photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Hannah Moore, an employee at Dirty Dough cookie shop, displays a variety of the west Lawrence shop's menu items on Jan. 4, 2023.

A brownie swallows a chocolate chip cookie, and then I swallow both of them. Such a feat is not just possible in fever dreams any longer. It is a real deal at a new west Lawrence cookie shop.

Dirty Dough has been open several weeks in the shopping center at Bob Billings Parkway and Wakarusa Drive, and it indeed has on its menu the “Brookie.” It is described as a treat whose exterior is brownie dough, but whose interior is a chocolate chip cookie. For good measure, the whole thing is drizzled with caramel sauce.

Cookies with unique fillings are what Dirty Dough is all about.

“I think what makes us different is that our flavors and our surprises are more inside the cookie,” Hannah Moore, a manager at the Lawrence Dirty Dough, told me. “It is more of a surprise to have it melt in your mouth instead of just having all the crumbles on top.”

The shop, which is part of a fast-growing national chain, has six cookies that are always on its menu. In addition to the Brookie, the shop also features: a stuffed chocolate chip cookie, which is kind of a gooey version of a traditional chocolate chip cookie; a raspberry toaster tart that has kind of a Pop-Tart feel to it; the Reverse, which Moore described as a Reese’s peanut butter cup turned inside out; Cookies ‘N Cream, which features a cream filling, white chocolate chips and Oreo crumbles; and the Muscle, which packs 25 grams of protein into a single cookie, thanks to peanut butter chips and a filling made with protein-enhanced peanut butter nougat inside a brownie cookie.

But the shop also features weekly specials, consisting of special-recipe cookies that just make brief appearances on the menu. This week, one of those was called the Kitchen Sink, thanks to its long list of ingredients that include a brown sugar cookie with a pretzel, toffee, Oreo chunks, butterscotch chips, and white chocolate chips. (I did not get word on whether insulin is served on the side.)

If that doesn’t quite satisfy your sweet tooth (which I assume also has its own special filling at this point) you could have the Kitchen Sink or any of the cookie creations mixed with ice cream. Dirty Dough calls that a Dirty Scoop. That involves a layer of either vanilla or chocolate ice cream, a cookie mashed into the ice cream, and then another layer of ice cream. Or, you could have that same creation made basically in the form of a shake.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Kitchen Sink cookie is pictured at Lawrence’s Dirty Dough cookie shop on Jan. 4, 2024.

Moore said that business has been strong at the new shop, and it particularly has been popular with parents of young children. The cookies — many of them about $4 apiece, depending on how many you buy — are of a size that can easily be cut up so that they can be eaten over a the course of a day or two.

Moore said Dirty Dough believes that is one of its advantages over other cookie companies — its cookies stay fresh longer. The idea is that given that so many of the ingredients are inside the cookie — rather than crumbled on top of the cookie — the flavorful parts of the cookie don’t dry out as quickly. (I can’t attest to the chemistry of any of that. However, I have long believed a cookie should not be exposed to open air longer than 10 seconds, which is why I immediately store all cookies in a special container that is with me at all times, right above my belt buckle.)

Perhaps you have picked up on the idea that Dirty Dough is a competitor with Crumbl, the large national cookie chain that makes large, soft cookies that often are loaded with many ingredients that are crumbled atop the cookie base. However, I am not going to say the two companies are similar because that has proven to be a loaded statement. Until recently, the companies were involved in a federal lawsuit in Utah, where Crumbl is headquartered and where Dirty Dough has a number of shops.

Media outlets there took to calling the lawsuit the “Utah Cookie War.” Crumbl accused Dirty Dough and a smaller competitor of stealing some of its secrets and using cookie boxes and other marketing that was too similar to what Crumbl uses. Dirty Dough, in turn, seemed to have a lot of fun with the lawsuit. It installed billboards in Utah touting “cookies so good we were sued,” and also launched video commercials online spoofing lawyers driving around threatening to shut down the front yard cookie stands of innocent kids.

Apparently, though, the two sides decided enough fun had been had, as Utah media reported in October that the two companies reached an “amicable” settlement that involved the changing of some cookie box designs, among other details.

The suit seemingly did nothing to slow Dirty Dough’s growth plans. The company’s website lists 56 locations currently open — up from a reported 36 locations in October — and another 45 locations that are in the process of opening. In Kansas, the company has a store in Topeka, and one coming soon in Garden City, according to the company’s website.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Dirty Dough, 1540 Wakarusa Drive, is pictured on Jan. 4, 2024.

In other news from around town:

• Look for downtown Lawrence’s Ramen Bowls to have a new home next month. The restaurant, currently located at 918 Massachusetts St., has announced on its Facebook page that it will move to Ninth and New Hampshire in February. The noodle shop will occupy the space most recently filled by Gold Medal BBQ. If you are having a hard time picturing the space, it is on the ground floor of the Marriott hotel on the southeast corner of Ninth and New Hampshire.

In its Facebook post, the restaurant’s owners said they are looking forward to being in a larger space, which will allow for a larger menu and a full tropical and boba tea bar, among other additions.