The Great American Cookie-Off
During the Knaus Berry Farm season, I’m making dough for cinnamon rolls, cookies, brownies and bread all day long. Then I smell the fresh baked goodness fill the air as they are baking … Yes, I break down and eat some almost every day. Especially when we try a new item.
We spent several weeks working on a new recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies.
We would make some and I would bring them home for the whole family to critique. We reworked the recipe twice, so we had three different varieties of the cookie, and, of course, I had to bring some home every time.
As we were tasting the product everyone would comment on the cookies having this taste or that taste. It came to our attention that we don’t usually sit and make comments and comparisons about everything else we eat. That’s when we decided we should compare and critique other foods.
I decided to start with chocolate chip cookies.
We went to the grocery store and picked three name brand cookies (Famous Amos, Keebler, and Nabisco) and the store generic. I reminded everyone what flavor we were trying to pick out: a little vanilla, chocolate chips, and lots of sugar.
The family was pretty well in agreement, so I’m just going to share my ratings on a scale of 1 to 5:
Store generic - (0) Cookie was floury and not very sweet, not many chips and not really good chocolate flavor. Oh, yea, and the cookie was a little over done. Jewel wouldn’t eat these after a taste.
Famous Amos - (.5) Not a very sweet cookie, the chips were better, but not enough. Jewel wouldn’t eat these either.
Keebler - (1) A little better cookie and good chips. Jewel ate these, although she clearly preferred…
Nabisco (”Chips Ahoy”) - (4.5) You could smell the difference when you opened the bag. Very good cookie and chocolatey chocolate chips. Jewel really enjoyed these.
I really didn’t expect that big of a difference in the name brand products.
…And I have to add that the Knaus Berry Farm cookies have them all beat hands down - even if I do say so myself! 
God bless you all …
Wolf
A full-time RV family shares their adventures - homeschooling two kids, running a home business on the road, life in an RV, interesting travel and dining experiences, you name it...
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(fried hot dogs! Mmmm)
June 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
well, duh! of course “chips ahoy” would be the best of the bunch. my favourite with ice cold milk for dunking. as i recall those were the only chocolate chip cookies i would buy back when i bought such things.
hmmmm… next you should critique sandwich cookies. i know tigre would have an opinion on which are the bestest.