Milk Dessert Bar – Memphis Flyer

When the Apple personal assistant Siri is asked the question, “what is zero divided by zero,” she responds with the answer: “Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends.” — Wikipedia entry on Cookie Monster

There’s almost no problem that a cookie can’t solve. Hungry? How ‘bout a chocolate chip cookie? Depressed? Oatmeal raisin will cheer you right up. Tired? A protein-packed cookie will put pep in your step.

Memphis has plenty of great cookies, from the standard to the sublime, sprinkled all about town. Go grab you a dozen or two.

Did we miss your favorite? That’s how the cookie crumbles. But let us know in the comments.

And, now, in no particular order … the best 11 cookies in Memphis.

Oatmeal Cream Pie

A crowd pleaser, this cookie includes two perfect oatmeal cookies crushing on some super-sweet buttercream icing. It’s a take on Little Debbie’s oatmeal cream pie. From Muddy’s, which knows a thing or two about sweets. For your sweetest tooth.

Muddy’s Bake Shop, 5101 Sanderlin (683-8844)

Marranitos from La Espiga

You, a porch, temps in the 60s, a steaming cup of coffee, a marranito from La Espiga on Summer. This cookie, sweetened with molasses, has long been an obsession of ours. Will do for breakfast or an afternoon snack.

La Espiga, 3967 Summer (454-9220)

Butter Cookies

We could sing the praises of this cookie all day long — buttery and so rich as to knock you to your knees. Bring a tray of Makeda’s butter cookies to any event and you’ll be welcomed with open arms. Their peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies are excellent, too.

Makeda’s, 488 2nd (295-0901)

Lemon Blueberry Sugar Cookie

Large and bold. This cookie is no ordinary sugar cookie. This one has zing. The bite of the lemon is tempered by the sweet of the blueberry. It’s a beautiful thing and is available at Dessert Therapy, a relatively new sweets shop in East Memphis.

Dessert Therapy, 6645 Poplar, Carrefour Kirby Shopping Plaza (567-8837)

Peanut Butter

About as close to a Platonic ideal of a cookie as one can get. Crisp bottom, fluffy center — salty and peanut buttery. Terrific. From Lucy J. Bakery in the Crosstown Concourse. They pay their workers a living wage, which makes this cookie all the sweeter.

Lucy J Bakery, 1350 Concourse (257-9206)

Macarons

Pretty and delicate — in both taste and appearance. These dainties are for Memphis’ best ladies and gentlemen, mane. A real treat from 17 Berkshire.

17 Berkshire, 2094 Trimble Place (729-7916)

— Susan Ellis

Acorn Cookies

Nostalgia lovers might remember the home-made “acorn” cookies at the old Seessel’s grocery stores. They were acorn-shaped.cookies with raspberry filling dipped in chocolate with sprinkles. Milk Dessert Bar owner Sharon Cohn re-created the cookies from memory. As one who worked at Seessel’s for three years, I can say Cohn did a good job. They evoke those great days at Seessel’s, when children were given free ladyfingers when they passed by the store’s bakery with their parents.

Milk Dessert Bar, 1789 Kirby Parkway No. 10 (730-0893)

Gingerbread Men

Kay Bakery sells its gingerbread men all year ‘round, but the cookies are more popular during Christmas, says Queo Bautista, one of the owners. That’s when they sell “10 or 12 dozen daily,” he says. They still decorate them the way they were decorated back in the 1950s and they still use the same cookie cutters, he says.

Sugar Cookies

The sugar cookies in Halloween shapes of a ghost, pumpkins and a black cat with an arched back at Kay Bakery evoke Halloweens past, particularly for Baby Boomers. And, like the gingerbread men, these are the made from the same cookie cutters as the ones made decades ago.

Kay Bakery, 667 Avon (767-0780)

Butter Cookies

You might think of a butter cookie as something shaped like a daisy or just a thin beige cookie, but the butter cookies at Frost Bake Shop are thick, white cookies with yellow rivulets. If you’re into texture along with great taste, these are for you.

Frost, 394 Grove Park, Laurelwood Shopping Center (682-4545)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Maybe it’s because they’re rectangle and small instead of big and round in addition to tasting great, but whatever it is the chocolate chip cookies at Ricki’s Cookie Corner & Bakery are addictive. It’s hard to stop eating them. Owner Ricki Krupp says her chocolate chip cookies are made of flour, sugar, eggs, and canola oil, but she puts her personal touch in each cookie. Krupp says she took a basic recipe and over the years tweaked it. She now sells 4,000 of her chocolate chip cookies a week.

