Chefs Camari Mick, Laurie Ellen Pellicano, and Umber Ahmad are used to thinking outside the box when it comes to cooking; however, today on Epicurious we’ve asked them to give us their unfiltered, honest reviews of some prominent chocolate chip cookie doughs and mixes found on supermarket shelves. Which cookies pack the most bang for your budget, and which should you avoid at all costs?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00We've gathered three professional chefs
00:02to blind taste test every chocolate chip cookie dough
00:04and mix we could get our hands on
00:06to see which ones meet their standards.
00:13Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Lovers Cookie Dough.
00:16Right off the bat, I could tell that these are the square bakes.
00:19Definitely a break-and-bake cookie.
00:21You've got that nice sort of tan,
00:23been in the sun a little bit kind of a color which I love.
00:26My idea of a perfect chocolate chip cookie
00:30is a crisp exterior with a very chewy, warm, gooey interior.
00:35It shatters a little bit when you bite into it
00:37and then your teeth just kind of sink after that.
00:39I would love to have real chocolate.
00:41You want the chocolate to be able to stand on its own.
00:44Perfect chocolate chip cookie should be
00:46at least 40% chocolate.
00:48The right amount of sweet,
00:49but also the right amount of salty.
00:51You want to have balance.
00:53So this cookie has a bit of a crisp exterior, which is nice.
00:56The inside's a little drier than I would like.
00:58The ratio of flour to butter seems a little bit too high for me,
01:03so it's coming off a little dry and I could kind of taste the flour.
01:07This cookie also, to me, tastes like it has a lot of white sugar in it
01:10and not as much brown sugar.
01:12If you have less brown sugar and less molasses,
01:14you, by definition, are going to have less moisture.
01:16I'm not so sure I love the chocolate.
01:18I don't really want to eat a ton of it on my own.
01:21I don't really want to eat a ton of it on its own.
01:23When you get a morsel, it's, like, extra sweet.
01:26Mass-produced chocolate chips tend to have more emulsifiers and additives.
01:31If you can take a chocolate chip out of a cookie and crumble it like this,
01:34it tends to not necessarily be the highest quality chocolate.
01:37I'm pretty sure it's a Toll House cookie.
01:39Oh, OK.
01:41Nestle Toll House.
01:43I was right!
01:45This, for a long time, was considered the gold standard
01:48of chocolate chip cookie in America.
01:49This one says it has chunks.
01:51They are liars!
01:53There's not one chunk in here.
01:56False advertising.
01:57I'm emailing.
02:01King Arthur Baking Company.
02:03Outrageous chocolate chip mix.
02:05It's a little blonde, so I think it's got some bleached white flour in there.
02:10Ooh, kind of dry.
02:12It kind of has, like, a pliable crispy outside.
02:15Lots of chocolate chips in here.
02:17This one actually does have a chunk in it.
02:22No.
02:23Immediately no.
02:24Very dry.
02:25Different types of flour have different levels of protein.
02:28And protein is what makes things chewy or make things tough.
02:32So a higher protein flour is going to give you
02:34something that probably tastes a little bit more like this,
02:36which is a little bit tougher.
02:37It doesn't have a ton of color.
02:40And the fact that it's kind of hard indicates that they used white sugar.
02:44There's, like, a white note to it.
02:46White sugar, white flour.
02:48It doesn't have a lot of complexity.
02:51The chocolate is really sweet.
02:52Chocolate that has more sugar tends to have less cocoa in it.
02:56This feels like more sweet, lower-percentage chocolate.
02:59Oh, King Arthur.
03:00Oh!
03:02Yikes, I talked some s**t.
03:04They also bake their cookies at a much higher temperature
03:06than we would normally do.
03:08And I wonder if that also kind of lends to the drying out
03:11and becoming crispy faster.
03:12I am a huge fan of King Arthur.
03:15Love King Arthur flour.
03:16Phenomenal flour.
03:18But not in chocolate chip cookies.
03:22Trader Joe's Super Chocolaty Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough.
03:26First impressions of this cookie,
03:28it's starting to look a little bit more like what I want in a cookie.
03:32Listen to that.
03:34Chocolate chips on the bottom.
03:35We see chocolate chunks on the top.
03:37A lot more chew inside, which I love.
03:41The brown sugar makes it, like, a chewier that's going to stay.
03:45It's sort of like caramel.
03:46It also has a little hint of salt, which I like.
03:48The flavors are sticking around a little bit longer in my mouth.
03:52The chocolate quality in this is definitely
03:54better than the Toll House.
