I've consistently visited Aachen since 2008 and I've consistently eaten printen since 2008. I have to say that Drouven printen isn't a favorite of mine. I think that their basic non-chocolate printen isn't very flavorful (I think not enough of an anise taste and not enough candied fruit) and that their chocolate printen is a little too fancy (jam or marzipan on top of the cookie and under the chocolate). I guess everyone acquires a preference for a certain printen taste and the Drouven taste isn't for me.
(Note - When I was here in the Summer of 2018 I conducted a blind printen tasting test of 7 different local printen cookies. We did the blind tasting twice (on different days). Four locals from Aachen and 2 from the USA were involved. We compared the basic printen cookie (no nuts, icing, or chocolate). Across the two blind tasting tests Moss and Lambertz consistently came out on top, with van den Daele a very close 3rd. Dreuven was of note - although people did not rate the basic Dreuven printen cookie highly, people very VERY much liked the Dreuven with icing (princess) or with nuts or chocolate (of course were not part of the tasting test but they were available in the room). Nobis was consistently in the middle. For the tasting test we unfortunately did not have Klein cookies available but everyone noted that they did very much like Klein. And of course, there were notable differences across the tasters. I myself KNOW that van den Daele is the best, but many people mistakenly preferred other shops. In the end, it was clear that each person has to try printen from many different stores to find their own favorite(s). That such a relatively large number of different printen stores have existed for so long also suggests stable between-person differences in printen preference.) read more
