What makes a cookie so expensive? It’s just sugar, flour, and butter. Buckle up, Josh. You’re about to find out. You cool to take this one? Award-winning pastry chef Christina Tocei. Oh, yeah. I was born for this one. This is a hot dog is a sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal. So what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? You thought that was seductive? Okay, fine. More like um official. Is that better? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world’s biggest food debates. I’m your host, Josh Sher. And I’m your host, Nicole Annay. And today we have a very special guest on the pod. She’s the founder owner of Milk Bar, James Beard, award-winning pastry chef, and the progenitor of Cool Girl Baking. A woman who’s a woman who is as iconic as her cereal, milk, ice cream, and compost cookies. It is the Christina Tossy. Christina, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. is I mean, is a hot dog a sandwich? It sure is. Yeah, I’m over I’m over the drama. It is. A woman on the right side of history. We So, we we founded this podcast more than 5 years ago at this point. And we had not covered the actual topic of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich until we did a five-part series where we interviewed a philosopher, a historian, a lawyer because there have been multiple legal battles over this and then an actual hot dog business owner uh to to get the real boots on the ground and then we debated people on the street and we’ve still been split until now because Nicole wants to defer to you which I really respect. Yes. Yes. I I’m a very respectful debater. Uh, but the reason we wanted to have you here today is because I feel like we are going through maybe a third I’m going to call it the third wave cookie renaissance. I knew you were going to say renaissance. There’s a ren but there’s there’s a new renaissance but I think you can sort of track these waves of cookie popularity and now for the first time I feel like it’s gone completely global. I was in France recently and I’ve not seen so many cookies among all of the like French vias. Yeah. And they’re just called le cookie which is really funny. Lebroni as well. They’re very popular all over. Um, but you are one of the ones leading that renaissance and we want to talk all about the economics of a cookie and what actually goes into the pricing because we’ve gotten a lot of comments from our listeners talking about how expensive baked goods are. And at the beginning of the pod, I said it’s just sugar, flour, and butter. But, oh, Christina, I imagine it is so much more than that. Just Oh, Josh, it’s so much more than First of all, amazing French accent. And also, I think that’s such an interesting call out because I when I was becoming a professional pastry chef 20 years ago, like going to culinary school, you studied French technique and there is there was nearly a cookie recipe anywhere near the curriculum to the extent that they don’t even really have a French word for cookie or brownie to your point, which is a bar cookie. So, is a brownie a cookie? Yes, it’s a bar cookie. not a brownie. Um, and I think that’s fascinating. Oh, rename the podcast. We’re doing a spin-off. We’re doing a spin-off. Is a brownie a cookie? I might be a cookie biggest fan. Like, I wrote a cookbook that’s all about cookies that really uh blurs the line of what a cookie can and can’t be. And I think it’s really just scratching the surface, but I the reason I do what I do for a living and have my whole life is because of the power of a cookie in its inherent humility. The fact that like you never get a cookie recipe that makes one, right? It’s always a batch of cookies. It’s meant to be shared. The power of a cookie, what it does for us, etc., etc. But beyond the emotion of it and the deliciousness of a cookie, cookies, like it’s not easy to make a good cookie. It is easy to make a cookie and a mediocre cookie implicitly or a sub subpar cookie, but it’s not easy to make a great cookie. To pay rent on a storefront for any baker, you got to sell. My like phrase I always tell the team’s like you got to sell a lot of cookies to pay the rent. and the economics of making a great cookie. Well, they’re more complicated now than they were almost 17 years ago, 18 years ago when I opened Milk Bar. You ready for it? You want me to just go? You want me to put Should I put on like my bif focals and be like, “Okay, Josh, let me tell you.” I I would actually love that. We would love to be school. The CFO the COO. Okay, we’ll do CFO Christina and then COO Christina and then we can just be a baker again. Okay, love it. Okay. So, basics of a great cookie, right? Like raw ingredients. Butter, great cookie, unsalted European style butter, so that the dairy is cultured. So, there’s a depth of flavor to the butter before you even start mixing it with these other ingredients to make it greater than the sum of its parts. Um, some cookies are better with part shortening. And I don’t mean that because you’re like short changing the experience. You just get a better shelf life. If you’ve ever had like an oatmeal cookie that has part butter and part shortening in it, the shortening is all fat where butter is some milk solids, some water, and some fat. Um, so you’re getting more flavor in butter, but you get like um a softer, tender for a longer period of time cookie if you can find the right ratio of shortening without forfeiting flavor. sugar, granulated sugar, light brown sugar, dark brown sugar. There’s all honey, maple, there’s all different sugar systems that you can bring into place depending on the flavor story of the cookie. Eggs. I don’t like a cookie with a lot of eggs, but a little bit of egg truly, and I’ve gone at every single one of our recipes and questioned every ingredient and the ratio of every ingredient at Milk Bar. A cookie without eggs, when we go through like aven bird flu or some of these other egg shortages, a cookie without egg is just not as good. If you remove the egg entirely, the texture is out the window. We’ve replaced the egg in our cookies at times with flax. One, for like people with egg allergies and and you can get similar in texture, but you you you start hacking away at what makes a really great cookie as delicious. The flax just doesn’t come with the same richness, even though you can almost reconstruct the texture that an egg brings. Um, some sort of flavor. So, typically vanilla extract. Is it dark vanilla extract like a like your favorite chocolate chip cookie like that deep sultry vanilla extract? Is it clear vanilla extract like our