The N Cookie AA: FAQ
“HOW’S THIS WORK?”
Y’all nominated many many cookies for us to consider. We narrowed the contenders down to six (6) flights of roughly twenty (20) each, alphabetized the list, then ran it through a randomizer.
From the first round, five (5) cookies will proceed from each flight to a semifinal of thirty (30).
From the semis, five (5) flights of six (6) each, one (1) cookie will proceed from each flight to a final of five (5).
From the final, one cookie to rule them all. (And cause vociferous objections in the comments.)
CURRENTLY
Behold: your final!
PREVIOUSLY
First-round voting concluded with much grumbling all around. Then the semis separated the wheat (biscuit) from the chaff.
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Keckler and I have threatened repeatedly to get the N Cookie AA rolling, but every time we started to make a master list of all the cookies we might consider, we just got completely overwhelmed and defeated. The chocolate-chip section alone! Since the last time we seriously considered moving ahead with the N Cookie AA, Pepperidge Farm has added an entire dessert-cookie LINE to their already massive arsenal…and they just won’t effin’ stop with the Milanos! I think there’s a vodka-tonic one now.
But: it’s now or never. We will declare a top cookie even if it kills us. And from the looks of the Keebler website, it’s probably going to, so: crumbituri te salutamos, eh what?
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: nominate your favorite cookies right here in the comments thread. BUT WAIT. You should know a few things first.
- Please nominate COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE cookies. Not varieties, not recipes. Brands. So, “Walker’s Shortbread,” yes; just “shortbread” no. You’re free to vent about that in the comments, but it is the only way we can see to prevent the list from algae-blooming into the tens of thousands of entries, and here’s your semi-annual friendly reminder that we don’t get paid for this, so: 1) we don’t get paid for this, except in fun, and 2) national brands only please.
- I can think of a couple of exceptions — fortune cookies, for one — but they’re rare. If you’re not sure, ask, or nom it just in case-ies and we’ll nix it later.
- Nominees should be universally understood as a cookie. If you can find a rum ball at your local grocery, that’s great (…sincerely, it is; also please to provide a map), but cake-poppy hybrids are probably not going to get through.
- Do your best to read the whole comment thread before posting your nominees. It’s fine to repeat/”nth” previous mentions, of course, but “I CAN’T BELIEVE NOBODY SAID THIN MINTS”…you see what I’m saying. Hee.
- Nominate as many cookies as you’d like, within reason (i.e., 15 is fine, but maybe not 50). You can always comment again if you go shopping later in the day and realize you forgot Stella d’Oro Breakfast Treats or something.
- This is neither exact nor science. The actual voting/selection will probably work a lot like Cinemarch Madness did — all bajillion nominees randomized, followed by “flights” of voting, and if all the Milani end up in one draw, so be it — but we won’t know until we have a better grasp of the nominees, and…
- …as of this writing, the nominations will close on June 2.
We welcome your comments, questions, suggestions, offers of help writing the match-ups so we aren’t all sifting (so to speak) through these cookies until the CHELSEA Clinton presidency, etc. Tell a friend, foe, or snacky child, and let’s get listing!
Tags: Chelsea Clinton food Keckler N Cookie AA
+1 for Pepperidge Farm Ginger Men. I could eat a whole bag.
+1 for the CVS brand Divine cookies they are amazing.
I also really like the Pepperage Farm Pirouette cookies. Mmmm.
Girl Scout Thin Mints
Girl Scout Samoas
Mother’s Circus Animal cookies
Archway Frosted Lemon
Matt’s Oatmeal Raisin
Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos
Pepperidge Farm Nantucket
Pinwheels
Mint Milanos (I can’t get behind other Milanos because I keep wondering “but where is the mint? There’s no mint!”)
Girl Scouts Thin Mints
Girls Scouts Samosas
Fabulous Butter Cookie Assortment That Comes In A Round Tin From Europe.
