They call it Insomnia, but is it really insomnia that sends you on a midnight run for cookies with tons of chocolate chips? I believe the technical term is “the munchies.”
My favorite moment at Insomnia: the gratified look on the counter-workers’ faces, when they saw the look on my face, when I learned the cookies were served warm. Because clearly, they like to see their customers happy and really, what will make them happier than warm cookies, unless it’s warm cookies served with cold ice cream?
Another night, a worker politely agreed that there were too many choices for a stoned person. I counted 24 cookie flavors on the website, and that’s before you think about whether you want a Cookie’wich, which involves ice cream, or a Big’wich, which involves icing, or maybe a brownie, a blondie, a chocolate chunk blondie, or a brookie, which is a cookie on top of a brownie, or maybe a side tub of cream cheese or buttercream icing, recommended for dipping. There are vegan cookies and gluten-free cookies, pretty much indistinguishable from the normal cookies, a whole lot of sugar being the running throughline.
The easiest way is to order on the web so you’re not standing there with your mouth open holding up the line, and then go pick up your order. Or, at the Detroit location, you can have it delivered for $3.99 close to the Wayne State campus (Insomnia focuses on college students) or $5.99 further out. If you join CookieMagic™ for $9.99 a month, you get a free in-store cookie every day and free delivery.
Repeat buyers can download the app, and they’re always running specials. I took advantage of a deal: “buy 12 classic cookies for $25.25, get 6 free.” The workers thoughtfully placed the vegan ones in a separate box. Wouldn’t want to mix up my healthy cookies with my unhealthy cookies.
The offerings change, with “limited time only” banners spurring you not to FOMO. The deluxe cookies, which cost more, are often filled with something, like the “Banana Crepe,” banana-flavored dough mixed with chocolate chunks and stuffed with hazelnut spread, or Blueberry Cheesecake, blueberry dough mixed with cranberries and filled with sweetened cream cheese. This is clearly not a company that thinks gilding the lily is a bad thing,
The cookies are baked in the store from dough delivered by the parent company, a national chain. I’m not going to tell my readers that Insomnia makes the best cookies you ever ate. Mainly they are sweet. Sweet is as it should be, and it’s certainly true that many of the varieties are distinguishable one from the other. It’s not all chocolate chips, or chocolate chunks. Generally the cookies taste just as advertised: Double Chocolate Mint or White Chocolate Macadamia or, yes, Sugar. The chocolate chunks are melty. A few notes (yes, I took notes on cookies):
The Vegan Double Chocolate Chunk was deeply chocolate. The Vegan Birthday Cake, with sprinkles, tasted strongly of vanilla. Oatmeal Raisin was traditional, buttery, and tall. Peanut Butter Chip, one of my favorite cookies in civilian life, contains no peanuts per se but maybe some peanut butter chunks. The Double Chocolate Mint, a chocolate cookie with chocolate chips, is not as intensely minty as the Girl Scouts’ Thin Mint. The Blueberry Pancake has a harsh artificial taste, not surprisingly. White Chocolate Macadamia is the best of the non-chocolate side of the ledger. Lemon White Chocolate is mostly lemony and almost refreshing, a tart break from the unrelenting sugariness (but not really).
To take it up a notch, consider these combinations, as I did personally: A Big’wich composed of Cream Cheese Icing between a Peanut Butter Chip cookie and a Classic with M&Ms cookie. This is ridiculous on the face of it, but no more so than peach ice cream between a White Chocolate Macadamia and a Blueberry Cheesecake. I can testify that your brain and mouth can separate out the competing, riotous flavors to some degree, if you slow down enough to do so (the ice cream is melting and squeezing out between the cookies; eat these in Insomnia’s little courtyard, not in your car or, heaven forbid, trying to walk back to your dorm).
Or you can be abstemious and order ice cream only on top of the starch rather than in-between it, like Caramellionaire ice cream on a Chocolate Chunk Brookie. Note that that brookie is still a brownie plus a cookie, though, so you’ve still got three types of sweet competing for your attention. If it’s all too much, just order a tub of icing and a spoon.
Insomnia Cookies was launched in 2003 by University of Pennsylvania students. It now has stores all over, arriving in Detroit a year ago, with others in Ann Arbor, Rochester Hills, and Ypsilanti.
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