03:55The chocolate's a little bit darker.
03:57Even though it's a, like, room-temperature cookie,
04:00it is still able to melt.
04:02Trader Joe's.
04:04Trader Joe's.
04:06Look at you, Trader Joe's.
04:08It's unbleached enriched flour.
04:10So if it's unbleached, there's a natural aging process
04:13where air ages, bleaches, and gets the wheat
04:17to where it needs to be flour.
04:19Bleached flour has an accelerated process
04:21because additives are used to get a lighter color
04:25and a little bit of a lighter texture.
04:27Baking powder, baking soda, which is also a good thing
04:30to have baking powder and baking soda.
04:32Baking powder poofs.
04:33Baking soda spreads.
04:35Overall, not bad.
04:36I would say, so far, this one might be leading the pack.
04:40Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough.
04:43It's super round, suspiciously round.
04:46This one's really flat.
04:48It's almost like a Florentine.
04:49It's like so you can kind of, like, see through it.
04:51The chips almost, like, poke out of it
04:54because it spreads so much.
04:56Probably has too much wet ingredients in it,
04:59so it's not holding together as well.
05:01It looks like it wants to crisp, but it's still soft.
05:04Balance is off in this one.
05:05Wrong amount of chocolate, a little too wet,
05:08not crispy enough.
05:10A bit more flour added to it
05:11would kind of help it hold together.
05:13It's quite sweet, which also makes sense
05:16when you get a cookie this thin.
05:17It probably has a little more white sugar in it.
05:19This is okay.
05:20This cookie has a very nostalgic taste for me,
05:24which makes me think that it might be white fat guy.
05:28What is it?
05:29I don't know.
05:30I think that it might be white fat guy.
05:33What is that?
05:34Pillsbury?
05:35Pillsbury.
05:36Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
05:39Look at this.
05:39Safe to eat raw.
05:41Wow, they really marketed it to people.
05:43Maybe that's why the cookie looks like that
05:44because there might not be eggs in here.
05:47Palm oil.
05:48Palm oil alarms me.
05:49It's definitely more affordable than butter,
05:52and if you're producing as much cookie dough
05:54as the Doughboy's producing,
05:56I would imagine that that's a huge consideration.
05:59There's also very little egg in here.
06:01The eggs act as a binder in the cookie dough,
06:04so seeing that this cookie is super flat,
06:07I understand why.
06:11Dolly Parton's Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.
06:14There actually is a lot of chocolate chips.
06:16You see these brown edging on the side?
06:20This is telling me that it's either all white sugar,
06:25tons of butter, which, look at my hands,
06:28I'm right, it's tons of butter.
06:32Definitely crisp on the edges.
06:34Nice chew in the middle, too.
06:35Has a little bit more of the brown sugar,
06:38which I actually like.
06:39For me, the cookie's too soft,
06:40so if there's more brown sugar, there's more molasses.
06:43I think it tipped the scales a little bit too much.
06:44There's definitely some salt in here.
06:47It's not giving that overly manufactured cookie taste,
06:52which is rather surprising.
06:54Some of the ingredients feel like they're of better quality.
06:57The chocolate's not bad.
06:58I'm impressed.
06:59This is a store-bought cookie.
07:01I would guess that it's a Duncan Hines kind of a box mix.
07:04Oh, it is a box mix.
07:05Ah, Dolly Parton!
07:07It's giving me a little Easy Bake Oven, almost,
07:10you know, in a positive way.
07:12Brown sugar, yeah, and that's interesting.
07:14It's the second ingredient listed.
07:20Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.
07:23Whoa, hi, sad little guy.
07:26This one's really thin.
07:28Lot of spread.
07:30Every bite deserves a chocolate chip.
07:32It's all just scrunched together.
07:34It feels a little bit dry,
07:36just when something snaps like that.
07:38It kind of just bends.
07:40Very sad.
07:41It's weak.
07:42This cookie is weak.
07:45Sometimes when you put a lot of vanilla into a cookie,
07:48it starts to taste a little bit more like cake.
07:50This tastes like cake.
07:51It is really quite sweet.
07:52Pretty bland.
07:53Having a mix of flours,
07:55I like to use a mix of AP flour and bread flour,
07:58helps give it a little bit more structure
08:00so you don't have that flat landing cookie.
08:03The finer and the thinner at room temperature a fat is,
08:07the finer and thinner your cookie's gonna be.
08:10That really affects your cookie a lot.