Ricki’s Cookie Corner, 5068 Park Avenue (866-2447)

— Michael Donahue

I’ve always liked sweets,” says Sharon Cohn, owner of the newly open Milk Dessert Bar in Germantown. She’s particularly fanatic about ice cream, she says, often making time during her travels to taste that city’s local offerings. And, yes, she’s been to Milk Bar in New York, the famed bakery operated under the Momofuku umbrella and headed by Christina Tosi. But, Cohn insists, the two places aren’t so similar. “I admire Christina Tosi,” she says. “She’s a pastry chef; I don’t claim to be.”

Instead, she describes her style as “down-home.” Her lace cookies have always been crowd-pleasers, and she’s also known for her lemon squares. But, it’s when this former hairdresser lets her imagination go wild that things at the Milk Dessert Bar go over-the-top.

Let’s start with the Unicorn Colossal. It’s a milkshake made with seven scoops of pink-dyed vanilla ice cream and dressed with cotton candy, rock candy, and sprinkles. “It’s not as complicated as it looks,” we’re told.

Shall we move on to the Milk Vortex, a combo of cereal and vanilla ice cream? Next up is the flight of cookie doughs, which may include dark chocolate pretzel, confetti, peanut butter, and s’mores.

There’s banana cream pie and chocolate coconut cake, blue cakes with wave patterns, cereal milk (it is what it sounds like), and cereal by the bowl. Two cookies and a carton of milk can be had for $4.50. And you can get a plain old scoop of vanilla, if you feel like it.

Milk Dessert Bar is off Kirby Parkway near the Kroger and Sekisui. Cohn says she’s had her eye on the space for a while. What she pictured was a place to hang out, where phones would be off and conversations would be had. There are board games (Candy Land, among them, naturally) and magazines and books. The decor consists of cool old funky pieces set against pretty blue-and-white tile.

It’s an ice cream candy land at the new Milk Dessert Bar in Germantown.

Cohn says her approach is “Let’s dream of something.” She recently is putting that mantra into action by signing up for a master’s degree in sculpting. “If I can do this,” she says, “I can do anything.”

Milk Dessert Bar is open Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Milk Dessert Bar, 1789 Kirby Parkway, 730-0893, milkdessertbar.com

Corey Smith is a lifelong Memphian whose first job was selling Icees at Libertyland, so he knows a thing or two about offering up just the thing to counter a boiling hot day.

His new store, S&B Treats, opened in early July at Park Place Center. It serves liquid nitrogen ice cream.

Liquid nitrogen is added to an ice cream base and freezes at -320 degrees. This method keeps the ice crystals small, which makes for a creamier ice cream. Plus, it’s pretty cool to watch it being made.

Smith recently retired from the Memphis Police Department. He opened S&B for his daughters, Serenity and Brook, the “S” and the “B.”

S&B is mainly a build-your-own place. Begin with a base of either vanilla or chocolate and select two toppings — Butterfingers, pretzels, Fruit Loops, Vanilla Wafers, peaches, apples, and on and on.

They also offer a few signature treats like Strawberry Dream — with strawberry ice cream and sauce and shortcake topped with strawberries and whipped cream. Oreo Explosion is Oreos, ice cream, and chocolate sauce. A favorite is the Chocolate Cake with warmed chocolate sauce topped with ice cream and a tiny piece of cake.

Also on the menu is Philadelphia water ice, candy apples, and cupcakes.

Smith says of his time at Libertyland’s Revolution Icee, “There was no better training.” Likewise, he hopes to pay it forward by hiring his staff from area high schools. “They’re picking things up. It teaches them a craft,” he says.

S&B Treats, 1315 Ridgeway, 207-3048

Jerry’s Sno Cones owner David Acklin says he’s seen some familiar faces at the new space in Cordova. But maybe not as many. He’s taken to standing on Germantown Parkway with a sign.

But much is familiar at the new store. The shouting pink paint on the boxy building, the garage doors, the wall to write down your greatest hopes, the Wedding Supreme, of course.

The spotted polar bear is MIA, though Acklin says he tracked one down. It was too pricey.

The menu’s just about the same, though there are some additions, like Ghost Busters (marshmallow mixed with Toxic Waste) and Mystery (all the top vanilla flavors mixed together).

Jerry’s Sno Cones, 1601 Bonnie Lane