Any readers of this blog know I am all about the dessert, though not usually about the ice cream as dessert. Too creamy, too runny, not filling enough. I like my desserts with heft and one of my favorite eats is a cookie. I've tried a lot over the years all over this town with varying degrees of delight and distaste. One day I was strolling through the Embarcadero and came across Over the Moon Ice Cream & Cookies and thought, well, I'm not big on the ice cream but let's give the cookies a shot.
Fortunately for me the cookies are 2 for $2, which is a pretty good price, as long as they aren't the size of a dime, and luckily enough, they are not. On any given day they have 6 or 8 choices of cookies and over the course of a few days (glutton yes, food masochist no) I tried out a half dozen to see how they measure up.
I thought I'd start out with with some basics like the cookies and cream and the chocolate chip. From appearances they look like perfectly fine cookies. The cookies and cream, however, tasted neither like a cookie or cream. I think those were supposed to be chunks of Oreo or something but amazingly this thing had no taste whatsoever. I can't really explain how they managed it but they did. I could tell I was eating something supposed to be a cookie but it made no impression on my taste buds. I'm guessing this is what synthesized food will be like in the future--bland. The chocolate chip, sadly was no better. Yes, there are lots of chips, but it is way too sweet, almost achingly so. You'd think if they were pairing this with ice cream, which is already sweet, they'd cut back some on the sugar, but nope, it serves up large doses of it. To the point where the chocolate seems like an afterthought. And just for good measure, they were both on the dry-ish side. That's 2 done and 2 duds.
Then came oatmeal raisin and peanut butter. The oatmeal was all cinnamon and brown sugar--in spades as it were--much to the point of being overwhelming with both sweet and bitter. I could see raisins and bits of oatmeal but all I could taste were brown sugar and cinnamon, and not in a good way. Again, it was a cookie that seemed too sweet for it's own good. As for the peanut butter, well, it wasn't as painfully sweet, but it was still up there. It was missing that good balance of salty and sweet you should get. Here it was more like sugar cookie and the occasional peanut chip. Not totally awful but not totally cookie worthy. 4 down, 3 1/2 duds. (I'm giving the peanut butter half a pass)
Finally came butterscotch and oatmeal chocolate chip. I must have been out of my sugared mind by now to try these but I did anyway and if nothing else, they both came down to my expectations and were right on par with the rest of the lot. The butterscotch just made my teeth ache. Pure sugar cookie madness with grossly sweet butterscotch chips. I'm still shuddering from the flavor. The oatmeal chocolate chip tasted just like cinnamon, and not in small amounts. In fact, there was so much cinnamon in this cookie it was almost bitter. I take that back, it was totally bitter, I couldn't finish it. Because of the overriding flavor you couldn't taste any oatmeal or chocolate. I had to get a diet Pepsi to wash the flavor out of my mouth. 6 down, 6 duds. (f**k it, screw the peanut butter, they all kind sucked in their own special way)
The one and only thing I'll give props to is the cookies were all soft, which makes sense if you are going to use them as the outsides of an ice cream sandwich. I mean if the cookie is hard it's just gonna crumble when you bite into it and the whole thing will fall apart on you. If it's soft you can just bite through the cookie and ice cream with ease. Until you actually get a taste of the cookie that is. In this instance I'm just gonna say screw the cookie and get the ice cream. They may be called Over The Moon but the cookies will definitely underwhelm.
