Eight Chocolate Chip Cookies. One Completely Unnecessary Taste Test.

Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite cookie.

Not one of my favorites.

My favorite.

Back in 2024, I thought I had found the chocolate chip cookie in Santa Claus, Indiana. It was my favorite. Case closed.

Then this year I tried a sourdough chocolate chip cookie that was even better.

Well, darn.

That planted the idea that someday I should sit down, try a bunch of recipes, and figure out which chocolate chip cookie really was the best.

“Someday” arrived a couple of weeks ago when TikTok did what TikTok does best and sent me down a rabbit hole.

I found Lily P. Crumbs’ chocolate chip cookie rankings, where she has taken on the completely reasonable task of baking and ranking chocolate chip cookie recipes from across the internet. I picked out a couple of contenders, including Butternut Bakery’s Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies, and started reading.

And that’s as far as it went.

Until a few days later.

That’s when I stumbled across a TikTok from Stableside Farmstand making a rather confident claim about her chocolate chip cookies:

Hers were the best.

Naturally, I went to the comments.

People asked some version of, “But how do you know yours are better than mine?”

Her response?

“They are better.”

Repeatedly.

I admired the confidence.

I also now needed answers.

Then another woman entered the comments claiming that her cookies were even better.

And suddenly this had become a situation.

Obviously, We Needed a Blind Taste Test

I found both recipes, but there was a problem: I absolutely did not need that many chocolate chip cookies sitting in my house.

Fortunately, we were headed to Mermet Springs in Metropolis, Illinois, for a weekend of scuba diving.

And scuba divers eat.

A lot.

The basic itinerary of a dive weekend is pretty simple:

Dive. Eat. Dive. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

I had test subjects.

So what began with two recipes somehow became eight.

Because apparently I don’t know when to stop.

Along with the two TikTok contenders, I added Butternut Bakery’s recipe from the larger online cookie ranking. Then I added Memaw’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, my mother-in-law’s recipe that quite a few of the people going on the trip already knew simply as “Memaw Cookies.”

Of course, no chocolate chip cookie challenge would be complete without the OG: the original Nestlé Toll House chocolate chip cookie.

I also included Sugar Spun Run’s chocolate chip cookie recipe, which I’d previously used for another cookie experiment. It isn’t personally my favorite, but that’s the point of asking other people.

I already know what I like.

And then I got ornery.

I added Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough.

There’s a reason.

Years ago, my dad entered a chili cook-off. Someone else dumped Hormel chili from a can into a Crock-Pot and entered it.

It won.

Apparently, the judges decided it tasted exactly like chili was supposed to taste.

I’ve never forgotten that.

So Pillsbury went into the competition.

And because I was already committed to chaos, contestant number eight was a package of Chewy Chips Ahoy.

The Highly Scientific Method

I baked.

And baked.

And baked some more.

Every recipe made at least a couple dozen cookies, which meant that by the time I was finished, I had what can only accurately be described as a buttload of chocolate chip cookies.

Then I packed them all up and hauled them roughly six hours across Missouri and into Illinois.

For science.

At Mermet, I labeled the cookies A through H so people wouldn’t know which recipe they were eating. I gave out a few hints about what was hiding among the choices but otherwise kept their identities under wraps.

An index card on the front provided a grid for voting, with each cookie receiving a score from:

1 – Yucky

to

5 – Yummy

Very technical terminology.

I wasn’t worried about whether people liked the cookies I’d baked. I followed the recipes. Everyone has different tastes, and that was exactly what I wanted to see.

Some people tried all of them. Some didn’t. Some cookies received more votes than others.

It was not exactly a peer-reviewed study.

But I had numbers.

And the Winner Is…

Well…

We had a three-way tie.

The original Nestlé Toll House cookie earned an average score of 4.0 out of 5.

Memaw Cookies: 4.0.

Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough: 4.0.

Now, before Pillsbury starts celebrating its stunning victory over the internet’s finest bakers, there’s an asterisk roughly the size of Illinois attached to that score.

It received one vote.

That vote was a four.

So technically…

Four.

Next came Butternut Bakery’s Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookie at 3.71, followed by a tie between Sugar Spun Run and the Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie from Stableside Farmstand that helped start this entire mess, both at 3.67.

The Five-Star Chocolate Chip Cookie—the recipe whose creator had entered the TikTok comments to announce that hers were even better—finished at 2.5.

TikTok brought a lot of confidence to this experiment.

My test subjects brought numbers.

And then there was Chips Ahoy.

Poor Chips Ahoy

Official score:

Zero.

But I need to be very clear about what that means.

