So Many Cookies

The Finale desserterie chain recently added a new treat to their restaurant menu, just in time for the fall season and its attendant comfort-food cravings! The menu suggested that the Cookies and Cream dessert offered more, quantity- and variety-wise, than their other plated desserts. I was already familiar with Finale's smaller, fancier indulgences, so I was eager to try something potentially bigger and better. Plus, I knew a plate of warm cookies would feel oh so cozy on an unexpectedly chilly September evening.

As you can see, we have an eclectic cookie assortment, accompanied by a vanilla gelato float crafted with Izze blackberry soda and garnished with white and dark chocolate wedges. This fizzy, fruity float counted as the cream. The cookies, moving clockwise from the float, are:

• Chocolate Chip - a basic cookie filled with melty chocolate slivers. The batter had run rather thin, resulting in a crispy, crunchy cookie - but, this contrasted so nicely with the warm, gooey chocolate bits.
• White Chocolate Cranberry - huge white chocolate chunks, plump cranberries, and small walnut pieces studded a chewy, buttery mound of a cookie. I was really impressed with the robustness and quality of the mixins, as well as the base batter's flavor.
• Brownie - a fairly basic fudge brownie topped with sweet, smooth chocolate ganache.
• Oatmeal Raisin, 3 scattered across plate - alright, I'll admit it. I left these behind. Readers who know my distaste for raisins will understand.
• Linzer - this unusual spice dessert has a cookie base spread with raspberry jam, with dough latticed over the jam layer. This made me think of holiday treats, with plenty of assertive spices that were suggestive of gingerbread.
• Snickerdoodle - a light sugar cookie coated in cinnamon sugar. This wasn't a traditional snickerdoodle in the sense that I know, as the spice was not mixed throughout the batter. Still, Finale's airy version was a welcome respite between bites of heavier cookies.
• Raspberry Shortbread - a thin layer of raspberry jam and evenly-distributed small-crumb streusel topping cover a soft, buttery, salty shortbread cookie. A real winner, probably my second-favorite dessert of the bunch.
• Peanut Butter - a crumbly, dry, and intensely nutty peanut butter shortbread.
• Whoopie Pie - I thought this "pie" might be the best cookie on the plate, so I saved it for last. Goodness, was I correct! Two sizable chocolate cookies - which are stiff but chewy, surprisingly fudgy and almost brownie-like when bitten, and exploding with full dark chocolate flavor - sandwich a thick smear of fresh, tangy white chocolate cream cheese frosting. I wish I had been given 3 of these beauties instead of 3 oatmeal raisin cookies! I made a mental note that the whoopie pies can be ordered individually at the desserterie's to-go counter.

So many cookies, so much dessert! Tasting each cookie was like unwrapping a new present. Dessert as entertainment, even.

Apparently Finale has a prize for whomever manages to eat this entire dessert, but the waitress had not yet seen anybody do so and win it. I put forth a valiant effort and ended up taking home bits and pieces of most cookies. I would definitely order the Cookies and Cream again, as it was delicious; fun; and, considering my little bag of leftovers, two desserts in one! I should also mention that this sweet abundance costs the same as Finale's finer, tinier treats, so it's a great value as well.