confetti cookie where it’s light and creamy? And then there’s like a world of extracts, right? Of you can get a brown butter extract, you can get a maple extract, you can get a fudgy extract, a citrusy extract. I can’t even tell you how many extracts we have. We have so many. You can anything can be a flavored extract that helps boost the flavor story of just the baseline cookie dough before you get to all the inclusions mixins. That’s usually all the wet ingredients. If we’re talking about like a true drop cookie should have even should have even backed out there. I’m talking about just like let’s we’re talking classic chocolate chip cookie drop and bake because there’s so many different kinds of cookie. Then dry ingredients. So flour but flour allpurpose flour. Is it high protein? Is it low protein based on the texture of your cookie? Do you I don’t know. Is there some like rye flour in it? Are you smoking the flour because you want kind of like a smoked chocolate chip cookie? Is there some corn flour, some oat flour, or some um wheat berry flour, whole wheat flour, etc., etc. Pumpern no flour. There’s so many different dry flowers you can bring in to tell the flavor story texture. Is it gluten-free flour? Because it’s a gluten-free cookie. Gluten-free is so much more expensive because the what makes up the gluten-free flour hasn’t been commoditized the way that wheat has. So, it’s just more expensive to grow, to harvest, to to mill down. Then, typically salt. Every cookie needs salt. Every baked goods need salt. Not because it’s salty sweet, but just to help sharpen the edges of flavor and contextualize it. Um, baking powder or baking soda, your leavenners, right? Baking powder gives you height. baking soda gives you breadth, but also those two um leavenners. You don’t need both, but some cookies use both. They help um even distribution of color in the baking oven. And then they actually add acid to your cookie dough. So, if you ever left baking powder, baking soda out, you would know not just because the cookie isn’t either growing in height or breadth and because the cookie is like strangely colored when it’s baked compared to what happens when you have it in, but you will be like, “This cookie doesn’t taste as good because it doesn’t have that slight bit of acid.” And then you have all the other add-ins. So, inclusions, chocolate chips, chocolate chunks. If we’re just going chocolate chip cookie, I believe we were talking earlier, milk powder for me is the MSG of the baking world, but specifically in cookie, it’s going to give your cookie a deeper, rounder flavor. It’s going to give it more chew if you want a chewy chocolate chip cookie. And then, I mean, as the person that was like, I have an idea. Let’s put all of the things into the cookie, which is what the compost cookie, the classic milk bar compost cookie is, where it’s like pretzels, potato chips, oats, ground coffee, butterscotch, chocolate, graham crackers. I think I got it all. Um, but the way that we tell flavor stories, to your point, Josh, like the third renaissance of cookie, right? The flavor stories that are coming out in cookie form are all about how we are inspired by I have made a hot dog cookie, by the way. how we are inspired by something that inspires us to turn it into a cookie to to like you could make a molted Oreo milkshake cookie and think about all the other ingredients you need to then add into that cookie. Just raw ingredients to make it taste like that. So that’s raw ingredients. Then you’ve got the labor involved with measuring and weighing so that the formula is just right because baking is a science. mixing it, scooping it, chilling it, maybe depending on it, putting it in the oven, taking it out, cooling it, handing it to someone, wrapping it, putting it in a box, whatever it is. You’ve got your overhead, right? Your So, that’s the labor of it, but you’ve got your rent. You’ve got all your other utilities. You got to have an oven that works, whether it’s gas or electric. You have to have a walk-in fridge or, you know, a single door or double door going. So, then all you’ve got capex, right? What table are you making that cookie on? What mixer are you using? Where did that who paid for that oven? Right? Are you depreciating it on your schedule, etc., etc.? And then, of course, you have the packaging of it, right? Like, is it going in a cute little bag? Are you handing it to someone on a cute little napkin? Most people when you buy a cookie, they aren’t just putting it in the palm of your hand. Maybe they’re using a spatula to put it on. Like there’s a whole stick to we want like our cookie dream to come true and that comes with um the controllables on a P&L of a cookie to get that cookie to you for that experience nowadays. I mean even during COVID like the cottage bakeries even nowadays, right? So it’s you can get a great cookie in the mail through DTC for someone that has foregone a higher occupancy cost but they’re still paying for shipping and boxing and and andan and tape. How cute is the label? What about the insert that tells you how to store your cookie and what to do with your cookie, etc., etc. And then you have, you know, usually a small write off line of spoilages, right? Like maybe a cookie um, you know, have you ever like taken your cookies out of the oven and you’re like your pot holder thumb accidentally dents a cookie and you’re like, “Well, I can’t sell that. I’m going to eat that cookie, but I can’t sell that now.” Or a cookie breaks when you’re handing it to someone or packaging it. Or maybe you didn’t sell all the cookies you thought you were going to do in a day. Or maybe the box of cookies didn’t arrive on time for someone’s big occasion. Blah blah blah blah blah. That’s a line item of the P&L because you’re going to send someone a new box of cookies instead. But but raw ingredients, I’d say, is the biggest piece of why a cookie is so darn. I love listening to you talk about cookies. What do you I could go I could go further, but I saw Josh’s eyes be like, I’m not ready for all of this. I internalized everything. I internalized it all. That was my own machine turning on on where this was going. But no, no go Nicole, you have the floor. I just loved it. I I mean, what do you want to talk about next? You have the floor. You want croissants? You want 15 minutes on croissants? I’ll give it to you. I wanted to ask a question. It all this sort of calls into question of like what is a bakery now? Cuz you were mentioning cookies by mail and just going DTC. We actually we have a friend he runs a fantastic small uh you know fledgling