Once upon a time there was a chef named David Chang. Chef Chang was a very ambitious chef. First he opened one restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, which specialized in crazy, real-deal ramen and overstuffed pork buns. Then he opened another restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar, which featured crazy, Korean ssam. Then he opened another restaurant, Momofuku Ko, which was known for being impossible to get in the door.

And then Chef Chang said, “Where’s my dessert?” and he hired mad pastry chef Christina Tosi to make crazy desserts for him at a place called Momofuku Milk Bar, next to Ssam Bar, and she did! Mad Chef Tosi made soft serve ice cream in all sorts of crazy flavors, like apple-and-cheddar and jelly donut, and she made crazy cookies, like blueberry & cream and corn, and pies, and cakes, and pastries, all of them crazy, crazy, crazy! Some of the things she made were so crazy that she had to trademark them so that no one could ever have the same crazy idea she did! Which is okay, because who else besides Mad Chef Tosi would ever think up such crazy things as cereal milk® (just like what is at the bottom of your bowl), or compost cookies™ (potato chips, pretzels, chocolate chips, and lots of other things), or crack pie™ (condensed butter filling in a buttery crust)?

And then Mad Chef Tosi made some crazy cakes, like banana cake and pistachio cake and chocolate malt cake. For a while, any person from anywhere in the land could come in for a slice of these crazy, delicious cakes, and life was sweet.

But then, Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi decided that cakes were only to be purchased whole, not in slices, and issued a decree: “No more cake slices!” The cake slices soon disappeared, banished forever, and people like me became sad, because a world without cake is no world to live in at all.

But Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi are not evil rulers, so they started experimenting with new, crazy ways of getting cake to the people. They soon began sending out crazy little bite-sized snacks named cake truffles: cake and frosting baked into one chocolate truffle-sized ball, rolled in more cake crumbs.

Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi sent these cake truffles out into all of the Momofukus, which by then had sprouted and multiplied all over New York City. Cake truffles went to Carroll Gardens and Williamsburg. They even went to non-Momofukus, like the Stumptown Coffee in the Ace Hotel.

But Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi made sure not to forget their roots, and they also sent cake truffles to the humble restaurant that started it all: Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is where I encountered the mint cookies n’ cream truffles.

How to describe a mint cookies n’ cream [cake] truffle? Imagine you had a minty Oreo. Not toothpaste minty or peppermint minty – just a nice, mild, spearmint. Now imagine instead of chemical “crème” inside the Oreo, you had an honest vanilla frosting. Then, imagine you took the Oreo, and you smashed it real good, until it turned into a gray dough, and then you rolled it into a ball, and the ball magically lightened and puffed up a tiny bit, until it seemed almost like… smushed cake. Then, you took your leftover minty Oreo crumbs, and you ran your ball through them so they had a bit of crumbly Oreo dust on them.

The ball is less dense than this, but still fudgy. The crumbs give it some crunch so it doesn’t completely stick to the roof of your mouth.

And there you have your mint cookies n’ cream truffle. You will take a bite, and then thank Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi for bringing these truffles across the land for you to purchase and snack on at will.

Momofukus
Multiple Locations in New York City