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I didn't understand the allure of store-bought cookie dough until I had a toddler. It's fun to bake with a kid, but sometimes you just want fresh cookies without hauling out a five-pound bag of sugar and trying to keep Mama's Helper from spilling it everywhere. This year, I decided to see if I could fake my usual baking spree, with my one-year-old's assistance. Many not-even-vaguely-grueling batches of cookies later, here's a list of the five tastiest cookies you can make in moments. — Meredith Broussard
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600 lb. Gorillas Chocolate Chip Cookies - $4.99 for 18 oz
These spectacular chocolate chip cookies are not just the 600 lb. gorilla of cookies, they are the Platonic ideal of chocolate chip cookies. Crisp, buttery and made of all-natural ingredients, with a blend of dark semi-sweet chunks and milk chocolate chips, this cookie is perfectly bite-sized and couldn't be easier to make. Even the packaging is handy: the cookies come formed into individual dough balls, inside a recloseable box. The dough balls can be cooked in a toaster oven, which makes them convenient for late-night snacking. You may find it useful to keep some 600-lb dough in the freezer for social occasions when you want to seem like an impressive parent by showing up with warm "homemade" cookies. We also loved the oatmeal raisin cookies with white chocolate chunks.
Find stores on the 600 lb. website.
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Wholly Wholesome Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Dough - $4.49 for 11.25 oz
This cookie tastes like it's good for you, except that it's also sweet and buttery with undertones of fresh cinnamon. The oats give it a rough texture, and the raisins are plump and juicy. I like the list of real ingredients: raisins, organic evaporated cane juice, unsalted butter, rolled oats, wheat flour, eggs, molasses, and so on. My tasting panel also loved the Wholly Wholesome oatmeal cranberry orange cookie dough, with citrusy flavors. The price can be a bit steep: only nine cookies come in a package. But the cookies come in pre-formed rounds on a small tray. If you're trying to fake it for a bake sale, pat the cookies with your fingers to smush them about halfway through baking so they don't look perfectly round. Especially with the healthy-seeming oats, nobody will know you didn't bake 'em yourself.
Find stores at the Wholly Wholesome website.
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Wegmans Break & Bake Style Sugar Cookies - $2.59 per package
These cookies are like a weird science experiment: they come in a large sugar-studded rectangle, and you break them apart into little cubes at the perforated lines. Put the squares into the oven on a cookie sheet, and they turn into perfect circles. While I might ordinarily shy away from recommending break and bake cookies (the chemical preservatives and the perforations freak me out), any kid who knows his shapes will be delighted by the transformation from square to circle. We like this store-brand dough because it can also be treated like real sugar cookie dough: use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes, and roll out the extras into additional cookies. The taste is like a soft store-bought cookie, but not too sweet. The pearled sugar on the surface of the cookies adds a lot, so if you roll out the dough, try sprinkling some colored sugar on top.
Find stores at the Wegmans website.
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Wholly Wholesome Truly Natural Double Chocolate Chunk with Pecans - $4.49 for 11.25 oz
Chocoholics, please repsond: what's the only thing better than chocolate chip cookies? That's right. Chocolate chocolate-chip cookies. Add some pecans for taste and texture, and you're good to go. Rich and not too sweet, these are among the few pre-made chocolate cookies on the market that actually taste like chocolate, not chalky chocolate substitutes. The tasting panel also liked the Wholly Wholesome Truly Natural Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, though it's not quite as grandma-tasting as the 600 lb. Gorillas.
Find stores at the Wholly Wholesome website.
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Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies - $5.49 for 40 oz.
These cookies are sold in the traditional phallic tube or in a giant tub of cookie-dough goodness. For many of us, Nestle Toll House cookies taste like childhood -- sweet like candy, with a slightly artificial aftertaste. Nevertheless, they couldn't be more convenient. The texture is perfect (they scoop more easily than real dough), and they're delicious underbaked or overbaked. These taste like traditional, homemade "Toll House" cookies in the same way that Pizza Hut pizza tastes similar to real pizza: clearly artificial, in no way good for you, and a ton of fun.
Find stores at the Nestle website.
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