Chocolate-chip cookies

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Chocolate-chip cookies
What will it be? Crunchy or chewy? Out of the package
or fresh from a fancy shop? We tested all types.
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a good many
yea". th,
packaged
chocolate-chip
:::::::: cookie served as a sort of
confectionary poker chip
that enlivened the lunchbox or provided a
mildly calorific fix after school. Those
were cookies for the masses, not particularly expensive and not particularly
voluptuous. As a youngster's belly-buster
or as decor for a brown-bag lunch, however, they sold nicely.
People who wanted a softer, sweeter,
more chocolaty treat baked their own,
most likely following the recipe immortalized on the Nestle chocolate-chip package. That cookie was first devised by a
woman named Ruth Wakefield in 1931,
when she chopped a Nestle candy bar into
some cookie dough. That original cookie
perhaps also qua1ifies as the first "gourmet" chocolate-chip cookie.
Today, the gourmet cookie-whether
homemade, served up at a specialized
cookie boutique, or fresh-baked at the
supermarket-commands most of the
attention and much of the money to be
made in cookies. Wally Amos, literally
now a Famous Amos, may have been the
first to spot the possibilities of designer
baked goods. His cookies, initially
brought to market about 10 years ago,
are certainly among the most conspicuous of the rich new wares. These days,
they're sold both in Famous Amos specialty shops and in supermarkets.
But competitors have come crowding
in. There's Unknown Jerome. There are
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Mrs. Fields and David's, whose specialty
cookies are retailed directly from minibakery boutiques. There are cookie
bakeries being built into supermarkets.
And there's a rapidly filling roster of
other specialty cookie companies: The
Original Great American Cookie Co.,
It all began at the Toll House in J93J.
Cooky Wooky, Le Dernier Chip, and so
on. Even individual bake shops are joining
the trendy parade, often with twists of
their own. New York's Sweet Victory, for
instance, is marketing chocolate-chip
cookies touted as lower than most in
calories, cholesterol, and fat.
Curiously, the rise of the specialized
cookie boutique and its rich fare (indeed,
a trend toward all sorts of premiumpriced sweets) coincides with a heightened concern for fitness and nutrition. Food
Do-it-yourself Duncan Hines mix topped the Ratings, with
specialty-chain Mrs. Fiilds dose behind. Darid's
and Famous AmOS didn't fare quite as w""--
magazines report that desserts and nutrition are their readers' two favorite topics. People are eating fewer desserts
than before-but when they do indulge,
they apparently go whole-hog.
Some deep thinkers see a lesson in all
this. They trace the popularity of gustatory splurges to an era of high prices and
diminishing expectations. The rich dessert, then, is the Yuppie's consolation in a
world of contracting opportunities. Fifty
cents or so may be a fancy price for a
single cookie, but it's still a pretty smallcaliber extravagance. And you can afford
to indulge your waistline if you don't do it
too often. Still, at those prices it's evident that the fancy cookie is a grown-up's
morsel, not a kid's ·snack.
Such currents have not escaped the
attention of mass cookie marketers. Nor
has the success of many pricey haute
cuisine cookie brands. The dominance of
the leading mass bakers-Nabisco,
Keebler, and Sunshine-has come under
attack by two come-latelies in the cookie
business, Procter & Gamble and FritoLay. Both newcomers sell supermarket
versions of the boutique chocolate-chip
cookie: packaged, but as rich and chewy
as skill and economics allow.
Frito-Lay entered the cookie market
when it purchased Grandma's, a regional
food outfit. Of the 24 items in Grandma's
line, seven are chocolate-chip cookies in
one form or another. Procter & Gamble's
entries in the cookie wars are readymade and bake-'em-yourself cookies sold
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under the Duncan Hines label. Nabisco-,
for its part, has retaliated with its own
moist and chewy entries-Almost Home
- and Chewy Chips Ahoy.
As the bakers jockey for position, shoppers face a lot of choices. Should it be a
whole package of cookies for 69 cents, or
Plain, the cookies enl. the lunchbox.
a single cookie for 50 cents? Do the mass
bakers' new "chewy" entries provide
anything like boutique-cookie quality?
And just how good are the products of
those specialty cookie shops?
CU decided to find out. Of the 140-odd
varieties of chocolate-chip cookies we
found on supermarket shelves, we selected more than two dozen popular brands
for testing and tasting. We also bought
several cookie mixes. And we evaluated
four boutique or fresh-baked varieties:
Mrs. Fields, Grand Union, David's, and
Famous Amos.
