Moon Rocks Bakery
These round cookies are out of this world. The MoonRock bakery has a very American origin story. It starts with a passionate mom. She loved to cook and worked her way through culinary school to explore her craft and to better her family’s life. She was dissatisfied with the cookies in the current baking world and this sparked a curiosity leading to the creation of the Moon Rock cookie. This isn’t your toll house chocolate chip, the Moon Rock cookie is less sweet, denser and very flavorful. Like lots of other great business ideas Moon Rocks had to take a back seat to raising a family. A generation later Mama Moon Rock’s dream lives on with her daughter and a wonderful little bakery in Hamden and a recently opened satellite shop located downtown New Haven.
The debut Moon Rock was the Maple Chocolate chip which is very good, but their many flavor options really make this shop worth visiting. Because a Moon Rock isn’t as sweet as other cookies, they make for a fantastic partner for a beverage, a hot tea, coffee, a pint of beer or hard cider, or some milk if you’re desperate.
A while back, when I visited Moon Rocks for the first time the star of the show for my wife and I was the chocolate orange cookie. This time around there were some others that were awesome too, the cannoli cookie was particularly good. A soft almost anginette like cookie with a mild almond flavor, chocolate chips, and granulated and powdered sugar on top. I wish I got more of these. The lime coconut and pina colada cookies were big hits too. The PB&J cookie is also worth a shout out, a little jam flavor in with a peanut butter base.
When I visited the shop most recently I had my two children (2 and 4 years old) with me, which was really a bit of a gamble but I went for it. The woman behind the counter couldn’t have been more friendly or helpful with engaging with my kids as well as talking about which cookies would be good for a beer pairing. There is a giant teddy bear who lives in the corner of the shop that my kids were in love with, and the samples they shared kept them happy too.
This is Teddy, “If those cookies were real they would spill” my daughters thought as we were leaving
This is a bakery full of cookies ready to be paired with beer and its location close to the merritt parkway puts it in line for grabbing some cookies before a visit to many breweries, counterweight, New England brewing co, cliffside, or front porch. Don’t let too much time go by without having a few of these little guys in your life.
If you like pina coladas and eating cookies in the rain... then I would question your judgement. No one wants rain soaked cookies, get it together.
