When on the verge of a second global financial crisis, or maybe a deepening of The Great Second Depression that shall not be spoken of in such terms, all I want to think about are cookies, or as Tom Haverford from “Parks and Recreation” would call them, tiny-ass cakes.
But there’s so much to love about chocolate chip cookies specifically and so many different ways those tiny-ass cakes can be made. This came to light when Tate’s Baked Goods sent me some whole wheat chocolate chip cookies. A thin, dark brown disc with large chocolate chunks in it, the cookies Tate’s sent by appearances, seemed like the dried out over-cooked homemade cookies I’d try to make as a teenager. But eating them is a very different experience from gnawing on those charred pucks I used to make. Tate’s cookies are crispy and crumbly in an incredibly palatable way.
Let’s do a rundown of our favorite grocery store chocolate chip cookies and see which come out on top:
Chips Ahoy: These, our gossip columnist Dorothy Robinson says, “seem to be made with chimney ash.” But many would assert that they boast a strong dunkability due to that firmness. Plus, as our art director Benn Storey says, they’re not too sweet.
Soft Batch: Soft Batch cookies were super trendy in the 80s when they first came on the scene. Everyone loved microwaving them and pretending they came right out of the oven. However, that seems to have gotten old, because no one I asked listed them as a current favorite. Also, now we have refridgerated cookie dough, which if you can manage to get it on the cookie sheet without eating it raw, does a better job at being freshly baked.
Entenmann’s: These little discs were roundly the favorite of our office, with both Music Editor Pat Healy and Health Editor Meredith Engel naming them as a fave. Meredith says, “they are really soft, and they’re also small, so I don’t feel too bad about having a couple or a few.”
Honorable mentions go to Famous Amos and Peggy Lawton’s cookies. But which ones are your favorites?