But first, we had to find a recipe to test
them all against.
A movable feast
A slog through a stack of cookbooks
turned up no outstanding recipes, as we
discovered when we tried them out. Not
even the classic recipe on the back of the
Nestle chocolate-chip package produced
outstanding results: We had two bakers
try it repeatedly and got different, not
quite satisfactory, results each time.
bought cookies, some still oven-warm,
were scored on the spot.
We then modified the Nestle recipe.
We tinkered and tasted, feeding the
results to staffers ar1d sensory consultants and soliciting their reactions. Mter
much trial and error, we found a satisfactory combination of baking times, temperatures, and mixing procedures. At
that point, our taste consultants agreed
that the cookie merited an excellent rating across the board. We dubbed our test
standard The Practically Perfect Cookie;
the recipe is on page 72.
Our Practically Perfect Cookie provides an intense jolt of chocolate aroma
and flavor, with just a hint of vanilla and
the tastes and smells of milk and butter.
The chips have the moderate "cocoa
bitterness" typical of true chocolate,
combined with come-hither tenderness.
They melt with silky smoothness. The
cookie smacks moderately of sweetness
and caramel, with traces of salt, vanilla,
and dairy flavors. It provides a double
texture-a crisp edge, with a moderately
firm, chewy, center-and leaves a faint
residual mouthcoating after each bite.
In a series of tastings, our sensory
consultants compared the commercial
products with our standard cookie. Typically, the taste experts worked in a lab.
But testing the boutique cookies required
a special effort. Those cookies are usually
the product of on-the-spot baking, the
spot being a specialty shop or a special
corner of a supermarket. Several of the
companies are fiercely protective of their
product's freshness and assure customers that they will sell no cookie after its
time.
Since that time is reportedly as short
as two hoUrs, we faced a special problem:
how to sample the cookies as close to
their time of baking as possible while
maintaining our anonymity. We ended up
loading a station wagon with scoresheets,
pencils, clipboards, water containers,
cups, napkins, and our freshly baked
cookies-and setting off on a tasting
safari to shopping malls near CU. Newly
The agony and the ecstasy
Three brands were judged standouts in
'our quest for excellence: the bake-ityourself Duncan Hines mix, the Mrs.
Fields boutique cookies, and the storebaked Grand Union cookies. While even
those didn't match CU's own cookie in
every attribute, they did come very
close. And they excelled in the most
important Qualities: total chocolate impact and chip texture.
Two other boutique brands, David's
and Famous Amos, shared the excellent
chip textures of the top-rated three-and
their excellent baked flavor as well. They
even offered something extra in dairy
flavor and aroma. But those two fell down
in the impact of their chocolate. That's
perhaps of particular interest with the
David's cookies, with their highly touted
cargo of bittersweet chocolate chunks.
About two-thirds of the other brands
were downrated for a lack of caramel and
baked flavors. The Grandma's, for
Fancy, the, are a grown-up's indulgence.
instance, advertises that "old-fashioned
baked-at-home taste" but ours had
almost no baked flavor. They were also
very slightly bitter and artificial-tasting.
Several others styled "homemade" also
lacked a baked flavor.
Fanq meets plain: Nabisco caters to the taste for chewy,
moist cooIries with Almost Home line. But our tasters pre
the company's plainer Chips AllOy a slight" higher rating.
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70
FEBRUARY 1985
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Worse
Chocolate-chip cookies
Listed in order of estimated
overall sensory quality, based
primarily on strength of chocolate flavor and aroma, cookie
and chip texture, and freedom
from sensory defects. Prices
are averages paid for the sizes
noted.
Product
Product
Duncan Hines
(mix}
ItJrs.FieIfIs
(boutiquel
Grand Union
(boutique}
Darifl's
(boutique}
$1 .52/18
8¢ '/2
3:1
'f8/to
0 0
0
F,O,U
9 .00/~
22
2
0 0 0 0
F,O,W
5.95/16
37
l'/to
1.74/12
15
8f,o
e e
e e
e 'e
e e
e e
e e
e e
e e
oe
oe
0 a
1.67/12
14
'/2
0 0
1.59/13
12 1/2
0 0
3.00/7
Befty Crocker
Bil Batcb (mix}
2.89/28
43
3/tO
.,
10.;
'12
Duncan Hines
Pefllleridle Farm 1.06/5
21
'/to
'/to
Famous Amos
2.14/7
31
3/tO
£1It.....n,,'s
Nabisco
Chips Ahoy
Grand....'s
RidJ '. CItewy
Nabisco Chewy
Chips Ahoy
Keebler
Chips DelII"e
Nabisco
Almost Home
1.75/12
15
'/10
1.62/12
N~
e
F,O,U
4.95/16
Famous Amos
(boutique}
Cllips '" Ifore
0 0 0 0
14
1.69/13
13
'1.97/14
14 '/to
1.69/12
14
'/to
'/to
mPrices for mixes include cost of added ingredients.
