Baked and Wired: Brownies and Cookies

Posted by Edmund in Bakeries & Sweets, Washington, DC | 0 comments

1052 Thomas Jefferson Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20007-3813.

If you’re in the Georgetown area, and you haven’t heard about Baked and Wired, the little bohemian coffee shop/bakery just off of M Street, you’re missing out. Baked and Wired is probably the coolest, hippest bakery in the area, catering largely to a younger crowd. In a city known for its uptight formality, stiff suits, and overbearingly boring status quo-ism (trust me, DC is so boring at times that it justifies the creation of a new word), Baked and Wired shines likes a beacon with its modern, bohemian vibe. It is a perfect spot for the local college crowd to just relax and have a nice snack.

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It can, however, sometimes be a bit much, especially with the odd abstract designs. Expect to see oddities like blue mountainous globs jutting out of picture frames. Still, it does have some nice seating—loungy couches and chairs right in the middle of the store. Unfortunately, those are almost always taken, and you will more than likely need to sit at one of the very scarce, rinky-dink stools. If you do manage to somehow get a spot, it’s a great place to just hang out with friends.

Adding to that interesting bohemianism is a pretty solid line of desserts, with all the major American desserts represented, from cupcakes to brownies to cookies to sweet breads. A warning, though: Baked and Wired is perhaps the sweetest bakery around. Practically everything on the menu is packed to the brim with sugar, giving you a sugar high that will satisfy even the sweetest of sweet teeth and probably deter all the rest. I’ve always been a fan of balance flavors, but you won’t find it here.

That said, some treats fare much better than other. Baked and Wired is especially known for its gigantic cupcakes (they’re a feast in themselves), but I think that’s probably the wrong reason to go. I won’t go into any specifics today—I’m planning a separate review of the famous (or, rather, infamous) Baked and Wired Cupcakes—but they pale in comparison to some of the other treats, largely due to their overpowering, cloying sweetness.

In my book, it’s instead the cookies that shine. They’re moist and bursting with flavor, with some really interesting combos like oatmeal butterscotch and double chocolate brownie. They also tend to be much better balanced in terms of the sugar.  The cookies are, in fact, the only treats in the whole shop that I can say are consistently fantastic.

The brownies, too, are nice—that is, if you like your brownies incredibly gooey and pasty. I’m personally more a fan of more cakey brownies, but as far as gooey brownies go, you really can’t touch the Baked and Wired formula, overloaded with both intense chocolate and intense sugar. Beware, though, because they’re so dense that they go down like a rock. They’re practically a meal in themselves.

The biscotti are a bit more inconsistent, really depending on the flavor. I had a chocolate ginger biscotti that I thought was just dull, really lacking in the flavor department, and the whole thing just tasted kind of muddy. My almond biscotti, on the other hand, was right on. On the more positive side, the biscotti are hard and crunchy, as any good biscotti should be, though Baked and Wired tends to make theirs like a rock.

As for value, I’d say it’s certainly above average, but not amazing. Except for the cookies, the treats are typically huge, and you’re almost sure to leave filled. I’m still not a fan of paying over $3 for a cupcake, though, nor did I think the quality of the treats was really that much better than what you’d find in any other bakery.

Overall, then, Baked and Wired is a great place to go for a quick snack or a bohemian hangout, and it is perhaps the best place in all of DC to get a heavy, even maddening, sugar rush. It gets points for some interesting flavor combinations, especially in its brownies and bars, and I give them extra points for their cookies. Everything, however, is just too overdone in terms of sweetness, and so I recommend this place only to people with a big sweet tooth. And when I say big, I mean humungous.

What I had:

