Several months ago, the kids and I had the idea to taste-test all of the store-bought gluten free chocolate chip cookies we could find and figure out which one was the best. Seeing as gluten free pre-packaged foods are pricey, this idea had to be shelved for quite awhile. I thought winter would be best anyway when we're all bored and need something fun to do. I spent the better part of this week sick, so today seemed like a good day to celebrate and eat cookies.
While Matt was out delivering papers, Ben, Anna and I hit up Walmart to see how many different brands of chocolate chip cookies we could find. We had a strict criteria for our testing: The cookies must be chocolate chip ONLY (no nuts, no added flavoring, just traditional chocolate chip) and had to be found in the aisle. That cut out any from the bakery or freezer. We had to draw the line SOMEWHERE. Walmart had three brands only--kind of disappointing, to tell the truth. We looked at Pick 'n Save next and found FIVE more. Thank goodness one of them had a coupon on the box! I figured 8 was good enough for a start. When we find more in the future we'll pit our winner against the next batch. Because I know for a fact more are out there.....
Each family member had a scoring sheet with scores from 1 to 5 in three categories: taste, texture, and amount of chocolate chips. Apparently LOTS of chocolate chips is a high priority! We passed around one cookie per person (going down to a portion of cookie per adult by the end because of sugar overload) and tasted them one at a time. The following scores are the average from the five of us.
Glutino thins: 8.2/15. This score was pretty consistent with the whole family. It tasted good, but it was too crunchy. I think they taste the most like homemade, but again, too crunchy.
Enjoy Life crunchy: 8.8/15. The texture is awful, but the taste is pretty good. Unless you are like Rob and Anna, who enjoy a really crunchy cookie.
Enjoy life soft: 8.6/15. Anna loves these, but the rest of us thought "meh." We've also had them many times before so it wasn't anything new.
Glutino: 11.2/15: These cookies are MY favorite for sure and the kids loved them too. Rob....not so much. They taste and feel like Chips Ahoy, but with MORE chocolate chips.
Pamela's: 12/15. This brand is always a family favorite (especially the pecan shortbreads!) The texture was a little too crumbly for the adults, but the kids loved them. Almost the winner until we tried.....
WOW: 12.4/15. Okay, these cookies are seriously amazing! They remind me of Soft Batch cookies in every way except size. Everyone loved them! We have never tried them before but we are fans now!
Lucy's: 7.8/15. This is Rob's favorite brand of cookie, so he scored them pretty high, as did Anna. The boys and I balanced that out to give it the low rating. They are super crunchy and leave a weird background taste in the mouth.
Great Value (Walmart brand): 1.8/15. BLECH! If you like the taste of baking soda, then these are the cookies for you! They were so bad NO ONE finished a single cookie and we were scrambling for our drinks. And a WOW cookie. Absolutely wretched. We've had them before and liked them, but compared to the other seven brands they were just awful.
The kids had a great time playing taste tester and learned some valuable lessons about the taste differences in products. You really can't accurately judge until you've tried them all together! Next time we are near a Woodman's we'll pop in and buy up other brands and do it all again.
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