Milk Compost Cookie Mix, reviewed

I can never resist the opportunity to try out a premium cake or cookie mix, especially one that comes from the highly acclaimed Milk Bar in New York City, so picking up the Milk Compost Cookie Mix at Target (they also carry it at other stores) was a no-brainer for me. The compost cookies are a chocolate chip cookie that also includes butterscotch chips, oats, coffee, potato chips and pretzels.

The mix has been available for a while now, but it appears to have undergone a slight transition from the earlier version, which included several packets of ingredients and mix-ins but now only includes a packet of dry cookie mix and a packet of mix-ins. You add the butter, egg, potato chips and pretzels yourself. I found it slightly inconvenient to have to buy pretzels and potato chips just to make the cookie mix, but it wasn’t a big inconvenience. The mix came together easily and I shaped the cookies into “golf ball sized rounds” as directed on the packaging.

I’ve had some of the baked goods from Tosi before and found them to be over-the-top with their level of sweetness. These cookies, unfortunately, were no exception. The sugar in the cookies caramelized during baking and gave them a slightly hard, rather than crisp, edge that made the cookies seem tough even when they were fresh out of the oven. They were surprisingly sweet even with the salty mix-ins. Some of my tasters suggested adding salt to the tops of the cookies to try to balance them out, which I did in subsequent batches. The cookies also turned out under-done in the center with the recommended size and baking time. I had to turn my over down and bake them longer to get a more evenly baked cookie.

Once I ironed out the kinks, the cookies weren’t bad, but they simply weren’t all that special even with the potato chips and pretzels. This is one mix where I feel like you have to do so much to it, you’re better off adding pretzels and potato chips to your favorite scratch chocolate chip cookie recipe, where you’ll likely get a better result with a good salty-sweet contrast.