1. Jolt Brownie (Plain Jane Brownie with Cream Cheese Espresso Swirl): When it comes to brownies, I like mine more cakey than fudgy, but even I have to admit that this sucker hits the sweet spot, as it almost flawlessly combines the two. The reason is that Baked & Wired does a good job of layering the brownie into different sections—first a larger, lighter, cakey section, then a layer of the espresso swirl (which has a semi-creamy, grittier, semi-crumbly consistency), and finally a very thin layer of pure fudge on the bottom. Still, it very definitely falls on the fudgy side, since it integrates the fudge throughout the brownie, even into the cake layer. This helps to give the brownie a nice, even consistency throughout. Moreover, with that much fudge, it’s not surprising that this brownie is big on flavor. I was scared that it would be just another sugar fest, and while I do think the sugar is a bit much, it’s actually not cloying. That’s largely because the sugar is counterbalanced by an intense dark chocolate semi-bitterness, along with the subtle tang of the cream cheese. The one place where this brownie really misses, though, is in the espresso. In fact, I could barely taste it at all because the chocolate is just so intense that it almost completely overpowers everything else. 4.2/5.0. Really solid for a fudgy brownie, but didn’t give me the espresso jolt I was looking for.
2. Blazed and Confused (½ Cookie, ½ Plain Jane Brownie): I love the theory behind this concoction, but in practice it just fails. The brownie itself is very well-built: soft, fudgy brownie on top and a rather hard, crumbly cookie on the bottom. You’d expect a great texture, mixing the fudgy, crunchy, and chewy, with the harder cookie balancing out the sticky brownie. In practice, though, this is all brownie. The cookie more or less disappears underneath the barrage of fudgy sweetness. And as with all brownies at Baked and Wired, this one isn’t perfect. I actually liked the Jolt because even though it wasn’t very espresso-flavored, it seemed a bit more balanced. The Plain Jane Brownie, though, really hits you hard with an overly sweet, supremely chocolaty rush, unmoderated by the addition of any other flavors. And it’s very fudgy, to the point of sticking on your teeth. So not only do you lose the cookie’s more neutral flavor, but even the harder texture. Don’t be mistaken, this is a brownie, and a plain one at that. 3.0/5.0. It would have probably gotten an 3.5 for the brownie, but it loses points for a poorly executed concept.
3. Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookie: This is a great way to innovate a very traditional, somewhat boring flavor with some added crunch and flavor. The oat flavor is very pronounced, giving it a very natural, granola-like taste when combined with the baked cookie dough. But that oat flavor has a kick to it because of the inclusion of a whole bevy of butterscotch chips, which add a great crunch and sweetness. While an odd match, the two flavors really help to counterbalance each other, and neither dominates. I also love how chunky this cookie is (from the butterscotch). My one complaint is that the cookie was too hard when I had it, though when I’ve tried it before it has tended to be gooey, rich, and buttery. 4.0/5.0
4. Molasses Spice Cookie: This is another great treat, largely because of the same type of balance that made the oatmeal so good. Here the cookie is more compact, though thicker, and it has a much softer, airy, slightly crumbly, and chewy consistency (slightly like bubblegum), which I think suits this type of cookie well. It’s a cookie that starts out slow, since it doesn’t have much overt flavor or much sweetness to it. Pretty soon, though, you notice a subtle molasses smokiness that keeps on picking up until the cookie ends with a gingerbread-like spice. I like that the sugar is almost completely downplayed in favor of a more cinnamon, spicy flavor that really leaves your mouth feeling refreshed. Still, the flavor could be stronger, and I’d prefer some more denseness to the cookie (it’s very airy). 3.8. Bland at times, but overall very solid.
5. Chocolate Ginger Biscotti: I like the consistency of this biscotti. It’s hard as a rock, perhaps too much for the average person, but a good biscotti should have some hardness to it. It doesn’t fall or crumble apart, and the crunch is absolutely huge. I’m not too crazy about the flavor, though. I normally like the chocolate ginger combo, but there’s always the risk that the ginger will overpower the chocolate. Here, however, I find just the opposite problem—the ginger barely even comes through the chocolate. And that’s not to say the chocolate itself is very flavorful, because it’s not. It actually has somewhat of a dull, muddy taste, largely because it doesn’t mesh well with the hard, neutral cookie taste. I do like that chocolate chips and ginger chunks are included inside, though. The chips especially give a much nicer chocolate flavor. 1.8/5.0
6. Almond Biscotti, dipped in bittersweet chocolate: Whereas the last biscotti succeeded on feeling like a biscotti, this one succeeds where it matters most: actually tasting like one. Gone is the muddiness that the infusion of chocolate into the batter brought with it. What you get instead is a rather hard, but very easy-to-eat cookie, with an extreme crunch to it and a fantastic consistency that is reminiscent of rolled oats. In fact, the almonds have been nicely integrated into the batter, so that you constantly get the crunch and flavor of almonds infusing every bite. Moreover, since the biscotti is only dipped in chocolate—and in a thin layer at that—the chocolate doesn’t interfere with any of the natural nutty flavors, instead adding just the right amount of bitterness to give some contrast to the otherwise one-dimensional cookie. I also like the sweetness in general. It’s just enough that it satisfies a craving, but downplayed enough to let the almonds shine through. On the negative side, again the flavors can be one-dimensional, and the crunchy texture isn’t perfect. Still, the biscotti is quite impressive for an American bakery. 4.0/5.0.

What I’ve had at other times (Not formally evaluated. Recommendations in bold):

1. Peanut butter brownie: Good flavor. They use a lot of PB, so it’s a little cloying, which is why I’d choose a different flavor, but the brownie itself is very rich and has a nice consistency.
2. Tart cherry and pistachio biscotti: Pretty solid. This one was very interesting and had some good flavor behind it, especially with the mix of sour and nutty. Nothing too phenomenal though.
3. Chocolate Chip cookie: Awesome cookie. It’s moist, nicely gooey, and very soft, with an intense intense chocolate taste to top it all off. Probably one of the two best I’ve had in DC, though it’s not perfect.
4. Double chocolate brownie cookie—Again, moist, soft, gooey, and very chocolaty. Kind of overpriced, given how small it is. If you like gooey cookies, these are the ones to get, but it’s still not extraordinary.
5. Plain Jane Brownie: This is the typical brownie and really gives you a sense of the types of brownies that Baked and Wired makes. They’re all just dense blocks of chocolate paste—very, very rich, but actually not too sweet, which offsets the intensity of the chocolate (dark choc) flavor pretty well. Really, if you like gooey brownies, this is pretty good, though not the best. Still, the size, density, richness, and intense chocolatiness are offsetting for me—too much in one package. I like Firehook’s cakey brownies better.
6. Cookie sandwiches: Don’t get them—they don’t have any taste. Enough said.

Taste: 3.5/5.0
-          For the biscotti: 2.9/5.0
-          For the cookies: 4.0/5.0
-          For the brownies: 3.5/5.0
Ambience: 3.5/5.0
Overall Score, as a bakery: 3.5/5.0
Overall Score, as a café: 3.5/5.0. Good for a hang out spot, but nothing notable about the food.