Creams: Workin’ On The Night Brownie

Brownie Basics

Creams, a restaurant which does only dessert, almost exclusively does non-brownie desserts. Almost exclusively. I have the exception here.

Brownie Backstory

Not that I’m planning my evenings around brownies, or anything.

But originally I was gonna go for a takeaway dinner from a restaurant that included a brownie dessert option. Then, relatively last minute, I learned about a leaving dinner for a colleague at a Thai restaurant. Delicious! Thai restaurants tend not to serve brownies, though.

So I had a tasty Thai dinner (lots of chicken), and then came back to my hotel, and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to order a brownie from Creams. See, Creams only does sweet things. I’d never come here for a full dinner, and rarely get the opportunity to come here at all to be honest. Maybe once for another colleague’s birthday lunch? But if I’m honest I feel like that was more of a joke than a serious proposition. Halfway through writing this post I remembered that I also ordered from Creams on Pancake Day this year. I hadn’t had any pancakes all day, so I ordered some white chocolate crepes from Creams for dinner. They were okay.

I think Creams is reasonably well known, though when I first mentioned it to Blog Friend (my new designation for the friend who told me to create this blog) she was all like “what?” and “is this some dirty thing?” and “what?” Now she knows, though. Now she knows!

When I opened the bag to get this brownie out I was unsure what I was looking at, if I’m honest. As you can hopefully see from the picture, it’s odd-shaped and odd-looking for a brownie. What you can’t see is the addition of whipped cream, which I chose out of the three options (ice cream, custard, whipped cream) for accompaniments on the menu, but rest assured I added it to the brownie before I ate it and assigned the below points.

Brownie Points

Taste: Quite nice, not too sweet, the chocolate is a bit strange but enjoyable. The whipped cream goes well with it. 7/10

Texture: Honestly surprising and disappointing. This is very dense and chewy and takes some serious effort to get a spoon through. I think it might go a lot softer if it were microwaved, but then, it was advertised as being ‘delicious hot or cold’ so that shouldn’t be necessary. 3/10

Presentation: Again, takeaway, but at a time when everyone else is using paper and recyclable packaging it’s disappointing that this came sitting in a sad little single-use plastic box. It doesn’t look great out of the packaging either. 1/5

Value: £6.45. Deliveroo maayyyybe inflate the price somewhat? I’ve certainly seen evidence of this before. Okay, but that means, roughly standard price for a restaurant brownie, yet I’ve got something that doesn’t really seem like a brownie, more like ‘we couldn’t think of anything better to call this’. It was disappointing and not very enjoyable to eat. 3/10

Fudge Factor: With my quick maffs I can calculate that this is currently about to fall into the ‘Poor Brownies’ category. Good, because that’s about where it belongs, being something that tastes good but doesn’t really work as a brownie. -1/5

Scores for Bores: 13

Should I Buy And Eat This Brownie?

No, and to be honest, I’m not sure if Creams really want you to. This brownie seems like an afterthought, like they filled out their dessert schtick and then realised there was an obvious brownie-shaped hole, but no-one had any enthusiasm to actually fix it. By all means go to Creams for dessert, but get something else.

Closing Thoughts

So, the chicken at this Thai place was a little bit funny. I don’t think it was undercooked exactly, but it was certainly less cooked than I’m used to or than I would cook it at home. I’ve had the same thing at this restaurant before (though I forgot until now, admittedly). I’ve also previously experienced this when, for example, cooking ready-made chicken dishes in the oven. The chicken is clearly not raw, and it’s not pink or running pink, but the texture feels like it’s not fully done. So this makes me wonder slightly if I’m always overcooking my chicken slightly, or if I’m occasionally eating undercooked chicken and it’s just not undercooked enough to really make my risk of salmonella or whatever high enough that I’ve ever got ill from it? Hard to know. I’m probably not going to change how I personally cook chicken, though…