While Colorado is home to many unique chocolate shops and bakeries, you usually know what you’re ordering. Even if you purchase something unusual, like wasabi ginger dark chocolate or goat cheese and crushed black pepper buttercream, the name will give you a hint as to what the ingredients are. If you visit the old mining town of Ouray, however, you can stop in Mouse’s Chocolates & Coffee for a more surprising kind of dessert: the Scrap Cookie.
Located at 520 Main Street, the shop is always full of locals craving delicious sweets and caffeine-filled coffees. While they have unique chocolate varieties, like bacon clusters with Chardonnay salt and coconut bark with pumpkin and sunflower, the most popular item on the menu is the Scrap Cookie. After making their chocolates for the day, the staff save the scraps and mix them with their family-invented homemade cookie batter. When guests come in and order the cookie, they won’t know what kind it is until they take a bite. My Scrap Cookie ended up containing all my favorite additions, like macadamia nuts, toffee, caramel and truffle pieces.
While ordering a Scrap Cookie is $2.50, you can also purchase two cookies and have Mouse’s make it into an ice cream sandwich for about $10. I was told by my canyoning guide that they won’t always do it. However, if you say a local told you about it, they will.