I have to binge now.
Do Little Debbie Nutty Bars count as a cookie?
http://goo.gl/RuWeg3
Also nthing:
Tagalongs
Double Stuff Orea
PF Dark Chocolate
Archer Farms (Target Brand) Dipped Macaroons
http://goo.gl/AbkVLk
All of mine are Keebler and some have already come up, but…
Keebler Frosted Animal Cookies
Keebler Iced Animal Cookies
Keebler Fudge Sticks (original)
Keebler Fudge Stripes (original)
Pepperidge Farm Brussels. They’re the only store-bought cookie I will eat. The only problem is they have a misprint on the serving size info on the package . . . (in case you’re wondering, there’s only one serving to a bag).
LU Pim’s Raspberry
Pepperidge Farm Santa Cruz
Definitely nth-ing the McVities cookies–hobnobs, digestives, etc.
Also, Trader Joe’s Meyer Lemon Cookie Thins and Trader Joe’s (or “Trader Jacques”) Coconut Cookies/Croquants Noix de Coco.
I don’t know if a discontinued cookie counts, but Pepperidge Farm Chantilly cookies WERE the best. The Veronas are OK but just not as good. Why, Pepperidge Farm, why? *shakes fist*
Thanks, guys. Now I want to eat ALL THE COOKIES.
+1 Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger. Holy god.
Candy Cane Oreos
Newman’s Own Ginger O’s. They’re ginger sandwich cookies and they are AMAZING. I could eat a whole package.
Christie Cookies White Chocolate Macadamia Nut. SO good, and I don’t even like white chocolate under other circumstances.
Girl Scout Peanut Butter Patties
Double Stuff Oreos
Nutter Butters
Deliver me from the Ginger O. It is not possible to stop eating a package once opened.
Hydrox, the original Oreo before the Oreo brand took their idea.
Any other Latin nerds refer to Hydrox in the plural as “Hydroces”?
HALLELUJAH, the NCookieAA!! I was afraid I’d Rip Van Winkled a chunk of time & missed it. Whew!
+1 for:
Dare Maple Leaf Cream
Golden Oreos
PF Brussels
Nomming (…hurr):
PF Milano Slices Sweet Toffee
PF Lexington
Tim Tams Caramel
President’s Choice The Decadent Chunk Cookie http://www.presidentschoice.ca/en_CA/products/productlisting/pc_the_decadent_chocolate_chunk_cookie14936.html
President’s Choice Reverse Decadent White Chocolate Chip Cookie http://www.presidentschoice.ca/en_CA/products/productlisting/pc_the_reverse_decadent_white_chocolate_chip_cookie17969.html
Suddenly, I’m craving cookies. Wonder why.
Oh, and -1,000,000 for anything with jam in it. Blerf.
Stauffer’s Ginger Snaps
Chiky cookies (From Costa Rica but I’m starting to see them in Walmart)
Girl Scouts: Samoas, Do-Si-Dos, Tagalongs
Chips Ahoy Chewy
Walker’s Shortbread (may be a shoe-in because it was mentioned in the write up but I want to make sure it gets in there!)
Grandma’s Chocolate Brownie Cookies (the ones in vending machines!)
Do chocolate-covered pretzels count? I feel like they are universal and cookie-y in the way of Circus Animals but brandless.
Teddy Grahams? Not sure they’re a “cookie” either but they are DELICIOUS.
Pretty sure this won’t fly but Kroger’s Pumpkin White Chocolate cookies are the world’s best cookies-sold-in-stores, IMHO.
Are Uh-oh Oreos still a thing? Like the golden ones but with chocolate filling?
Famous Amos original are the best chocolate chip cookies. Full stop.
Mother’s Iced Animals were the first thing I thought of, surprised to see I’m not the only one who remembers them here.
Snickerdoodles in general, but for simplicity’s sake, Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked Snickerdoodles.
Little Debbie Chocolate Chip Creme Pies.