bakery called Lexington Bakes. Yes. Where he makes just super high high high high quality cookies, brownies, whatever you want to call them. They’re all square for uh oven efficiency purposes. But he was telling me he was trying to go straight DTC. That’s direct to consumer for all our listeners out there. Except to get on all of these delivery apps and now people are just using the Door Dash, the Grubhub, Postmates to get cookies delivered to them. He needs to be registered as a bakery, which means he needs to have a brickandmortar storefront. So, you have to like get like not an escort, but like he has to get an LLC and everything like that. They they seem to have their own um own guidelines on what actually constitutes a restaurant that a driver will pick the cookie up from. And having like a ghost kitchen or a commissary kitchen uh where he normally does his baking and then packages it himself, it doesn’t exactly count. And so, there’s these strange hidden overhead costs. and like his packaging is beautiful because if you’re direct to consumer and you’re sending them out that needs to be beautiful and tell a story or if you want to grab attention in a storefront and so like when you’re talking about the overhead for I mean I remember when Milk Bar hit hit Melrose in LA and all of us you know flock down there it’s it’s beautiful and it’s welldesigned and there’s obviously intention that went into the feeling that you get when you’re being in there you know uh how much of that like the economics actually factored into that decision like was there any part of you that was like we can just do a mail order business or we can just supply to restaurants, we can just go into stores. Interesting. It’s so it’s such a great question. I mean I opened Milk Bar in November of 2008 in the East Village of New York City and in my mind it was always an in-person experience. I mean, November 2008 was like when the economy was, you know, there’s no other time in American history or the most recent time in history that that the financial health and well-being was as scary in a place was exactly that time. So, one would say terrible time to open a bakery, but in my mind, it had to be a physical bakery. Like, I wanted to see people like I my whole point of Milk Bar was I want to make people happy with dessert and I want to democratize dessert. And so one cookie had to be on the menu because of the democratization that I think a cookie holds in its size, shape, format. It’s Trojan horse for flavor and for so much more. I wanted to bake for you. I didn’t want to bake away from you. I wanted to kind of like bake with you, if you will. And I wanted you to be there. Open kitchen, right? Like we see all of these things now and they seem like they’ve always been this way. But having an open kitchen where you could actually see the people not just cooking savory food for you but baking for you did not exist. Pastry departments, you know, they’re behind the scenes. They’re in the basement. They’re in the back. There’s no windows. So for me, it had to be in person on some level. That’s just what made sense in my brain. But because we got so much like love and fanfare and support so early on then I was like well if I’m going to democrat like I really want this idea of democratization of dessert to to this is true for me. I would just get a call. I was also the customer. Who’s running your customer service? That’s another over. I was our customer service both on email and on phone. And I would get calls in right at random times of the day whenever we’d get like a cool piece done about us. And this one sweet woman, I think she was in Kansas, was like, “Well, honey, like I’d be like, “Well, here are our hours. You can come in.” And she was like, “Well, honey, I’m never going to make it to New York City. I’ve never been in my life. I’ve not, but I really want to try, you know, I really want to try your bakery.” And I took a step back and I was like, well, when I left home and went to college, like my mom would just send the cookies in a care package. She would underbake them because I like a slightly fudgy center. And so I was like, uh, okay. I’ll just put it in like just tell me what you want. I’ll write down your information. I’ll put it in the mail. And we launched the DTC arm of our business in 2009, 2008, 2009. So, this is before DTC was even an acronym, before anyone even thought about sending food in the mail as a business, before there were any real regulations for it, etc., etc. I think maybe Omaha states I was going to say it was Omaha states and edible edible arrangements. Yeah. Yeah. Um or Harry and David, but exactly. Palafrio was not shipping, but then when we did that, we were like, well, that’s pretty cool. It’s like we have it’s like we have a spaceship of baked goods that’s just orbiting around the US or like a drone delivery service where we can just bring our baked goods to wherever people are and built that part of it. But you’re right, Josh. Like that part’s expensive. Even ondemand delivery, they take a percentage of your sales, right? Like who’s paying who’s paying the the piper? You are as as a business owner, not as the customer. But there’s so many different ways to do business. I mean, I know people that like host little cafes in their New York City apartments. I’ve seen those how they do business. Yep. Um, obviously there’s like the whole farmers market bit. You can wholesale to your local coffee shop or where you think people are getting your baked goods. You can go into grocery stores or the little shopppee shops. But you’re right, each of them has like different overhead pieces. And a lot of it comes down to both like the the the LLC um like articles of organization of are you a legitimate business? And then the other piece of it typically is the health department, right? Like whatever whatever jurisdiction you fall under and town to town, city to city, state to state, those regulations differ. So I think across the US and to your point just like across the world now, across the globe, you get these really interesting manifestations of cookie shops or bakeries because they’re products of ingenuity and entrepreneurship of people that freaking love cookies and believe in the power of a cookie. I’m I’m curious what your margins are in like more acronyms in the CPG part of your business in stores versus DTC versus like in your brick andmortar store. Like how much money are you making from each cookie sale in each of those three realms? So, interestingly enough, in the grocery store in CPG, you there is there’s almost no margin left because