08:12It kind of tastes like I'm eating a packet of white sugar
08:14that's been bound together with some egg.
08:16Doesn't have a lot of depth of taste,
08:18which to me says it's probably a lot of white sugar.
08:21She's not chewy, she's not crispy,
08:23she doesn't have any color.
08:24She's Betty Crocker.
08:26Oh.
08:27Ha ha!
08:28She's Betty Crocker.
08:30Yeah.
08:31Yeah.
08:31I definitely like this one the least so far.
08:37Jacques Tourette's Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.
08:40Ooh.
08:41She's a big girl.
08:43Whoa!
08:45This is what I'm talking about!
08:47Look at this!
08:49This is the size you want your chocolate chip cookie.
08:51And it's got this good kind of rippling on the surface.
08:54It usually means that there's
08:55a good chewy texture on the inside.
08:57What's interesting is if you see the back of the cookie,
09:00you can see it's like massive pools of chocolate.
09:03Typically with chocolate chips,
09:05there are emulsifiers and stabilizers in the chocolate chip
09:08that it's gonna keep the shape of the chocolate chip
09:10even when it's baked at a high temperature.
09:12When you see something like this,
09:13this sort of like ooey gooey situation,
09:15it typically means that it's not a standard chocolate chip.
09:18F-E-V-E-S.
09:20F-E-V-E-S.
09:21And those are like almost like discs.
09:23That's what you want in a chocolate chip cookie!
09:26Mm!
09:27It's very good.
09:28That is 80% chocolate.
09:29There's so much chocolate inside that it is chewy
09:32because you're biting into soft chocolate.
09:34So I almost can't tell what the dough is like.
09:37I actually don't want any dough.
09:39It's actually really good chocolate.
09:40That shininess in your chocolate
09:42says that it's got the cocoa butter in it.
09:44There definitely is such a thing as too much chocolate.
09:46If I wanted a chocolate bar, I would buy a chocolate bar.
09:48Oh my gosh.
09:49Oh my gosh.
09:50It's Dr. S.
09:51The number one ingredient in the mix is chocolate.
09:54Look at those chocolate chunks.
09:56Yes.
09:59Capello's Gluten and Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.
10:02What a contrast.
10:04We went from like, oh, to like, oh.
10:06This one's very small.
10:07This looks gluten-free.
10:08And then I would put money on it too
10:11that it might be vegan.
10:12Smells like it's got maple syrup
10:14or an alternative sweetener.
10:16A lot of vegan recipes don't use white sugar.
10:20The way it's manufactured, it gets ground down with bone.
10:23Ooh, it's super like soft.
10:26Man down.
10:28I'd say this is the nicest way possible.
10:30This tastes healthy.
10:31Kind of tastes like a granola bar.
10:33Maybe there's some oat flour or almond meal.
10:36It's heavy on the salt, which I appreciate.
10:39It's not as sweet.
10:40It's pretty dry.
10:41The chocolate chips are quite lovely.
10:43It's some of the better chocolate.
10:45It's a little bitter, probably to help kind of mask
10:48a little bit of what the other ingredients are
10:50that are in there.
10:51It's not my favorite.
10:54Ooh.
10:54Capello's Grain-Free Vegan Paleo Gluten-Free.
10:58Good luck.
10:59That's a lot of free.
11:00There's some almond flour and maple syrup,
11:02which I got immediately on the nose.
11:05It says that they split the almond
11:08using the protein fiber and healthy fats and almonds
11:10to create cookie dough, unlike any other.
11:12They're not wrong.
11:13Into it, yeah.
11:14Would I buy it?
11:15No, I'm not gluten-free.
11:20Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.
11:23This is a cute cookie, but is it chocolate chip?
11:26How do we know it's chocolate chip?
11:28All the chocolate chips are hidden,
11:29which means the dough is probably pretty thick.
11:32The outside is pretty, like, crisp.
11:35Inside is definitely soft.
11:37It's a super chewy cookie.
11:39Come on, this is really sad.
11:41If I got this, I would write a strong email.
11:44This is probably the least chocolatey.
11:48Yo.
11:49Hmm, this is a good cookie.
11:51Oh my God, the texture is really delightful.
11:53I love the flavor.
11:55You can definitely taste the vanilla in it.
11:57This has a lot of vanilla in it.
11:59Tastes like birthday cake.
12:00The cookie itself is doing its job,
12:02but there is not enough chocolate in this cookie.
12:05Is this Ghirardelli?
12:07Because of the chips, they're big chips.
12:08That's Ghirardelli's thing.