Chips Ahoy did not receive a zero rating.

Nobody ate one.

Not. One. Person.

The moment the package was opened, that unmistakable Chips Ahoy smell escaped, my supposedly blind taste test ceased being particularly blind, and an entire weekend full of hungry scuba divers collectively decided they had standards.

I even bought the Chewy version because putting a crunchy packaged cookie up against seven soft cookies seemed unfair.

I tried to give Chips Ahoy a fighting chance.

They wanted no part of it.

Honestly, I respect it.

But Wait. I Had to Make the Damn Things.

The taste test answered one question, but while I was baking all of these cookies, I realized there was another part of “best” that mattered to me.

How much of a pain in the ass was the cookie to make?

Because taste obviously matters most.

But if two cookies taste equally good and one requires ingredients I already have, 15 minutes of mixing, and an oven while the other requires a trip to the store, browned butter, three different kinds of chocolate and an overnight stay in my refrigerator, I’m going to take that into consideration.

Some of these recipes let you decide you want cookies and then make cookies.

Others require a calendar.

So I went back and gave each of the homemade recipes an Ease of Making score from 1 to 5.

This part is entirely subjective. I considered whether the ingredients were things most people would reasonably have, whether I had to buy anything special, how complicated the process was, and whether the recipe required refrigerator or freezer time.

I also bake a lot, so my definition of a normally stocked pantry may be slightly questionable.

Nestlé Toll House — Ease: 5.0

There’s a reason this recipe has been around forever.

Flour, butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips.

I had everything.

Honestly, other than chocolate chips, most people who bake even occasionally probably have everything too.

Mix it together. Preheat the oven. Bake the cookies.

Done.

No browned butter. No chilling. No rearranging the refrigerator. No planning tomorrow’s cookie around today’s schedule.

5.0.

Memaw Cookies — Ease: 4.7

Memaw Cookies are also incredibly straightforward.

The one oddball ingredient is instant pudding mix.

For reasons I still don’t understand, finding a box of regular vanilla instant pudding that wasn’t sugar-free became more difficult than it had any right to be. Maybe everyone in southwest Missouri simultaneously decided to make pudding. Who knows.

The nice thing about the recipe is that the pudding flavor can be changed. I wanted vanilla this time because that’s what I remember Memaw using most often, although she also used cheesecake pudding.

Once you’ve acquired the apparently elusive box of pudding, the cookies themselves are easy.

I knocked off three-tenths of a point for making me hunt for pudding.

4.7.

Sugar Spun Run — Ease: 4.0

Ingredient-wise, Sugar Spun Run was easy peasy.

Nothing strange. Nothing difficult to find.

The recipe uses melted butter, though, which means the dough needs time in the refrigerator before baking.

That’s not a huge problem, but it does mean these aren’t quite an I want cookies right now cookie.

I also discovered that if the dough stays in the refrigerator too long, it gets rock hard. If I make these again, I think I’d portion the dough into balls before refrigerating it and save myself the trouble later.

Straightforward recipe.

Slightly less straightforward timing.

4.0.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies — Ease: 3.0

This is the Stableside Farmstand cookie.

The cookie that started this whole mess.

And this is where things began getting a little more involved.

The recipe calls for coffee. If you’re not a coffee drinker, you can substitute water, so that’s not a deal breaker.

It also calls for cane sugar, which I happened to have on hand but don’t normally keep around, and recommends Italian flour. I used regular all-purpose flour.

Then there are the chocolate chips.

Three kinds.

I had semisweet.

I had to buy milk chocolate and dark chocolate.

Then you have to make browned butter.

And then there’s approximately 12 hours of downtime.

I don’t remember leaving mine in the refrigerator for the full 12 hours, but I definitely remember it being in there.

Nothing about the recipe was impossible.

It was just… a lot for a chocolate chip cookie.

3.0.

Butternut Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies — Ease: 2.5

Oy.

First, I need to acknowledge something:

I forgot the cornstarch.

That’s on me. Not the recipe.

But even without my inability to read an ingredient list properly, this cookie required some commitment.

It called for European-style butter.

I actually keep European butter on hand, but I don’t think that’s normal-person behavior. It also used to be incredibly difficult to find where I live. For years, buying European butter meant finding it when I was in a bigger city. Thankfully, at least one variety has finally made its way into our local Walmart within the last several years.

The recipe also wanted dark brown sugar.

I didn’t have dark brown sugar.

I did, however, have molasses, so instead of buying dark brown sugar for one recipe, I made my own.

Again, I’m beginning to question whether I’m qualified to determine what constitutes a normal pantry.

