Day 259 - Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

If you have read any reviews on this blog previously, you know DAVID LIKES TO EAT.  Specifically, he likes DESSERTS.  He loves him some sweets – cakes, pies, ice cream…  And that includes COOKIES!  Poor guy, I do not bake cookies for him nearrrly often enough.  But every once in a while I grab a pack of these refrigerated cookie dough cookies that you plop in the oven, bake, and pretend like you made them from scratch.  I usually buy the “big name” brands – Pillsbury, Tollhouse, etc.  I have seen this one at Trader Joe’s before but have never gotten it.  Recently, I went for it!

Here is the package - find it in the dairy section by the butter

And I was disappointed…  After baking and tasting these I can easily say that I prefer the name brand versions. 

See - the dough is BROWN instead of the normal off-white

Right from the get go these were different – they are much more BROWN than the other kinds.  David thinks maybe the dough itself has some chocolate/cocoa in it, not just the chips.  We baked these for longer than the package told us for crunchy cookies to but they were still doughy in the middle.  They taste BLAND…  There is no “crunch factor” at all.  They are not exciting at all.  Not even satisfying as a cookie really. 

David munching a cookie - the man loves desserts

David says – they are tasty, but perhaps a little over sweet.  It is disappointing that they are still a little doughy in the middle even though we added an extra 5 or 6 minutes in the oven.  I think if we cooked them a littttle bit longer they might be crunchy on the outside and still chewy in the middle.  I still prefer the non-chocolatized standard Tollhouse cookie.  I would give this a 4. 

(I QUESTIONED HIS SCORE – A 4???  He was not happy with this cookie and he still gave it a 4 (which to me is a high score!)??  He said, “Well, still it’s a COOKIE!  How bad can it be???”.  Hahahaha!  Oh David!)

$3.49 for 16 cookies

For me, my normal order of preference for chocolate chip cookies is:

1.        A freshly baked homemade (or nice bakery made) cookie

2.       A freshly baked store bought dough cookie

3.       Premade, prepackaged store bought cookies

HOWEVER, in this instance, I would prefer even premade, prepackaged store bought cookies over the Trader Joe’s Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough.  I would much rather eat TJ’s Crispy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (which got a great review on day 213of this blog    http://traderjoes365.blogspot.com/2015/08/day-214-crispy-oatmeal-chocolate-chip.html ) than these. 

It has been 2 days since we made them and there are 8 left...  I ate 1.  That means David has eaten 7 cookies in two days.  That may sound like a lot to you, but trust me, if he liked them there would be fewer left.

And if you need further proof that these are not great, we made them 2 nights ago and there are still a lot left….  If David TRULY liked them, there would only be 2 remaining at this point…  He agreed to lower his rating to a 3.5 (though he scoffed and insisted that, basically, all cookies are good…).  I would give these a 2.25.  The rating below averages our 2 scores.

Price – $3.49

Rating - 3

Day 130 - Way More Chocolate Chips Cookies

We picked up this little tub (16 oz) of mini chocolate chip cookies to munch on during a 13 hour road trip (that turned into a 15 hour road trip, no fault of the cookies…).   We hadn’t had them before.

Little plastic tub of little cookies

From the product name, Way More Chocolate Chips Cookies, it is apparent that the main thrust of this particular sweet is number of chocolate chips per square millimeter (cuz they are tiny…) of cookie.  And the chocolate chips in the cookies taste good, I will give them that.

But let me just say, there is more to chocolate chip cookies than CHIPS.  There is also, as the name implies, the COOKIE to consider.  And it is the cookie where these little puppies fall short. 

I like chocolate chip cookies, but the cookie part has to be good.  Sadly, these cookies taste fake-y – sort of like Chips Ahoy.  The TEXTURE of them is much better than blecky ol’ Chips Ahoy – they are not hard and they do not crumble.  But there is no buttery goodness to be found here.  L

One cookie with an apple, so you can see how petite the cookies are.  Very cute.

So these get pretty high marks for the chips – chocolatey and tasty.  And the size is convenient – tiny little mouthfuls of dessert.  But the cookie brings the score way down.  Even David, who will pretty much eat any cookie you put in front of him, had to agree that the cookie part needs improving.

At our Trader Joe's these are in the frozen food section, on the cookie shelf above the frozen stuff

Price - $3.99

Rating – 3.25

Day 115 - Brownie Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies seemed to have a LOT going for them – first off, the name itself starts with BROWNIE, that’s a good sign.  Then CHOCOLATE CHIPS, hello, those are tasaty!  And wait a minute – WALNUTS, TOO?  Stop the goodness before you overload me!   There were a few varieties in the same sweet, down home’y” looking packaging and they actually took up a bit of prime real estate on the shelves.   I figured we might have hit a homerun with this one!  I mean, who doesn’t like a good cookie? 

Don't they look delicious from the packaging?

Maybe that’s the problem – this is not a good cookie.  Turns out, these cookies are bleck.  The ingredient list swears otherwise, but they taste really ARTIFICIAL.  The sugar in them does not feel all the way dissolved, either, so there is a grainy quality.  And David felt they were undercooked.  (I felt they were UNDERWHELMING…)

We do not take returning products to Trader Joe’s lightly.  Seriously, we do NOT return things very often.  But we each ate one of these and then said, “Nah, we do not need these in our lives.  They are NOT good”.  After returning them, we later found one of the cookies at home that David had taken a bite out of and left on a plate not finished.  He THREW IT AWAY rather than eat it.  If THAT doesn’t tell you something, nothing will.  Because NOTHING will get between David and a good cookie!!!

$4.29 is nothing to sneeze at - we took them back

When we returned these, the nice guy working at Customer Service suggested we TASTE the bag of cookies that we were exchanging these yucky ones for before buying them.  The replacement ones were in the same cute packaging but were called Sutter’s Formula – peanut butter cookies with milk chocolate chunks.  I thought for suuuuure they would be better than the Brownie Chocolate Chip ones!!

Same price, still yucky

David was worried before we even opened the package and tasted these....

I was wrong again.  And boy was I glad the Trader Joe’s guy recommended we taste them before buying, because in the end we just said, “No thank you!  We will just stick to the big pile of stuff already in our cart,”.   So, although David and I each only ate part of one Sutter’s Formula Cookie, this will be their only mention in this year long blog.  I don’t feel as if I can give them a complete review on their own, or a score of their own, since we didn’t even purchase the bag and take it out of the store with us.

The score below is based only on the Brownie Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Price – $4.29

Rating – 2.25