III Price is for 20 cookies.
0 "'0
0 0
e e
e 0
0 0
0 0
oe
oe
0 0
Sunshine
Chiparoos
Keebler
Sott Batch
Pillsbury
(slice & bake}
13
8f,o
0 0
1.79/16
12
'/to
0
Archway Ice Box . 1.28/10
13 , 8/tO
0
Archway
1.59/16
10
'/to
~
lIotheI"s
1.96/18
11
'1'0 ~ ~ 0
F;a,U
Keebler
Rich 'n Chips
1.69/13
13
8/tO
P,U
Busy Baker
Country Oren
Chip Ifates
1.09/11'1.1
10 . '1.1
Kjeldsens
5.12/178/e 29
.• A,F,O,W
A,F,O,X
M,P,X
L,M,N,
P,X
M,N,R,W
M,N,a,V
J,M,N,
P,W '
Most samples had the fOlioWinR suitable attributes: • Slight dairy notes, vani la flavor and/or
aroma, saltiness, mouthcoating . • Slight or moderate caramel flavor. • Moderate sweetness
cocoa bitterness. • Moderately strong chocolate
navor and/or aroma.
Key to Comments
A - More dairy aroma and flavor than most.
B - Vanilla aroma too strong, a defect.
C - Vanilla flavor too strong in chips, a defect.
CONSUMER REPORTS
1.19/13
9
Lady Lee (Lucky} 0.79/12
7
Country Oren
Ifrs. Wright's
1.69/18
9
(Safeway}
1.45/16
9
0 0
M,N,S,W
Grand Unioll
0.99/18
6
oe
oe
oe
A,M,N,
a,v
A&P
0.69/10
7
M,N,Q,W
~: ~fAcme,
0.97/18
5
M,N,a,V
Daintee (Acme}
0.69/11
6
Ifurray
0.79/14
6
lID Contained no apparent chocolate chips.
Sensory Characteristics
o·e . M:N,R,W
o e ~ F,S,U
A,M,N ,
Q e e • a,u
L,M,N,
~ o e R,V
1.51/12
D - Almost no chocolate aroma, a defect.
E - Less chocolate flavor in chips than most.
F-Excellent baked flavor.
G - Sweetest cookie tested.
H - Barely sweet enou~h for a cookie.
1- Noticeable vanillin avor, a defect.
J - Slight artificial flavor, a defect.
K - Slight ranCidity, a defect.
L - Slight stale cookie navar, Ii defect.
M -Almost no caramel flavor, a defect.
N-Almost no baked flavor, a defect.
O-Silky, syrup~ chip texture.
P - Silky, soft c ip texture.
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M,N,S,X
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A,E,M,N,
S,Y
D,E,J,M,
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E,G,M,N,
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E.L.M,N,
S,V
E,L,M,N,
S,X
OQ
E,L,M,N,
S,X
2/tO
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E,L,M,N,
T,X
D,H,I,M,
N,Y
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2f,o
a - Smooth, soft chip texture.
R - Smooth, firm chip texture.
S - Noticeably rou!\lh, firm, or hard Chip texture .
T -Gritty, waxy ChiPS, a defect.
U - Crisp and chewy cookie.
V - Soft and tender cookie.
W-Soft and chewy cookie.
X - Hard and crisp cookie.
Y - Hard and brittle cookie.
71
Here and there, our tasters detected a
very slight excessive bitterness or a mildly artificial taste. Two brands smacked of
vanillin, a chemical extract of the vanilla
bean. Six tasted slightly stale-including
samples of the Famous Amos cookies
bought in supermarkets. The Kjeldsens
cookies tasted slightly rancid. A few others were a bit too assertive in vanilla
flavor or aroma, or had gritty, waxy
chips. The bottom-rated Murray seemed
to contain no chips; instead, the cookies
sported meager chocolate smears almost
totally lacking in chocolate character.