Chips Deluxe Fudge Stripes, an unholy hybrid that doesn’t appear to exist anymore (probably for the best).
Koala’s March chocolate. (So random, SO good.)
I *was* planning to avoid the cookie aisle for the remainder of swimsuit season, but…research purposes, people. Can’t risk forgetting something vital.
+1 Le Petit Ecolier (milk chocolate)
+1 Tim Tams
+1 Girl Scouts Thin Mints
+1 Girl Scouts Samoas
+1 every ginger thin ever, but so not to disqualify this, let’s say the Trader Joe’s variety
Another vote for Dare’s Maple Leaf Cream Cookies!
And Christie’s Pirate Cookies (the oatmeal peanut butter ones).
3rd-ing Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe-Joes!! I stockpile those like no other! I also have to nominate the decadent Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe-Joe’s Cookies. It’s a good think this event isn’t happening around the holidays or I’d be stuffing my face with those right now!
@ferretrick I *totally* agree that the old McD’s cookies were the best! I swear Aldi’s animal crackers are a close match.
Girl Scouts Trefoils (shortbread)
Girl Scouts Lemonades (lemon sandwiches)
If we’re allowed to nominate cookies that are no longer available, my vote is for Mystic Mints.
“Retired” cookies = okay.
Snack cakes, yogurt pretzels, things that are not really cookies = not okay. (I mean, you’re not going to get trapdoored off the site for suggesting them or anything [hee]. But it needs to be generally understood as a cookie.)
YESYES AMEN for Girl Scout Thin Mints, Famous Amos Chocolate Chip, Chips Ahoy Original, and Keebler Fudge Stripe.
@Emma, Golden Oreos with chocolate filling do still exist, but they don’t call them “UhOh” any more. They’re just … golden oreos with chocolate filling. I love them best because my husband doesn’t care for them, so they’re all mine!
Soft Batch (best if microwaved 5 seconds before eating)
Girl Scouts Trefoils (those tasted great, but they were soooo bad for you)
Stella D’Oro Anisette Sponge (is that a cookie?)
Anna’s Orange Thins
2nd on Fig Newtons
2nd on Carr’s Lemon Ginger Cremes
I’d nth a Fig Newton, but I bought a package of them a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve CHANGED THE FORMULA. The fig part is as I remember it, but they’ve reduced the size so much that the cookie part is now limp and soggy and lacking its distinct flavor.
So, for as much as nothing used to hit quite the spot as FN used to do, the new verzh is HORRIBLE. Fie on the fig!
I’d like to propose a couple other rules, based on previous NCAA contests…
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“(cookie) is good if you heat it up first” No. NCAA rule 1257.40(b): “No cookie shall require the application of additional prep work immediately prior to consumption. Any cookie which requires additional prep work at the time of service to the consumer shall not be adjudged to have suffered a handicap if said prep work cannot be performed due to a lack of time, materiel, or equipment”.
The so-called “no microwave rule” was instituted in 1974 after a lengthy series of debates over the fundamental nature of the cookie as a foodstuff. It was decided that the philosophy of the “cookie” implied rapid consumption and convenience, and permitting cookie recipes that required work directly prior to being eaten–heating, whip application, chocolate dip–precluded the fast pace of cookie activity that fans had come to enjoy and expect. As Bolt Vanderhuge (assistant coach, Wilton State, 1971-1980, famous for developing the “Oreo Slide” wherein a player consumes an entire sleeve of cookies in a single swallow) put it, “if people want fondue then that’s what they should go get”.
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“(cookie) is so good if you use it as an ingredient in–” No. This contest needs to be cookies qua cookies, not “as a basis for the production of further items”.
This includes cookies serving as the basis for sundaes, sandwiches, moon pies, and any other cookie-derived confection; it further includes cookies being added, in whole or in part, to trail mix or other such heterogenous mixes.
