Stanley and I drove to Vegas from the bay area last weekend, which took freaking forever, but we did get to experience everything the middle-of-nowhere has to offer. Including Kohnen’s Country Bakery, a German bakery and breakfast place which was totally poppin’ despite, you know, being literally nowhere.
These cookies were all $1 or $1.50, and I picked up a few things I’d never seen or heard of before. Counter-clockwise from the center, we got a cinnamon crisp, nougat taler, chocolate espresso cookie, and ginger snap. The cinnamon crisp was a huge, flat thing that looked crazy, and when I asked the cashier what it tasted like, he said it was like “Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal but bigger”. Pretty good description, but actually the “dough” is laminated and flakey like a palmier! So it tasted kind of like a deconstructed palmier which of course, I loved. I picked up the nougat taler because it had a weird name – it’s just two plain cookies with hazelnut spread (“nougat”) in the middle, then dipped in dark chocolate. Note that the hazelnut spread inside was not nutella, but just the nut flavor. This one took me a few bites to get used to, but mostly because I’m not typically a fan of chocolate plus nuts in my baked goods.
The chocolate espresso cookie had such a strong flavor – almost literally like drinking a mocha! It had a great kick and chew to it, and I’d love to have a cookie like this in my repertoire. Lastly, the ginger snap was exactly what I expected – snappy, gingery, and not too sweet. If you’re ever driving on the CA-99 through Bakersfield/Tehachapi, take a break here and grab some snacks for the road 🙂