you aren’t just selling your cookie to the Gellson’s of the world. You’re selling them to someone that’s selling them to someone that’s putting them in Gellson’s and Gellson’s paying a piper to pay a piper to pay a piper to pay you. That part of selling cookies is super tricky which is why you see I think far less innovation and far less maybe newcomers that stay that are doing something that is as magical as what we see in the other sectors of business. So that’s another way to sort of you can as a consumer gauge what profit profitability um looks like in different sectors by saying where am I seeing the most innovation cool stuff cool flavors delicious flavors and when where am I seeing the least you see the least in grocery because of that DTC it kind of depends on how you have the relationship with your customer. Are you giving them free shipping or they paying for shipping? How cool to your point is like the unboxing and packaging experience and is that getting built into a handling cost or is that getting built into the cost of a cookie? Everyone does the accounting bit of it a little differently. In person, the margins are the best provided you have people that are coming in for cookies all the time because you’re paying. When was the when you worked an hourly job an hourly job? I think we all started somewhere in the food industry, right? They weren’t like, “Hey, Nicole, um, you can take the next four hours off unpaid because no one’s coming in to buy cookies now.” Like, you’re coming, you’re going to work under the premise that you are making cookies and helping the bakery sell these cookies for the entirety of your shift. And rent doesn’t decrease based on the number of cookie sales you have. Usually, it depends on your rent structure, whether it’s like base or base percentage. Most landlords won’t do a pure percentage rent based deal, but it’s basically the it is inerson bakery has the potential for the highest margin at a certain scale, then DTC, depending on where you put the dollars and cents and who’s paying and then grocery or CPG, unless you get to a crazy scale, Josh, where you have an entire cookie factory and everything is mechanized and you’re at like the scale of Oreo where you do see some cool, you know, Some of the bigger cookie behemoths are really trying to get into the mix a bit, but you can see the pushpull of like where they want to innovate and then where they’re hamstrung either in mechanization or they don’t want to take the risk of building like the robot to make the cool cookie as cool as it could be and they’re like maybe this is good enough. so so much of their innovation because I’m actually really curious about like where Milk Bar stands in all of this because obviously you have the Nabiscoco of the world, the Pepperage Farms of the world who I’m sure they’re owned by some sort of food conglomerate or private equity firm. Um or even like Tates to me is one of the newer cookies that is really been in storefronts for a long time. Then you have the people like our our friend Lexington Bakes who’s you know in a commissary kitchen grinding itself. you, I think, are sort of in this middle ground where you are able to innovate, you are able to use still incredible products and obviously the buck stops with you as far as keeping that quality. But what sort of challenges have you faced with trying to take what is like arteasonal and beautiful and frankly very personal to you and your story in trying to then automate and get to that economy of scale? I mean, it’s such a good question, Josh. It’s like 17 years of successes and failures that are like just dotted. It’s not a straight It’s not a straight line. There’s all kinds of dots along the way of surprised to know and I learned all of this on the job. Um because they don’t they certainly don’t teach it to you in French pastry school, my friend. They don’t have a word for cookie, nor do they have like the P&L and and all of the ins and outs of how it’s going to go for you. But when I started Milk Bar, I was like, we’re going to mix big batches of cookie bit bigger than what I know from making it at home or in my free time as a pastry cooker, pastry chef. So, we’re going to start, we’re going to hand mix everything with a with a giant Hobart mixer. We’re going to hand scoop. We’re going to chill. We’re going to bake because this is this is this is, you know, chef crafted cookie land. And one of my biggest things in building milk bar has always been taking a step back to go like where’s our bottleneck? Where’s our b we want to democratize dessert. And as much as sort of like hype culture and andan has had moments along the way. I want everyone to be able to come in that wants a freaking cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie. And like for me there is no greater disappointment than when you get to your bakery that you know and love and trust and they’re like oh we’re sold out. Like for me that hurts that angry angers me and hurts my heart because I’m like I will text me. I will go there. I will mix the bat. Like I really believe when you want that dessert, you should be able to have that dessert. You worked hard for it. You need it. You deserve it in life. And so in the bottleneck of it, one of the very first bottlenecks of milk bar was we could not scoop cookies fast enough. Or to say differently like me, Leslie Barren now Leslie Disher, Courtney Mc Broom, Hela Joe Mara, right? Like we would you’d onboard a pastry cook. The poorest use of me or anyone else that’s like a pastry sew or whatever’s time is being on the cookie scooping station, right? Like we need to be running the business. But the reality was we were the fastest cookie scooper. So we like we are going to need a bigger boat. Okay, we need a cookie scooping machine. How do we find a cookie scooping machine that allows for all of these different crumbs and crunches and and one doesn’t exist, Josh? Right. like it’s only because the big guys are the ones that are defining what the industry standard is and they’re not putting cool stuff in their cookies. No. So, we found this um burger patty portioner after like long research. So, you’ve got a bunch of gals who are trained pastry chefs learning how to be like food scientists and engineers and we found this like hilarious hamburger patty machine because you know in hamburger patty land you want to scoop you want to touch your dough as little as humanly possible right or your your patty so that it’s tender and juicy and in and in. And we found that and that was one of our unlock. So, as we’ve scaled it there is always a push pull. You