Nabisco recommends that you warm
the Almost Home cookies in an oven for
five minutes, or microwave them in paper
for 35 to 45 seconds. Oven-heating did
improve the Almost Homes--and cookies
of several other brands, too. A zap in a
microwave - oven, however, produced a
tough, somewhat bitter cq.okie.
Freshness is one of the selling points of
the boutique cookies. The owner of
David's, for instance, reportedly won't
sell cookies that have aged as much as
one day. The founder of Mrs. Fields,
Debbi Fields, is said to insist that her
cookies be still warm when sold. Packaged commercial cookies, of course, can't
hope to guarantee that sort of consistent
freshness. But a few do make a stab by
putting an expiration date on the package. We took care to taste all cookies
well within their labeled lifetime, if any.
That's how if crumbles
You'd better have fun eating that cookie, for its nutritional benefits are close to
nil. The main yield of a cookie, of course,
is calories: All (CU's, too) averaged close
to 140 per ounce. Cookies are mainly
carbohydrate, with slight to moderate
amounts of fat and very little protein.
The Practically Perfect Cookie
Procedure
0
We wanted a cookie with a chewy
interior, crunchy edges, and wellblended flavor. Above all, we wanted
a cookie with a high overall chocolate
impact to give a sensuous rush to the
chocoholic. Mer much experimentation and perhaps a few
cumulative inches added to staffers'
waistlines, we created a cookie with
all those assets.
Our recipe makes 40 medium-sized
cookies.
Ingredients
21/4 cups flour
1 level teaspoon baking soda
1 level teaspoon salt
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark-brown sugar,
packed
2 sticks (1/2 lb.) sweet butter, at
room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 12-oz. package Nestle
semisweet chocolate chips
72
True, there are minor differences
between packaged supermarket cookies
and boutique or homemade ones. The
packaged sweets tend to use relatively
inexpensive vegetable oils. Homemade or
boutique cookies apparently use butter
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
1. Mix the flour, baking soda,
and salt in a bowl and set aside.
2. Use a stand-type electric
mixer to mix the two sugars briefly
at low speed. Add the butter in
small gobbets, mixing first at low
speed and then at high. Beat the
mix until it's pale, light, and very
fluffy.
3. Add the vanilla at the mixer's
lowest speed, then beat at high
speed for a few seconds. Add the
eggs, again at the lowest speed,
switching to high speed for the final
second or so. The eggs should be
well beaten in, and the mix should
look creamed, not curdled.
4. Add the flour, baking soda,
and salt, one-half cup at a time,
mixing at low speed for about one
minute, then at high speed for a
few seconds.
5. Scrape down the bowl's sides
with a spatula, add the chocolate
chips, and mix at low speed for
about 10 seconds. If need be,
scrape the bowl's sides again and
mix for a few more seconds.
6. Put tablespoonfuls of the mix
on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake
until the cookies are pale golden
brown (nine minutes in an electric
oven, 10 to 11 minutes in a gas
one). Remove and let them coolon
a rack. Enjoy.
There are now more fha" J40 rarieties.
and have a lot more chips, making them
slightly higher in saturated fats; they're
also a bit higher in protein.
All these cookies contain sodium, but
the amounts are of interest mainly to
people on a severely sodium-restricted
diet. At 55 to 125 milligrams per ounce,
most brands would yield quite a bit of
sodium to someone who ate three or four
cookies. The David's and the Famous
Amos bought in supermarkets were low-.
est in sodium. CU's own had 95 milligrams per ounce.
Recommendations
Quality cookies needn't cost-if you're
prepared to bake your own. The ingredients for 40 of CU's excellent cookies will
run you only $4 or so, or about 10 cents
an ounce. With the Duncan Hines mix,
excellence ran about 8 cents an ounce.
If you don't feel like baking, you can
munch Grand Union's fresh-baked cookies (for 22 cents an ounce) or Mrs.
Fields' (31 cents). And there ends our
roster of excellence.
Despite their reputation (or promotion), the boutique-brand David's cookies
were rated only very good. And they cost
us 37 cents an ounce. Next was Famous
Amos, near-fresh from the factory at 43
cents an ounce. If economy is your aim,
consider the premade Duncan Hines, at
14 cents an ounce; those were also
judged very good.
The cookies at the low end of the
Ratings are, in most cases, cheaper than
the others. They may save a bit of money, but they had almost no chocolaty,
baked, or caramel flavors, and often
tasted a bit stale. The kids, of course,
may not care. But those cookies aren't
the stuff of grownup indulgence.
FEBRUARY 1985