12:10Ah.
12:11Ghirardelli.
12:12Oh, and it's a dark chocolate chip.
12:13I expect more from you.
12:15There's not a lot of chocolate in here.
12:18The chocolate is a pretty good chocolate.
12:19They make a lot of different types of chocolate,
12:21and in here, it seems like
12:24there's only semi-sweet chocolate chips,
12:27which is kind of disappointing.
12:29Bro, there's no chocolate chips in here.
12:35Bob's Red Mill gluten-free chocolate chip cookie mix.
12:39Okay, we have another tiny cookie.
12:41It's a little crispier on the edges.
12:45Crispy on the outside.
12:46Maybe gonna be a little dry.
12:49This cookie is very sweet,
12:51and it tastes like it has almond in it.
12:53So I'm gonna say that this one might be gluten-free too.
12:55There's a residue or a powdery something
12:57that's coming off of my fingers.
12:58Not super chewy.
13:00Not the kind of crunch you want
13:01because it's a crunch that sort of feels like dry.
13:04Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob Mills.
13:09Yeah, oh yeah, I said it, Bob Red Mills.
13:13It's Bob's Red Mill, and it is gluten-free.
13:15Oh, it's rice flour.
13:16That's what that is.
13:17They do such a good job of masking that,
13:20and the chocolate chips are probably like decent quality
13:23because they don't have a ton of extra ingredients to them.
13:26Okay for a gluten-free.
13:30Whole Foods 365 chocolate chip cookie mix.
13:33Definitely looks like it has a lot of white sugar in it.
13:36Has kind of like that sheen.
13:37We're in the not-so-many-chips portion
13:40of the tasting experience.
13:43Oh, I love that chocolate hole.
13:45That's always cute.
13:48This is super chewy.
13:49Almost kind of like a raw taste to it.
13:51I'm trying to like figure out what that flavor is.
13:53It's a little chemical-y.
13:54It has like a saltiness on the back end
13:56that's not delicious.
13:58There's a very unnatural flavor in there.
14:01I don't taste any vanilla in here, and I miss it.
14:04She's a basic quality chocolate,
14:07and then there's not enough chocolate,
14:08so the texture's completely off.
14:10Yeah.
14:11It's not chewy.
14:11It's not crunchy.
14:12It's kind of just like there.
14:14And I don't want to eat anymore.
14:16This would be a cookie I wouldn't remember,
14:18and that makes me sad.
14:19I hate this Whole Foods. 365.
14:21Whole Foods brand.
14:23Not loving this one.
14:24One of the ingredients in here is a natural flavor.
14:27It's usually produced in the lab.
14:29The fact that they are saying to add water is blasphemy.
14:33If you need a liquid in your cookie dough,
14:35why wouldn't you add milk, cream?
14:38Why wouldn't you add something like
14:39a little bit more flavorful other than water?
14:43No.
14:47Sweet Lauren's Gluten and Dairy-Free
14:49Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough.
14:51This looks like a play cookie.
14:52Like a little cookie for your little doll.
14:55And it is a little gray.
14:57I'm not loving the color.
14:59It just looks so anemic.
15:01It also has a sandier texture
15:03than some of the other ones have had.
15:06The flavor's not as bad as the color.
15:09There's a tiny shell of a crisp outside
15:11and a totally different texture inside.
15:13It's pretty soft, but not in the most pleasant way.
15:17I like this chocolate.
15:18Gives it a nice balance of bittersweetness.
15:20This definitely seems like a chopped chocolate
15:22that gets tossed in, which is what I really look for
15:25and appreciate in a cookie.
15:27I say Sweet Lauren's?
15:28Maybe Sweet Lauren's.
15:30Sweet Lauren's.
15:31Look at that.
15:32She's using a flour blend
15:35that has oat, tapioca, and potato.
15:37Oat was maybe the thing that has a little bit
15:39of that texture to it.
15:45Great value.
15:46Ready to bake cookie dough.
15:48This is the cutest little cookie.
15:51It smells really chocolatey.
15:52It also kind of smells like butter,
15:54but that might be more like butter flavor,
15:57like at a movie theater.
15:59This is Chips Ahoy.
16:00Mm.
16:02That butter flavor hangs around a little bit.
16:04Definitely something in there that's not the most pleasant.
16:08This is too crunchy for my taste.
16:11It's a little crisp and a little chew.
16:13There's some good browning.
16:15It definitely has a nice sort of sugary,
16:18caramelized taste to it.