have to make a bet in order to try and get more of your people more cookies when they want them, where they want them. And you learn a lot along the way, right? Like you learn everything along the way from to the point of like, oo, do we want to put shortening in a cookie? It’s got such a bad rap, but it makes a better cookie. What’s the best packaging that’s going to make someone if I can’t hand you the cookie in person at a bakery? I mean, we bake our cookies in store at all of our, you know, bakeries nationwide, but some people come in and are like, I want to stuff my bag with the cookies cuz I’m going home and I want to bring 20 cookies in my suitcase. Well, I can’t give you the cookies in that like amazingly cute pink box cuz they will not make the flight. You would also eat them all or they’d be broken, right? So, what is the best possible packaging experience? But you don’t want the packaging experience in bakery to make people feel like the cookie isn’t freshly baked. And we’ve we’ve dotted we’ve asked we’ve we’ve taken these sort of like chances and risks and asked oursel these questions along the way. And we’ve gone so far in both directions. Like we never we used to bake everything on site and never package anything. And then Alan Richmond, Crazy Food, amazing food reporter for GQ and and all of the publications. When we first opened, we got mad respect from him and he’s like, I’m going to bring all these cookies home to my neighbors in Connecticut. I was like, “Oh my god, this is a dream come true. This is really going to put us on the map.” An hour later, I get the most honest, heartbreaking email from him that’s basically like, “Girlfriend, you need to get your you need to get it together.” Oh my gosh. Because these the the cookies, they’re crumble. Like, I can’t give them to anyone. I am this amazingly accomplished food reporter and food reviewer. I can’t give people like, “You got to figure out how to get your cookies to people that aren’t standing in front of you.” So, I was like, “Okay, I have an idea.” We then we started and then I was like, we’re gonna package all of our cookies. And we packaged all of our cookies. And then people were like, it doesn’t feel the same, right? Like I want I want to be able to walk in and have it smell like a cookie. And you I we went too far into operationalizing it. Or we were like, we’re going to try a new cookie scooping machine because of And then all of a sudden it it made the cookies less delicious because there were less crumbs and chunks and pieces. And I mean, I could go on, but basically been fine-tuning a recipe for 17 years. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near done. And I love that part of my job. And it also is the most humbling, harrowing, nightmarish part of the job, too, because y’all know when you put up something that, you know, is not exactly what I we can’t be like, “Close the doors, shut down the business, no one’s allowed to have a cookie today.” I mean, I don’t know. Do Anyways, these are the things that go through a crazy cookie lover’s head on a daily bas. if it’s any consolation. Um, Anthony Bourdain wrote an entire chapter in his book Medium Raw called Alan Richmond is a douchebag. Oh. Um, and so that’s not me calling him that. That’s simply saying there’s an entire chapter devoted to it. So he is very very blunt with his words. But I think it really Well, that bluntness is what caused a a phenomenon. True. Truly. Sometimes bluntness works. Bluntness works. We I think we we’re kind of existing in a bit of a paradox right now where people want everything on demand, but part of the love for certain things is almost the exclusivity and the scarcity of it. Right. Sure. So, it’s like we’re living in this weird area where you want something that is artezal that’s handed directly to you from the cookie baker, but also you don’t want a crumbly cookie because you’re 2,000 miles away in a parish in Louisiana. Yeah. But also, can you get it to me in an hour? I’m on an island off the coast of wherever. Yes. Yeah. And so it’s it’s incredible watching. That’s one of the trickiest parts. It’s one of the trickiest parts of being in business and running a business. I think the thing I keep reminding myself, I think we’ve always done our best work. I think most people do their best work when they have blinders on, right? Where you are not chasing um my mom used to call it like Mrs. Got Rocks. You’re not chasing what someone else has and you’re not chasing what you think you should be doing. you are trying to put your blinders and your noise cancelling headphones on and do what you believe is true. The world needs more of that more than it needs more of what someone else is doing and the referential spin-offs because I think that just waters down what is in the world of AI, right? We’re going to get so much goodness from it and there’s so much scary stuff from it. I think art artistically, if we consider cookie making an art, which I do, but not in like a highbrow snoody way, we’re going to get more awesome cookie evolution if we can do more of that and stop trying to be everything to everyone all the time. And it’s easier said than done. I think it’s easier said than done. What I would say, like we talk about it in bakeries, I’m always like, I wish we could do a thing where we say to all the people that love cookies and love milk bar and and and the like it is we care so much about it and we’re not going to be able to be everything all the time. And it’s hard work, not in a feel sorry for me way, but in a um it if you want the best possible cookie, there’s a piece of it where you have to trust. It’s not a request for respect. It’s a request of trust in what it takes to get there. Because if the more trust there is, the better cookie you’re going to get every time and cookie you’re going to get universally. That was beautiful. So glad. For what it’s worth. For what it’s worth. Just a gal. Just one gal’s opinion. Fall is the perfect season to invest in yourself. And what better way than learning a new language? Whether you’re planning a trip, craving a new challenge, or just looking to make the most of cozy nights in, Rosetta Stone makes it simple to turn just a few minutes a day into real progress. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years. Their immersive, intuitive method helps you naturally absorb and retain your new language with lessons available on desktop or mobile so you can learn anytime, anywhere. I love how approachable the lessons are. Bite-size, easy to follow, and their true accent speech recognition gives real-time feedback that actually helps me sound more natural. It feels like having a personal language coach right there with me. And with 25 languages to choose from, from Spanish and French to Japanese and beyond, you’ll find the one that fits your goals. So, don’t wait. Unlock your language learning potential now. A hot dog is a sandwich. Listeners can grab Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off. That’s unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit rosettasone.com/hotog to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don’t miss out. Go to rosettastone.com/hotog and start learning today. All right, Nicole and Christina, we’ve heard what you and I have to say. Now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. It’s time for a little segment we call opinions are like casserles. [Music] All right, Christina, you ready to hear our fans first opinion about dessert? Be easy on them. You got to be easy on them. I mean, well, be firm. Be firm. Be fair. So, Sergio Ortiz says, “Hawaiian rolls are dessert.” Here is where I love dessert so much. I have opinions about dessert, much like casserles. Okay, good. And Sergio, I would say if Hawaiian rolls are where you get your like sweet little dirty dessert secret sugar fix, I would 10 out of 10 eat a Hawaiian roll as a dessert. I mean, I’d probably like gild the lily. Like I’d want to like break it up, lather it in like butter and cinnamon sugar and then bake it a new like make a cinnamon toast. Is it a s is it an ice cream sandwich which is a sandwich? And then like there’s so much you could do with Hawaiian roll in dessert land. But also, I’m I probably have been there where I’m desperate for dessert and I’m like, “Well, that’s sweet. I’ll eat that and call it dessert, right? I mean, it’s crafted.” I feel like the the French are always complaining. One, that could stand alone as a statement, but they’re also always complaining about what we’ve done to their beautiful brios. It is not for the hamburger. You put, you know, bio is like a a dessert. It’s like almost like a yeast, an eggy yeast cake. Very similar with like bio, like um gelato corn brio in Italy. Sure. You know, and to me, Hawaiian rolls, I growing up in California, Kings Hawaiian, like that was sold with every rotisserie chicken meal at the grocery store, put a scoop of ice cream in a Kings Hawaiian roll. I don’t know that you can get a better ice cream sandwich. Let me tell you what I would do. I agree with this 100%. I take the Hawaiian roll, I cut it in half, I put it in a toaster oven for approximately 30 seconds, and then I take peanut butter, probably Laura Scutter’s peanut butter cuz you know how much my mom loves that. And then um random chocolate chips cuz again, ingredient household. So that would be the dessert I would make. And also probably a little bit of salt because I love salty peanut butter like a lot a lot. And Laura Scutters ain’t got no salt, no sugar. Laura Scutters has no joy. You must find the joy in the peanut in the Laura Scutters, which I do. I find the joy in it. Also, can we just say King’s Hawaiian Rolls? Yes. Yes. Yes. King’s Hawaiian Rolls whole business is that you’re eating your savory on a dessert item. Yeah, for sure. That’s like the TLDDR of it. And you can take it on so many dessert adventures. I love it. All right, we we got another one. This one is That’s That’s all caps. Yes. This one is from Zack Garber. He says, “Almost all desserts are better cold. Cold brownies, cold cake, cold cookies, cold pie.” I’m really curious about this one, Christina. No, that’s enough. Where where do you stand on that? What What temperature should a brownie be eaten? I’m not saying that dessert great dessert isn’t sometimes cold. 100% it is, but it is not a universal standard. Sometimes it’s room temperature and sometimes it’s hot. A cookie should be eaten depends on the cookie at room temperature if it’s a chewy cookie. Hot if you are going for like, you know, a hot out of the oven cookie. For me, it’s cookie dough that’s warm slightly in the microwave. It’s a little cold. It’s a little hot in moments. Obviously cold, but then it’s like milk bar pie is best out of the fridge, but cereal milk is frozen. But cereal milk is frozen because it’s soft serve at like 14 degrees Fahrenheit where like hard pack mint cookies and cream, my favorite ice cream, is much colder than that. So I think dessert runs the temperature gamut. It just depends on what it is. You ever had a cold cobbler before? Yeah, it’s not as good as a cold pie, I’d say. It’s gross. I think a cold pie ice cold fruit pie though. Ice cold custard pie as well. Do you like those? I want my pies ice cold. Oh no. I want the I want the And I think even then like um if the the or cherry pie is there like a whole song sweet cherry pie. Are you talking like lemon curd or key lime pie or those should be cold? Are you saying that you’re into cold pie? Very cold. Cold everything. Well, no, not everything. Cuz I think um like a cookie I think there needs to be like fresh out of the oven but has sat for about 19 minutes, you know, in a window sill. I agree. Okay. But I d it. But I think most pies I think I want fresh out of an ice cold diner fridge where they they where they keep next to the prepackaged Cobb salads. Oh no. Apple apple pan pie. Yeah. You go to um you go to uh pie and burger in Pasadena and you get their butterscotch and mering pie. It comes at borderline. There you go. That I’ll give you. But I’m with Nicole and like I am not so sure about that as a universal statement. No, I I like my neither am I. I guess I like my fruitbased desserts to be on the warmer side. Like whole fruits like cobblers, buckles, pies. Oh, but you know, have you ever had an unset brownie? Sometimes an unset brownie, which if if your intention is for it to be ooey, gooey, delicious, dreamy, whatever. But if it’s like too if you can’t pick it up with your hand cuz it’s so melty gooey, I think that defeats the purpose. But if you But if you set it, cut it, let it let it like um I was going to say it in Farscy like jam jam, which is so random. Just get together and then you warm it up for like 10 seconds in the microwave. I’m down with that. I love it. Yeah. Plus brownie sundae. But also, you guys, have you ever just had brownie batter as dessert out of the fridge without make the brownie at all? That’s dessert. That’s where our guy is, right? Where you’re like, “Yeah, give me some cold.” That’s just chocolate moose, baby. Okay. Mosha Isaac says, “Any cake with fondant tastes very chemically and should be banned.” I think most cake I mean, you’re talking to the lady