If you'll indulge the Robin cosplay a moment?
Look past the spelling of the name. Former law firm employee turned baker Abigail Mattingly is known online as Bourbon Bae, so it's natural that she'd lean into her longstanding nickname and turn her love of cookies into the concept Bae's Baekery. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, "Look to the cookie."
Bae's Baekery is more than just cookies. Mattingly turns out custom cakes, cookies, cookie cakes, and choux au craquelin pastry puffs from her charming storefront at 1164 S Brook St, just a block or so down from Old Louisville's Toonerville Deli, that are baked fresh daily, and when the bakery is out of puffs, they're gone for the day, so you'll want to get there early. (I've yet to get there early enough for a puff, but a recent obsession with Great British Bake-Off means I'll keep trying.)
The cookies themselves rotate based on season and the whim of the baker. There are always a good selection of store favorites on the permanent menu joined by revolving flavors. On a sunny Sunday morning, there were over 10 varieties of cookie and brownie available, all of which look as good as they sound.
Bae and company lean into stoneriffic levels of excess, as the cookies and cream brownie has Oreo cookies liberally included in the final product along with a white chocolate Hershey's cookies and cream cream and a layer of chocolate ganache; the classic brownie is a soft, fudgy, chewy delight, and the Munchies brownie (topped with potato chips) is an unexpected sweet-salty treat. The Bedrocker cookie is Flinstone's cereal-forward, with cereal on the outside of the cookie and Fruity Pebble filling on the inside, along with white chocolate chips. One of my wife's favorite cookies is the pantry, which has salted caramel, pretzels, chocolate chips, and a whole bunch of other stuff inside that I can't remember, because the cookie was eaten too fast.
Did I mention that excess was a theme?
If you buy five, the sixth treat is on the house. If you have a sweet tooth, you'll probably buy five, which runs roughly $25. Don't be mistaken, these cookies are so big you'll gladly share them and still feel satisfied by the amount of cookie or brownie you're getting (I have two treats saved in my freezer for a rainy day). Think of a bigger version of Levain Bakery's world famous cookies, but with more excess. Even the no-frills options, like a standard brownie and a huge, soft chocolate chip cookie, feel like elevated versions of those ideas executed to perfection.
The "plain" cookie cake, two inches thick of cookie and buttercream icing, is the best version of a cookie cake I've ever eaten. It's both crispy on the bottom and soft in the middle, chewy and toothsome. The buttercream is thick and fluffy, but not overly sweet; it's just sweet enough to know that you've eaten a dessert, but not cloying. It's also beautifully, lovingly piped, if you can keep it out of your mouth long enough to admire it.
I never set foot in Bae's Baekery hungry, because that's just a death sentence for any sense of restraint. One or two cookies is plenty, but you'll want to try them all. That just gives you an excuse to come back, time and time again, in a Sisyphean effort to get one of those puffs fresh from Bae's oven. Or, you can message them on Instagram and ask politely for them to hold one or two back for you, but where's the fun in that?
89/100
Thanks for such a thorough review, Ron. I need to head out that way.