KRAVINGS COOKIES
Hoppen Hierarchy: ★★★⭑
District: Home baker
Giant cookies
Perfect For: Baked Goods
Standout Dishes: Chocolate Chip Cookie; Mint Chocolate Cookie; Snickerdoodle Cookie
There’s just something about a homemade cookie.
This is not to disparage professionally-trained pastry chefs who’ve honed their craft in restaurants or dessert shops. They can craft exquisite creations with creative ingredients one would never expect in a cookie.
But there’s no denying the home-y goodness of a homemade cookie. Tested hundreds and hundreds of times over years, the recipe has undergone enough iterations and tweaks to achieve its perfect state. It’s run the gamut of taste testers, from picky toddlers to brutally honest friends and everyone in between.
That’s part of what makes Kravings Cookies so special. This home bakery cranks out cookies that transport you back to grandma’s kitchen as a youth.
Baking is what gives owner Kristina Kalian joy, and it’s why she invested so much time and energy into perfecting her chocolate chip cookie recipe in her home kitchen while raising three kids. She’s now reached a point where she believes it is the “perfect chocolate chip cookie dough.”
Take one bite and it’s hard to argue with that description. The cookies are soft and buttery, with just a touch of crust on the edge. They have good chew and just the slightest bit of crumble, and large chunks of rich semisweet chocolate penetrate every bite.
That delicious cookie base is used in nearly every one of Kravings’ options, of which there are many. Kravings offers four different types of cookies each month, ranging from basic sugar and monster cookies to more advanced flavors like Caramel Apple Cider and S’mores. The rotating menu ensures that there’s always something new and interesting coming out of Kristina’s ovens.
The first thing you notice upon encountering these cookies is the size. About 4-5″ in diameter, they’re roughly the size of a flattened softball. They’re perfectly for sharing amongst friends, your spouse, or coworkers… or you can embrace the cheat day and have one (or several) on your own.
Kravings generally keeps the flavors pretty simple, allowing that perfected cookie base to be the star.
Here are a few standouts I’ve had the pleasure of trying:
- Reese’s Pieces: This cookie is stuffed with peanut butter, creating a butter butter shelf in the middle, before it’s topped with a bevy of crunchy Reese’s Pieces. It’s a peanut butter lover’s dream.
- Chocolate Mint: The rich chocolate is contrasted with a cooling spearmint, offering freshness not often found in cookies.
- Snickerdoodle: Blended with just the right amount of warming cinnamon, this is the cookie every snickerdoodle wants to be when it grows up.
Red Velvet: The dough is lush and rich, and white chocolate chips mimic the cream cheese icing in this take on the classic cake.
Lemon White Chip: The tartness of the lemon balances out the sweet cookie base, as do hits of vanilla and butter from white chocolate chips.
Kravings also offers cookies for special occasions, such as a heart-shaped chocolate chip cookie lined with light, airy buttercream frosting for Valentine’s Day.
You can order the cookies of the month for pickup or delivery, or you can place custom order on Kravings’ website. You can also stop into Her Company, a boutique off 156th and Q, where Kravings regularly keeps cookies stocked for wholesale.
There are a lot of great cookies around Omaha of varying styles. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find options as thick, chewy, and nostalgic as those from Kravings.