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“(cookie) is just the best if you have it with (milk/coffee/wine/straight grain alcohol)–” No. Cookies should be had on their own, straight with no chaser, because the point of a packaged cookie is to eat it straight out of the package. If you’re going to make an actual presentation then you should go the distance and make your own cookies.
PF Genevas! UMM YUMM PECAN
nth on the Thin Mints.
nth on the Petit Ecolier
And I know these are probably just for me but…
Kraft Pinwheels (seriously, they are full of marshmallow.
When I was eighteen and working as a bagger at a grocery store on the closing schedule, I’d eat “breakfast” at noon, “lunch” at six p.m., and my final meal of the day was a box of Pinwheels they I bought on my way out. Which I would eat. By myself. In its entirety. Thank goodness that cleanup-on-aisle-three and emptying recycling machines burned a lot of calories.
Question: do Mallomars contain any cookie element? Because if it’s just mallow and chocolate shell, they’re DQed.
My Google searchery shows the Mallomar as having a cookie base, topped with marshmallow and then cloaked in chocolate, so it looks similar to my beloved Kraft Pinwheel (but the Pinwheel has a superior shape)!
Stella Doro Swiss Fudge, the best, the end.
Trader Joe’s dark chocolate covered peppermint Joe Joes
Trader Joe’s dark chocolate covered triple ginger snaps
And it will be 6 months before either of those are back on the shelves.
Oh, if retired is okay, I will throw a nom at:
Dunkaroos (the pride of the lunchroom)
Magic Middles/Mini Middles
Planter’s PB Crisps
Did we already do cereals?
Also, discontinued snack foods/grocery items would be a fun bracket. Winner gets a petition on whitehouse.gov.
In the Girl Scout family: Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos
In the Trader Joe’s family: Triple Ginger, Ginger and/or Lemon Thins, Speculoos
In the British-but-mostly-you-can-get-them-here family: McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Digestives and Ginger Nuts
In the everything else category: EL Fudge and Stauffer’s Lemon Snaps
Like Jane I <3 & nominate Fig Newtons, also nth Le Peite Ecolier & Tim Tams, my original contribution is Golden Oreos. All the crunch and sweetness, no black teeth.
This has made me realize that I'm not much of a store bought cookie fan. Now my ex-boyfriend's Mom's Chocolate Crackle Christmas cookies? I will cut you. No lie, best cookie I have ever had.
+1 for Trader Joe’s Peppermint Joe-Joes, and for obsessively stockpiling them in December.
This contest is making me happy because I am currently off all forms of chocolate (for who knows how long….) and it is seriously affecting my cookie options. (Also speaking of delicious cookie ingredients: no nuts, and no citrus, and no raspberries. If I didn’t hate migraines so much….) But it is reminding me of all the other good cookies – ginger! Speculoos! those Danish butter cookies! Now I want to go shopping.
Wow, I really thought I’d have nothing to add since I am firmly in the ‘homemade is best’ contingent – Any chance of a ‘Homemade anything’ as a category? (well not with raisin’s obviously).
From the comments I have compiled this list to +1, or make sure are represented:
Double Stuff Oreos
Double Chocolate Milanos
Pepperidge Farm Brussels – Dark Chocolate
the UNFILLED Pepperidge farm Pirouette cookies in the variety pack
Royal Dansk (I went through 3 tins at Christmas, by myself)
Thin Mints
Trefoils
Le Petit Ecolier – Dark Chocolate
Nilla Wafers
Sugar Wafers
and the apparently discontinued, at least at any store near me, Apple Newtons.
Mallomars definitely have a cookie element. Good lord, have you never eaten a Mallomar?? You must rectify this immediately! Or as soon as the weather cools, because the reason someone upthread may not have noticed them lately is that they apparently don’t sell them during the warm months, so that the chocolate won’t melt. Lord knows what sinister technology every other chocolate-covered food item in the country is using.
