Chocolate chip cookies are the sorts of things that are intrinsically good. As long as they have real chocolate chips (and not that fake mockalate crud), it’s hard to mess up a batch.
But some cookies are better than others, right?
Consider three of the better cookies bakers in town. There’s Pattycake Bakery, famous for creating vegan eco-friendly miracles without any animal products whatsoever. Then there’s Layer, a bakery that brings goodies such as Oatmeal Carmelitas to the local binge food scene. Add the newish grocer Lucky’s to the mix: its bakery shelves hold some respectable stuff too.
Cookies from all three dispensaries went head-to-head in a big Chip Off.
First up: Layer’s Chunk-A-Dunk cookie ($1.49). The Layer cookie is plentiful with dark chocolate chips –enough to fuse together in delicate chocolate shelves inside the cookie.
The ingredients on the back list the requisite chocolate chips, along with interesting additions such as oatmeal, hazelnuts, pecans and toffee. The hazelnuts and toffee are sort of invisible and the final product itself is crumbly, which is an asset for some diners, but it left the taste panel underwhelmed.
Next up: Pattycake Bakery. Fun-ly, it calls its chip cookie “Classic Tollhouse Cookie” ($2.79). The “classic’s” ingredient list includes tofu and ground flax seeds. It’s also egg-free and dairy-free, but it does have the chocolate chips.
The tasters were pleased with this vegan version. In fact, they were even more delighted with the discovery of a renegade cookie (with the same Tollhouse wrapper) that included dried cherries. That version was a nominee for Best-In-Show on the wings of its cherries, only to be disqualified as having an illegal advantage.
The cookie that did shockingly well against both gourmet versions was the Chocolate Chip cookie from Lucky’s bakery. Priced at only 99 cents, it’s a very normal chocolate chip cookie, chewy with blots of dark chocolate in a buttery background. This pleased the taste panel the very most.
When it comes to Chocolate Chip Cookies, eaters are traditionalists when picking favorites.