Favorite Cookies

I love cookies and over the years I’ve made and sampled hundreds. People ask me which cookies are my favorite, and it’s very hard to choose. But I narrowed down the list to include 15 current favorites.

From left to right, starting at top left-hand corner

1. Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies

2. New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

3. Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

4. Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Skillet Cookie

5. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

6. Quintuple Chocolate Fudgy Brownie Cookies

7. Mounds Bar Chocolate Coconut Cake Mix Cookies

8. Thin Mints

9. Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies

10. Cranberry and White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

11. Sugar-Doodle Vanilla Cookies

12. Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

13. Strawberry Cake Mix Cookies with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

14. Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

15. Molasses Triple Chocolate Cookies

Grouped by category with explanations why I love each of them so

Chocolate Chip Varieties

1. Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies – My favorite recipe for pure, unadulterated, perfect chocolate chip cookies. They’re soft, chewy, tender, moist, stay soft for days, are a snap to make, and have two kinds of chocolate in every bite. I wrote extensively about why I love them and if you need a solid, fuss-free, and straightforward recipe for chocolate chip cookies that yields fabulous results on every level, try this one. It’s my gold standard

2. New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Jacques Torres) – I learned many valuable lessons when making these cookies, including using bread flour, making larger cookies, and stuffing in more chocolate than I thought was possible. Fresh from the oven, I love these cookies, and although I don’t consider them my ‘perfect’ cookie and wrote extensively about my overall thoughts. However, because it’s such a popular recipe, I’d be remiss to omit them because many people adore these jumbo bakery-style cookies

3. Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies – Inspired be the Cooks Illustrated Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, I also added peanut butter and oatmeal, creating a soft and moist cookie, with plenty of chewy texture. Because the cookies call for melted butter, no mixer is required, and the higher ratio of brown to granulated sugar keeps them just as soft on day four as on day one. If you’re not a chocolate chip cookie purist and like a variety of textures and flavors in your cookies, these are a must-try

4. Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Skillet Cookie – Three of my favorite cookies in one – chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal. The edges bake up crispy and chewy, and sweetened condensed milk is baked into the cookie, keeping the interior a literal hot, sweet, and gooey mess. No mixer is required, and this is a perfect impress-a-crowd cookie to pop into the oven before brunch or a dinner party, and as the meal wraps, the cookie is ready. Grab the spoons and wait for the ooh’s and ahh’s

5. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls (no-bake, raw, vegan, gluten-free) – Safe-to-eat raw cookie dough that’s all-natural, vegan, easy, and is the most Pinned recipe on my site. The cookie dough tastes just like the real thing and is ready in five minutes. They also freeze beautifully and I always have a freezer stash

All-Chocolate Varieties

6. Quintuple Chocolate Fudgy Brownie Cookies – Five different types of chocolate is used: Cocoa powder, melted bittersweet baking chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate chips, diced chocolate truffles, and chopped chocolate-filled Oreos. The cookies are rich, smooth, intense, very decadent and for the serious chocaholic. They are hands down the best chocolate cookie I’ve ever had or made and my search for the perfect chocolate cookie ends with this recipe. They’re like eating brownies, truffles, cookies, and Oreos all in one

7. Mounds Bar Chocolate Coconut Cake Mix Cookies – Chocolate and coconut is a winning combination and I baked both chocolate chips and Mounds Bar candy bars into these easy, goofproof chocolate cake mix cookies that turn out soft and moist every time. The chocolate cookies above are amazing, but are a bit more labor-intensive, and based on the work-reward scale, the cookies below get very high marks

8. Thin Mints (vegan, no-bake) – These are as easy as they come and give the Girl Scouts a run for their money. You’ll be amazed at just how fast, easy, and authentic they taste. The recipe has appeared in magazines and is another highly Pinned and popular one. People write to me both surprised and thankful that something so simple could taste like the real thing

White Chocolate

9. Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies– These are likely my favorite cookies on my blog, but it really is so hard to choose. They’re soft and moist from the peanut butter, chewy with plenty of texture from the oats, and full of sweet white chocolate chips. People write frequently telling me they loved these cookies and it’s one of those recipes that’s extremely do-able and no one writes with a cookie crisis

10. Cranberry and White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies – Inspired by my love of Cranberry Bliss Bars (Starbucks Copycat Recipe) and the Sugar-Doodle Vanilla Cookies (below), I combined the two. The Sugar-Doodle dough is stuffed with ample amounts of both white chocolate chip and dried cranberries. The cranberries lend a pop of tartness and texture against the buttery soft dough and sweet white chocolate. Super soft, moist, and are perfect not only around Christmas, but anytime

So Simple But So Good

11. Sugar-Doodle Vanilla Cookies – These cookies are much more than the sum of their simple parts and ingredients and I just love them so much. They’re easily one of my new favorites from 2012. Another bonus of these soft, chewy, and easy cookies is that the batch size is only 11 cookies. Perfect for our family because we don’t need dozens and dozens of cookies just laying around

12. Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies (gluten-free) – I love peanut butter and if you need a good-old fashioned peanut butter cookie recipe for cookies that are bursting with robust peanut butter flavor, try this one. The recipe is a snap to make and has just four ingredients, is naturally gluten-free, and produces cookies with chewy edges, and tender centers. A peeve of mine is peanut butter cookies that are lackluster on peanut butter intensity scale, but that’s not the case with these golden nuggets

Holiday & Seasonal

13. Strawberry Cake Mix Cookies with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting – Perfect for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, girlie birthday, baby or bridal shower. They’re ridiculously soft, chewy, moist, and are foolproof. The frosting is optional or it can be used to make sandwich cookies. These cookies are my soon-to-be six year old daughter’s favorite cookie. She has requested them instead of a cake for her next birthday

14. Pumpkin Whoopie Pies – These cookies really grew on me, to the point of re-making them just days after the first batch, which is very rare for me. They’re both dense yet light, incredibly moist and soft, and melt-in-your mouth. I prefer using the more robust version of seasonings that I noted in the recipe and because pumpkin season knows no boundaries for me, I plan to make these year-round

15. Molasses Triple Chocolate Cookies – I used chocolate three ways in these soft, chewy, moist and tender molasses cookies. All that chocolate pairs perfectly with robustly-flavored molasses and the intensity of spices used, making these a new holiday favorite and one of my top cookie picks of 2012

What’s your favorite cookie?

Tell me about your favorites and please share links to your favorite recipes. I am always on the hunt for new recipes. I can feel my list of favorites growing already.