16:19I would imagine there's brown sugar
16:21and or molasses in this cookie, which I like.
16:23It has a lot of chocolate.
16:25I like the ratio.
16:26The chocolate tastes pretty good.
16:27It's a little sweet.
16:29It's hitting my teeth in a way that's a little painful.
16:32Am I right?
16:33Great value.
16:34Walmart.
16:35It's not a bad cookie.
16:36It's really soft.
16:37I'm noticing that in here,
16:39which means that it has like a lot of additional ingredients
16:42keeping it nice and tender straight from the refrigerator
16:45because it's also cold.
16:47I will say there's a lot more ingredients in this
16:49than a lot of the others, so that's not great.
16:52Ascorbic acid added as a dough conditioner.
16:55It's for more mass-produced things
16:57that are passing through machines.
16:59That's an ingredient that's keeping it kind of tender.
17:02Can definitely impart an unpleasant flavor.
17:08Krusty's triple chocolate chunk.
17:11So this little guy has not that many chocolate chips in it.
17:14It's kind of got this netting on the top
17:18from the sugar, maybe a little too much.
17:21I wouldn't say that there's a crispiness
17:22to the outside at all.
17:25Texture's not great.
17:27It's soft.
17:28I think it might have like cake flour
17:30or another kind of soft white flour.
17:33There's not the same kind of density or chewiness
17:36that you want from a chocolate chip cookie.
17:38Barely even taste the chocolate,
17:39which doesn't seem to be like the best quality.
17:42This one tastes a little unbalanced to me.
17:44Kind of hits you with sugar
17:46and everything else sort of follows after.
17:48Lots of vanilla.
17:49It's more vanilla than it is chocolate.
17:51More personality.
17:52Oh, Krusty's. I've heard of these.
17:54It wasn't Krusty.
17:56They're more well-known for their biscuits.
17:59Three kinds of chocolate, it says.
18:01Triple.
18:02I'm not gonna say that that was something that I noticed.
18:10Stonewall Kitchen, classic chocolate chip cookie mix.
18:13Okay, last cookie.
18:16This cookie smells really good.
18:17You can see the sugar crystals still.
18:19And it is pretty dry.
18:21So definitely a little bit of resistance
18:22when I broke it open.
18:23So there's like a hint of that crunchy crispiness
18:26on the outside.
18:30It tastes very generic.
18:31Not a lot of complexity.
18:33It's a really, really dry cookie.
18:35You can see there's a lot of air pockets inside
18:37and air is the enemy of pastry.
18:39Since it's so dry, do you want a glass of milk?
18:41Ooh, maybe.
18:42This kind of cookie might be like a good dipping cookie.
18:44This is perfect for dipping.
18:48The milk helps a little.
18:50It makes it better.
18:51And the milk, perfect.
18:52Outside of the milk, needs milk.
18:54The chocolate itself is pretty good,
18:57but it doesn't matter how good the chocolate is
18:57if what's enrobing it is just dry
19:00and a little bit lacking in personality.
19:03Stonewall Kitchen.
19:04I think they do jams, kind of nicer jams and things.
19:07So this one's trying to be kind of a nicer cookie,
19:10but I'm not as convinced.
19:12I'm sorry.
19:13They have the least amount of ingredients.
19:17Mixes have less preservatives than the pre-made doughs
19:21because, I mean, once you add liquid to any dry ingredient,
19:25everything's gonna start to break down.
19:27I would highly recommend make them the day before,
19:31the night before, and let them age
19:33so you have that chance for everything to be hydrated.
19:37Now let's see which cookies our chefs
19:39like the most and the least.
19:41My favorite cookie today was Jacques Torres.
19:44It's the closest to the ideal cookie that I had today.
19:47It is nice and big with a crispy exterior
19:50and a nice, soft middle.
19:52It has the best quality chocolate in it.
19:55My favorite cookie today was the Pillsbury Log of Dough.
19:58Just stood the test of time,
20:00and I think memories and food are so inextricably linked.
20:04My least favorite cookie today was the Whole Foods 365.
20:08It had an unpleasant smell and a lingering taste
20:12that I did not enjoy.
20:14I would rather have the paleo vegan cookie.
20:16That little hockey puck from the woods,
20:18whatever that was.
20:19Capellas.
20:20I mean, King Arthur and Stonewall,
20:21I'm bummed about those two.
20:23The lesson here today, kids,
20:25is that there are some good cookies,
20:27there are some bad cookies,
20:28there are some tough cookies.
20:29Finding your perfect one is maybe an endless search.