I Asked 5 Food Pros To Name the Best Store-Bought Cookie Dough—They All Said the Same Thing

During one of my earlier assignments as a food journalist, I wrote about a viral dessert, the cookie croissant or crookie. Of course, I had to make them myself and see what all the hype was about. I just didn’t feel like making cookie dough from scratch that day, so I grabbed an iconic yellow tub of cookie dough from my local Fred Meyer and made the viral crookie at home. 

Let me tell you, I was surprised. That cookie dough slayed, excuse my Gen-Z lingo. But was it the best cookie dough out there? One thing I love about journalism is how deep we dig to seek truths—or in this case, the best store-bought cookie dough!

In search of my answer, I asked five baking experts to name their favorite brand of cookie dough. To my surprise and delight, they all gave me the same answer.  

The Food Pros I Asked

• Sara Haas, RDN, LDN: Food and nutrition expert and author of three cookbooks, including Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!
• Meghan Splawn: Food editor, co-host of the podcast Didn’t I Just Feed You?, and creator of the Substack Stir and Scribble 
• Kristen Morita: Food blogger and recipe developer behind Mochi Mommy
• Jonni Scott: Washington D.C.-based content creator, food photographer, and social media manager
• Myo Quinn: Associate Editorial Director of Simply Recipes and a Gramercy Tavern alum

The Best Store-Bought Cookie Dough, According to Food Experts

Meghan has her own favorite cookie recipe memorized, but when she’s testing recipes that call for cookie dough, she reaches for Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, the unanimous vote among the experts I spoke to. “It’s super reliable, and I need a brand that’s standard and easy to find.”

Sara, too, says nothing tops homemade cookie dough, but if she has to pick a store-bought version, she chooses the one that “feels most like homemade.” To make it even more like her own, she says, “I like to add a little sea salt to the top, too.”

Myo actually gathered her family earlier this year for a blind taste test of six popular brands of store-bought cookie dough. “Nestlé Toll House’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “got top marks for having the best dough-to-chocolate chip ratio,” she says. It’s a classic. After all, Nestlé Toll House has been a staple in American households for almost a century. 

Jonni tells me, “When I get a craving for a chocolate chip cookie to snack on, but I don’t feel like making a batch of dough, I will pick up a package of Nestlé Toll House because it’s a recipe I grew up eating, so it hits the spot.”

“The cookies are just nostalgic!” Kristen agrees. As a mother, she also appreciates that the dough is “easy enough for kids to bake.”

In fact, when I polled members of my global online baking group, Subtle Asian Baking, one member, Jennifer Lee, wrote me back, “Nestlé Toll House! My aunt would buy that brand whenever she babysat me, and that would be the activity.”

And that familiar yellow tub of cookie dough I grabbed from my local supermarket to complete my writing assignment on crookies? Of course, it was Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and the crookies came out great. I even mixed a bit of pandan and ube extract into the dough to turn it green and purple because, like Haas, I believe that the next best thing to making cookie dough from scratch is making this beloved store-bought cookie dough my own!

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