight Macaroons. Click here for more information or to purchase.

Lisa’s Cookie Shop: Shop Early, Shop Often

INDEX OF REVIEW

This is Page 1 of a three-page review. Click on the black links below to visit other pages.

MORE TO DISCOVER

Introduction

During her career in the leveraged buyout industry, Lisa Ciriello had sought a change to a profession where she could work at home and raise a family. She had grown up loving fine food and was skilled at making it. She started an artisan cookie business in her home kitchen and achieved the kind of success that enabled her to build a commercial kitchen on her own property. She is now living the dream of a business owner with no commute—a dream of many people who would love to own an artisan food business, although few people would envy the long hours and hard work.

Raspberry Thumbprint Cookies
Frazzleberry Cookies: It’s never too late to enjoy
the cookies your mother never baked.

Lisa wants to “bring to our customers the cookies they grew up on, made by hand, with the highest quality ingredients.” Fortunately, our mom baked as well as Lisa does; but if your household wasn’t as blessed, here’s your chance to recoup your losses. There’s a school of therapy* with the philosophy that it’s never too late to have a second childhood, and experience all the good things you should have gotten the first time around, including wonderful, homemade cookies.

*Rational Emotive Therapy

There are eight basic types of cookies. Lisa makes two of them—drop cookies and bar cookies—that are quite the enjoyable form of therapy. The current collection includes four drop cookies— Chocolate Chip Cookies, Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies, Kitchen Sink Cookies and Frazzleberry Cookies; and two bar cookies, Raspberry Bars and Pecan Bars.

(What are the other six types of cookies? Learn more about the different types of cookies and history of the cookie.)

You should certainly order one of everything. There are only seven cookies per bag, and four or five bars. If you need to make peace with family members, order enough bags so that you can invite them over for coffee or tea, set out a spread, and watch them munch happily away. The cookies are real seratonin reuptake inhibitors: No one will get cross or bring up old angst as long as their plates are full. Give them a few bags to take home; the cookies will act like penicillin and heal a wound or two.

Continue To Page 2: Drop Cookies

Go To The Article Index Above

 

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