Then there was vanilla bean paste, although vanilla extract could be substituted. I had both.

And then we got to the chocolate.

Good-quality dark chocolate wafers or chips.

Good-quality milk chocolate bar.

I had neither.

Back to the store.

Finally, the dough needed several hours in the refrigerator, with overnight being even better.

These cookies currently have a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 73 reviews on the Butternut Bakery website.

People clearly love them.

My scuba divers gave them a 3.71.

Again, I forgot the cornstarch.

But still…

Oy.

2.5.

Five-Star Chocolate Chip Cookies — Ease: 3.5

The Five-Star cookie was actually much less complicated from an ingredient standpoint.

The only thing I specifically had to buy was snack-sized Hershey’s chocolate bars, which then had to be chopped.

Fine.

The problem was the freezer.

The dough was supposed to go into the freezer.

I was making eight different kinds of cookies.

I did not have freezer space.

So these went into the very top of my refrigerator because that was the coldest available real estate I could offer them.

Was that exactly what the recipe told me to do?

No.

Did I have another freezer hidden somewhere?

Also no.

The actual recipe wasn’t especially difficult, so I can’t punish it too badly for my freezer being full.

3.5.

So Now Who Wins?

I still think taste should matter considerably more than convenience.

A cookie that is incredibly easy to make but tastes terrible is not a good cookie.

Congratulations on efficiently making disappointment.

So I weighted the original taste score at 75 percent and my Ease of Making score at 25 percent.

And that broke our tie.

The final homemade-cookie rankings became:

Place	Cookie	Taste	Ease	Overall
1	Nestlé Toll House	4.00	5.0	4.25
2	Memaw Cookies	4.00	4.7	4.18
3	Sugar Spun Run	3.67	4.0	3.75
4	Triple Chocolate Chip	3.67	3.0	3.50
5	Butternut Bakery Style	3.71	2.5	3.41
6	Five-Star Chocolate Chip Cookie	2.50	3.5	2.75

I left Pillsbury and Chips Ahoy out of the final combined ranking because rating them on ease would be ridiculous.

Pillsbury’s instructions are essentially open package, put dough on pan.

Chips Ahoy doesn’t even require the pan.

They were there to cause trouble, and they accomplished that.

But There Was Another Winner

The numbers now say Toll House won.

But the people still told a slightly different story.

Deb knew the Memaw Cookie almost immediately.

So did Jared.

Mark said it had been long enough since he’d had one of his mom’s cookies that he wasn’t sure he’d recognize it.

He did.

Addison didn’t recognize it immediately, which surprised me. But she did decide it was her favorite.

Then, at the end of the weekend, she took the remaining Memaw Cookies home with her.

I’m her mother, so I’m not sure it technically qualifies as stealing.

But she definitely claimed them.

And I think there’s something interesting about that.

Memaw’s recipe wasn’t developed to win an internet cookie competition. It doesn’t have a TikTok campaign behind it. Nobody is hanging out in comment sections confidently informing strangers that their cookies are inferior.

They’re just the cookies Mark’s mom made.

They’re familiar.

And even in a blind taste test surrounded by cookies with browned butter, expensive chocolate and ingredients I had to hunt down, people knew them.

Or, in Addison’s case, didn’t know them but wanted to take them home anyway.

That’s hard to put into a score.

So What Did I Actually Learn?

After all of that, I technically did find a winner.

Nestlé Toll House.

Seriously.

I went down a TikTok rabbit hole.

I read chocolate chip cookie rankings.

I bought multiple kinds of chocolate.

I bought Hershey bars specifically so I could chop them back up.

I browned butter.

I made dark brown sugar.

I refrigerated dough.

I attempted to find freezer space that did not exist.

I baked a buttload of chocolate chip cookies and drove them roughly six hours to Illinois.

And the winner was the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag.

Of course it was.

Does that mean Nestlé Toll House is the world’s best chocolate chip cookie?

No.

It means that out of these recipes, with these particular taste testers, on this particular weekend, and after taking into consideration both how the cookies tasted and how much nonsense was required to make them, Toll House came out on top.

And honestly, that’s useful information.

Sometimes I want to spend an afternoon browning butter, chopping chocolate, refrigerating dough and making a ridiculous cookie.

Sometimes I want to decide I want chocolate chip cookies and have chocolate chip cookies.

Apparently, there’s a reason people have been making the one on the back of the bag for all these years.

So have I finally discovered the world’s best chocolate chip cookie?

Nope.

Which unfortunately means I’m probably going to have to do this again.

For science.