Every year, I host a cookie-baking party over the holidays. (Works just as well for Valentine’s Day, too.) It’s messy, but it’s a crowd-pleaser.
Each time I host it, I find myself asking one question: Which type of cookie is the best? In doing so, swords are drawn. Trust, broken. Friendships, ruined. People are dead serious about their favorite cookies. I’m not one to make trouble, but oh wait: I totally am.
These are the best cookie flavors of all time that I’d happily debate with anyone up for the challenge.
15. Sugar Cookies
Pros: Fun to decorate
Cons: Usually taste bland
I know people love sugar cookies, but why? Decorating them seems like the biggest draw. Make them from a package, and they’re so-so. Buy them from Albertson’s, and it’s like eating a piece of stale cardboard with sickeningly sweet icing plastered on top. Make them truly from scratch, and they’re not half bad but still pretty boring all the same.
14. Biscotti
Pros: Crunchy, great with coffee
Cons: Without milk, will break your entire mouth
Biscotti has grown on me. Alone, I don’t get it. It’s like trying to bite into a brick. Dunked in milk or coffee, and biscotti transforms into a mouthwatering miracle. It’s as if someone optimized a muffin specifically to dip in coffee. The variety of flavors adds points in its favor, too.
13. Macaroons
Pros: Coconut
Cons: Coconut
This one is self-explanatory. If you love coconut, you’ll love macaroons. If you hate coconut, you’ll hate macaroons. I happen to love it, particularly when baked and covered in chocolate.
12. Macarons
Pros: Objectively the most attractive cookie
Cons: Expensive and hard to make
French macarons are the most influencer-friendly cookie because … look at them. They’re like a posh French poodle, only edible. Bakers usually specialize in macarons, making them in all different adorable shapes and colors.
Popular flavors include vanilla, strawberry, lemon, coffee, red velvet, pistachio, matcha and so many more. The only downside is that they take practice to make, and buying as many as you’d want to gobble up isn’t cheap.
11. Cornflake Cookies
Pros: A solid mix of crispy and chewy
Cons: Pretty tasty, but also pretty ugly
Cornflake cookies won’t win a beauty contest, but they’re tasty. Cookies are already meant to be paired with milk, and milk and cereal are BFFs. So, you do the math. Cookies are already a pretty American thing, but shoving a handful of Frosted Flakes in them is something we’d only try in the States. Can you imagine the British dumping breakfast cereal into the Queen’s biscuits? No. It takes humility to add Kellogg’s into a cookie and even more to admit it’s amazing.
10. Thumbprint Cookies
Pros: Come with a built-in bowl of jam
Cons: Too small
Thumbprint cookies are amazing. They’re buttery shortbread cookies with a little well in the middle for jam, Nutella or a Hershey’s kiss. Delicious. My only complaint is that they need to be approximately six times larger. I want handprint cookies. Don’t judge me.
9. Snickerdoodle
Pros: Like a cinnamon sugar donut in cookie form
Cons: The quality of the dough really matters
Snickerdoodles taste like Grandma’s house, minus the mothball scent. They’re just sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon and sugar, but that changes the experience entirely. The only issue here is that the sugar cookie dough, itself, needs to be on point. Otherwise, it’s just a sickeningly sweet circle topped with more sugar.
8. Mexican Wedding Cookies
Pros: Buttery and light with just enough crunch
Cons: Will leave your hands covered in powdered sugar
If you haven’t had Mexican wedding cookies, you’re missing out. They’re made in the form of a delectable ball packed with finely chopped nuts and vanilla. They’re not really a Mexican tradition, and historians believe the name replaced the term Russian teacake during the Cold War.
Whatever you call it, this cookie’s a winner. There’s not much to dislike about, except that eating one without getting covered in powdered sugar is impossible. But that’s why washing machines were invented, right?
7. Crinkle Cookies
Pros: Basically a cross between a fudge brownie and a chocolate chip cookie
Cons: Not for chocolate haters
Crinkle cookies are a chocolate lover’s dream and a chocolate hater’s nightmare. Right out of the oven, they’re more like mini chocolate lava cakes than cookies. After cooking, they’re lightly crackled on the top and rich and fudgey in the middle. Technically, one can make different flavors of crinkle cookies, but chocolate is the OG.
6. Pecan Sandies
Pros: Buttery, melt-in-your-mouth goodness
Cons: Addictive
I’ve noticed something about pecan sandies. A lot of people claim to dislike them, and yet the box is always empty. It’s the scheme of the century. Give pecan sandies a bad name, then take them all for yourself. It’s brilliant and evil, and I’m mad I didn’t think of it first.
5. Shortbread Cookies
Pros: Way better than sugar cookies
Cons: Can be boring
It’s tough to go wrong with a good shortbread cookie. They are crowd-pleasing and versatile. Add different flavorings to spruce them up, dip them in chocolate and crushed peppermint, make them into shapes, you name it. They’re like sugar cookies after graduating from an Ivy League, only not so full of themselves. Butter cookies are just as good, only butter cookies have more sugar.
4. White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut
Pros: Basically perfect
Cons: You have to have good taste
This is very much a pineapple-on-pizza situation. I love pineapple on pizza. I also love white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. I don’t normally love white chocolate, which isn’t really chocolate at all, but I make an exception for these gems. If you really want to start a fight, add coconut and pineapple chunks to them. You will lose friends, but you’ll be OK with it.
3. Oatmeal Raisin
Pros: Chewy, hearty, and you can pretend they’re healthy
Cons: You will get made fun of for liking them
The oatmeal raisin cookie gets way more hate than it deserves. Everyone acts like it’s a cookie for health nuts, but it’s not. These have a uniquely chewy texture to them from all the oats and sweet, gooey raisins, and it’s wonderful. Plus, you can swap the raisins out for white chocolate chips and cranberries on Thanksgiving.
2. Peanut Butter
Pros: Tastes like childhood
Cons: People with nut allergies can’t eat them
Peanut butter cookies are heaven. My best invention ever might be the peanut butter and jelly cookie, which is simply a peanut butter thumbprint cookie with strawberry jam inside.
If you’re allergic to peanuts, I understand your aversion to peanut butter cookies. If you simply do not like them, I have an aversion to you. Let’s not speak of this again.
1. Chocolate Chip
Pros: The ultimate classic
Cons: Unoriginal
Chocolate chip cookies aren’t fancy. They’re practically the default cookie flavor, but that isn’t without reason. Chocolate chip cookies are the standard because they set the bar for all other cookies. They’ve got it all: a balance of sweet and crispy; a warm, melty center; and rich, dark chocolate chunks.
Small adjustments to the ingredients yield different types of chocolate chip cookies, from thin and crispy to doughy and light. I happen to like my chocolate chip cookies somewhere in the middle: crispy and golden brown on the outside but soft on the inside.
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