who was like, “We stop frosting the sides cake. We’re not going to do it anymore. Everyone, come on. Let’s start this revolution. That’s right. Um I think cakes that are covered in fondant are beautiful 100%. But I want to eat my cake. I don’t want to just stare at my cake. I want to eat it. I’m here for I here I’m here not to look at the cake. I’m here to eat the cake. I mean fondant the makeup of fondant most fondant. It’s sugar. There’s a few other things in it. We won’t get it’s not about it’s not about is fondant too expensive. We won’t get into that and all of it. But because it is it’s sugar. I think it’s more that that fondant in it fondant implicitly is not meant to taste like anything. It’s meant to be a duvet cover for a cake that you can put other things on. Oh, you’re so right. I think it’s about function. I think the tricky part is we put it over something that people want to eat. So now everyone has an opinion about what fondant tastes like, rightfully so. But I think that’s where fondant is a little, you know, if you want fondant on like your pretty celebration cake, fine. But then get another cake to slice into. like let it be a centerpiece but don’t have it be the thing that people are gonna unless they’re just like unless they just want it to taste like basically confection or sugar because that’s most of the makeup of fondant I had a question from like a baking sample does the fondant kind of insulate the cake in a way it does okay so so like not not intentionally like the crumb coat you you normally stack your cake you put this really thin layer of icing on call a crumb coat because it’s not meant to be a perfect coat you’re meant to see crumbs through it and that frosting acts as glue for the fondant to go over it. You have to keep fondant thick enough so that you can’t see the chocolate cake below, right? You don’t want it trans almost translucent. You want it thick enough. But you’re so right, Nicole. What fondant ends up doing then is insulating the cake in a way that keeps I mean our our man with with a a love for cold dessert is probably super into fondant covered cake because Do you eat fondant? Always cold on me. I eat fondant and plain. You eat fondant on plain? I knew you were going to be a sicko. every day you get sicker and sicker to me. You know that it’s just it’s kind of it’s like I grew up with a lot of guinea pigs and they’d have like a wood bit that they’d chew on. What does that have to do with Because they’d have a wood bit that they chew on and that to me is like fondant. It’s my little wood bit. I get I like the texture. You like you’re like a little sugar fix. Do you like a sugar baby or a sugar daddy? You’re like, “Give me a sugar cube. I need my sugar right now.” Literally. Yes. I’m here for you. Do you know what my most commonly eaten uh confection is in our kitchen? We have those little cubes of Thai palm sugar. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just grab them and eat them like candy. Yeah. So I I understand that I’m but also Swedish princess cake that’s covered in marzipan, right? It’s not a fondant. Like a beautiful green marzipan is not a fondant. It’s like an almond paste. A little bit of almond and a lot of sugar and usually a little bit of almond extract. Like fondant could up the ante if they added some a flavor powder or an extract to the makeup of fondant. So fondant actually tasted like strawberry. Marzipan tastes like almond extract and almond taste. But the covering the covering on a princess cake like it that almost acts to me as a bit of a fondant, right? I’ve never made one because I’m a coward. I can’t make one. Weird. But I can we also say like merits of fondant on a cake just outright. It locks all of the moisture in. So unless someone really overbaked the cake or didn’t soak the cake or or or you’re getting generally a pretty nice moisture sponge on the inside cuz the moisture doesn’t have anywhere to go. It stays locked into the cake. You have a dry cake under your fondant. Just peel the fondant off. Send it to Josh in a cute DTC package. Charge him for it. Charge him for the packaging. He’s a happy customer. Yeah, it’s fine. Oh god, I need help. All right, this this one is It might mean fighting words right here, but we’ll see. This is from Guju. Less frosting means better cake. Frosting is how bad cakes hide. Ooh. I mean, the whole one of the other reasons that we don’t frost the sides of the cake at Milk Bar. I love frosting, I think, more than anyone else. And I’m in like Josh fondant land in frosting. Like I am at the birthday party where you get the grocery store cake and I’m like, give me the corner piece and I eat all the frosting off of it because most people I think don’t put enough thought into cake and how good the sponge should be. Every element of the cake should be a knockout hit in a single bite where it doesn’t need its coconspirators in the layers of it, frostings, fillings, whatever. That’s how a great cake is made. I think frosting and cake have a tricky relationship because if you have someone that didn’t really care about the cake and was just like, “It’s cake. Look, it’s a sponge. It bounces. Look, it holds the frosting. I’m done.” Then you’re going to 100% that’s a mad cake. Choo choo is right. That’s a mad cake and it’s all about the frosting. But I think people should spend more time making an awesome sponge and then an awesome frosting and then one’s not hiding between the other. It’s a perfect little balance relationship. I agree with you. The relationship between frosting and cake is a tricky one, Christina. I have never. That is one of the wildest statements that I’ve ever heard. I almost thought that would be one of the more simple relationships in the world. Wow. Two things that are wonderful that found each other, but you’re right. Sometimes great relationships, you know, they are tricky. You have to put in the work. They have the match made in heaven. I agree with you a thousand%. I think if you put love, care, and attention into your sponge and you put love, care, and attention in your frosting, then both of them can exist within the same universe, and they can be harmonious. It’s all about harmony. I have the best question, the best opinion I’ve ever seen. Go ahead. I’m ready to say it. Sunundevils 84 says, “Bcue sauce cookies made with sweet baby rays are amazing. Everyone should try them.” Come on. I’m here for it. This is where I will get so weird in a cookie. I appreciate that it’s probably not going on the menu at Milk Bar cuz no one’s going to buy it. I know this because we had a soft serve flavor sweet years