Anyone else remember/love Blueberry Newtons? Something about the berry/cake ratio on those particularly were my jam. (So to speak.)
I rarely eat store-bought cookies, but there are some that are just too delicious not to buy sometimes:
Trader Joe’s triple ginger
Pepperidge Farm Sausalito
Royal Dansk butter cookies
Anna’s ginger thins (these will do when we don’t have the time/energy to make our own pepparkakor)
White fudge Oreos (I think these are only available around the holidays)
I’m feeling deprived because here in Canada, we apparently don’t have all the cultivars of Pepperidge Farm cookies. There is only the one Milano, so far as I can tell, along with one Sausalito, one Brussels, etc. This cannot be right.
I’m glad retired cookies are acceptable, because so many of my favourites don’t exist anymore. (This just in: Am officially old.)
Seconding the Fig Newtons. I decided to keep a packet of Fig Newtons in my desk one time, you know, for emergencies? Apparently everything was urgent that day, because the package lasted half an hour, tops. Peek Freans, nearly any variety (the Ginger Crisps, full of teeny pinprick holes!), but the Dark Chocolate Digestives were the best cookie ever invented, but have passed from this world. Second best: Christie/Nabisco Hey-Days – OMG, like a little candy bar, but it counted as a cookie, so we could have them on a fairly regular basis! Crisp wafer, finely chopped pecans (?), caramel, covered in semi-sweet chocolate. DAMN. Similarly vanished, apparently unlamented save by me.
Royal Danish butter cookies are okay, but there’s a Royal Danish (or similar) ginger snap version that’s wonderful. And that Moravian sugar cookie whosiwhatsits, the paper-thin and fragile-crisp? Like Anna’s Swedish snaps, but even thinner. Yum. Love those, too.
President’s Choice — in Canada only? — are THE BOMB. Butter First Oatmeal Cookies; and Lemon Lucullans, I think they were called? Creamy, crunchy, with an authentically puckery lemon taste. The suggested serving size on those had a pretty embarrassing typo, too.
I only see one nomination for Newman’s Own Ginger-O’s, but I’ll second it. They’re unbelievable. Also, this pregnant girl now can’t think of anything but Ginger-O’s. Trader Joe’s makes a version, but they aren’t as good.
All of mine are just seconds/thirds/etc. But:
Oreos (Oreos obviously win it all, right? Is there even a need for the rest of the competition?)
Mint Milanos
Nutter Butters
Thin Mints
Samoas
Tagalongs
Dulce du Leche (A Girl Scout Cookie that is hard to find)
Is Freihoffer’s a regional thing?
Freihoffer’s Chocolate Chip Cookies if not; but I guess Entenmann’s might be their equivalent … *research research wikipedia wikipedia* Oh.. they own them now.
So I guess +1 for Entemann’s chocolate chip cookies. As in the box of wooden-nickel sized soft chocolate chip cookies you only buy when they are buy one get one free, and promptly destroy and then feel gross. Those ones.
Re-re-reupping McVities Dark Chocolate Digestives. I’d eat a whole sleeve of them at the movies in Leicester Sq.
Serious vote for stroopwaffles. I don’t see them often. And that’s a good thing. A former Dutch co-worker used to bring them back from Amsterdam. He said the locals rest them on top of a cup of coffee briefly to soften/warm them. I’m slobbering as I type this…
I think one person mentioned Entenmann’s, but I would like to specifically nominate their original chocolate chip cookie. Mom didn’t bake; she bought these.
Also, I would like to +1 the pizzelle. You can find them in stores or make them at home, but they really don’t have one specific brand, like the sugar wafer cookies (which are also awesome). I hope they are included as a generic type, because they are wonderful and they are the only way I will ever consume anise.
+1 for Freihoffer’s/Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies. A good friend of my dad’s, who lived with us for a while when I was a kid, literally lived off of Freihoffer’s cookies, coffee, and Lucky Strikes. It was scary.