ago and it was kind of this time of year and I was like it’s going to be a backyard barbecue themed soft serve sweet of four. One of the flavors was barbecue soft serve broom and I made that barbecue barbecue sauce from scratch every day with so much love and care. Family meal was popping. No one bought a single portion of barbecue sauce serve. Everyone got their free sample just to be there for the experience, but no one um no one bought a portion. Maybe it was the PR of it. Like maybe we should have just called it something different. Also, people are willing to take more risks I think in that flavor and the flavor of things now like where the flavor comes from and what it is. People are like more like make me feel alive. Wow. Yes. Casey Masterpiece barbecue sauce me or or baby sweet baby rays. Let’s go. Chasing the dragon. I think I’m Yeah, I think you just want to take a little bit of the water out of the barbecue sauce. I’d want to cook that barbecue sauce down a little bit because there is for it to be fluid. There’s water and water is the death of a great fudgy on the inside, crispy on the outside cookie. It would make a great cake. Otherwise, I’d want to just take some of the water out, cook it down a little bit before I made it into a cookie. I’m not Listen, it’s not a no for me. You should have shut down samples for that day. You should have been like, “No samples. Buy a full portioner. Get the hell out of my store.” I um I had like a miso caramel the other day and I was just like I wish I was going to talk about miso miso. There’s something to me about almost the uh it’s like the the glutamate of it all, you know, like I I don’t love they made that like cheddar ice cream Vanluin did. Um but the one like very savory ice cream that I had the dessert at all that really changed my mind was um everything bagel ice cream from Jenny’s I believe. Oh yeah, that was good. Where I was like, I’m here for the candied garlic in it all. Um I love a salty dessert, but there’s something about like a savory dessert that’s never quite clicked with me. But I do love getting weird. Sometimes I get weird. I’m the opposite. I love savory notes in dessert. Like I love There was this New York Times cookie. It was the gochu jang cookie that like exploded. So I love the idea of pushing the envelope. You just got to if you are able to do the right R&D, any cookie or any baked good can exist if you just again put the right care, attention, and detail into it. I wouldn’t do Sweet Baby Rays. I would actually probably do Casey Masterpiece. So, thanks for bringing that up cuz I agree. Can I Can I complain about one thing? Sweet Baby Race has too much Hold on. I think Sweet Baby Race has too much liquid smoke in it. I think Casey Masterpiece is a little bit It’s It’s not as smoky and that’s why I think that’s why I think it would work better. Yeah, like a bullseye would never work. A stubs would never work too. A stubs would never work. Not sweet enough. Rufus tea wouldn’t work. In in the era where like I started like really going to restaurants and thinking about them and I I was writing about food for magazines. Every single dessert was like here is a classic dessert item except we’ve added one herb or spice or fermented ingredient that you don’t necessarily want to hear. Here’s a lovely strawberry tart but there’s a lot of black pepper and thyme in it. I love that. Here’s a lovely chocolate lava cake. Ah, Chipotle in the face. I love that. And that was every dessert. And I I I love it. We needed it. Um Ah, mustard in your gelato. I don’t care. Yeah, give it to me. Whatever. Here’s my take on it. What’s up? Uhuh. My take I’m so with you, Josh. It’s the like I am so It’s tricky because I’m like 100% get excited about flavor and experimentation and trying things on and know when something is ready for prime time. Fair. Most of that stuff is like I want to bottle up that enthusiasm because this is the number one thing I see on menu. Sweet and savory across the US dining out is this mistake of like I’m so excited about this new ingredient or this new thing. Are they chasing a trend or do they have like noiseancelling headphones blinders on? Right? Like is it really coming from them? Are they just excited to try something new? There’s nothing wrong with trying something new, but you have to know how to be an editor and know when it’s ready for prime time. And most of these things are like either this doesn’t make sense and the balance of flavor isn’t right or my palette is blown, babe. How am I supposed to enjoy anything else and the like you it’s it’s just it you it might be something for sure, but you have to know when something’s ready for prime time. You can’t just put it on the menu. That’s you need a teen that’s your editor and you need an editing process. And I think that’s important. You need a Josh and Nicole. You guys, everyone needs to hire Josh Nicole as the are we ready for prime time team. Yeah, they’re the frosting and the cake, you know. Which one do you think you are? Wait, what was our original podcast name? Butter and the hot knife. Butter and the hot knife. She’s Butter and I’m the hot knife on 97.3. That was not the proudest moment. Christina, truly, thank you so much. This was such a wonderful time on the podcast. You got anything to plug? What what you got going on? Cookies. Just come in and get some cookies, man. We you can we’ll ship them to your doorstep, but really like come in for a warm cookie any of the milk. But to your point, I’m so with you. It’s not warm cookie, Nicole. It’s a cookie that’s been pulled out of the oven. Was it 18 minutes before you come in and get it? It’s Josh said temperature cookie. 18 minutes was it? It’s a room temperature cookie that you know came out of the oven and is cooled just enough for you to really enjoy it. It’s neither too hot or too cold. It’s just right. do it cuz you are part of like the cookie. You believe in the power of a cookie. And also find more cookies from people because we need more great cookie makers. Amen. There’s no such thing as too many. The whisper of heat is left. The breath of heat is left in the cookie. Say, “What lines do I have?” Oh, thank you so much for stopping by. A hot dog is a sandwich. We got new episodes every Wednesday wherever you get your podcast. We got new videos out every so they know where we are. If they’ve listened this far, they know. Call us 833 dogpod1 or tweet at us. You have our handles probably. We’ll see you next time. [Music] Do you need help finding the best storebought foods? Head over to sport.com to check out the five best things they eat every