Cookies are sold from a variety of places near Heritage, but which ones are the best? In order to find out, I conducted a taste test in the newspaper room.
I collected six cookies from each of four different locations: Blueprint Cookies, Night Owl Cookies, Midnight Cookies & Cream and Crumbl. Before I used them in the taste test, however, I first weighed them to find out their masses. Using the average weight of each place’s cookies, I calculated their cost per gram.
As it turned out, Night Owl’s cookies were the cheapest per gram, just barely cheaper than Crumbl’s. By far the most expensive place to buy cookies was Blueprint Cookies. The other cookies cost about three cents per gram; the cookies at Blueprint cost roughly a whole cent more.
This data alone, however, could not demonstrate which cookies were the best. I also needed opinions on the quality of the cookies. In order to gather them, I planned out a taste test for the newspaper students. I wrote and printed out an instruction sheet, which told them to write down rankings of the cookies’ appearance and taste. It also told them to describe what about the cookies stood out. The cookies were in groups labeled A through D, where A was Blueprint, B was Night Owl, C was Midnight and D was Crumbl.
By giving each cookie points depending on its ranking (i.e ranked first = 4 points and ranked last = 1 point), I determined that overall, Crumbl was judged the best in terms of taste and Night Owl’s cookies were the best in terms of looks. In both categories, Midnight scored the lowest.
Night Owl may have scored highest in appearance due to the chocolate chips on their cookies’ surfaces. However, neither Blueprint nor Crumbl’s cookies scored much lower than Night Owl’s, suggesting that generally any appearance of chocolate on top of the cookie appealed to the newspaper students. Midnight’s cookies’ lack of exposed chocolate may have been a major factor in their significantly lower score in appearance.
Crumbl beat out Blueprint’s cookies by just one point in taste, while Night Owl and Midnight’s cookies had distinctly lower scores. Many of the newspaper students described how Night Owl’s cookies had too much chocolate, but some enjoyed the cookies enough to rank them first. Even the lowest-ranked cookie overall was ranked first by one of the students. In fact, Midnight’s cookies were described as both too sweet and not too sweet. On the other hand, the students enjoyed Crumbl’s cookies for multiple reasons–some students praised the cookie’s texture, while others liked it for the small amount of salt sprinkled on the cookie. Even so, some students described the cookie as plain or generic.
The cheapest cookies, Night Owl’s, did not come in last, suggesting that the low price did not directly correlate to a low quality. In fact, Crumbl’s cookies, which were very similarly priced, came in first. At the same time, Blueprint’s cookies came in a close second place, suggesting that a higher price may still relate to a higher quality.
Personally, I like the Night Owl cookies the most for their moist texture and sweetness. After the survey, many of the cookie samples were left over, so I was able to take them home and share the rest with my family (Photo/Alex Ngo)
Cookies A through D from left to right and top to bottom. Blueprint’s cookies have chocolate centers with salt. Six of the nine participants noted its saltiness. Night Owl’s chocolate chip cookies are covered with chocolate chips on their surface. Some found this unappealing: one student described the texture as “muddy,” while another wrote down that they thought there was “TOO MUCH chocolate.” Midnight’s cookies were described in a variety of ways. One student described it as their “ideal chocolate chip cookie,” while another wrote “it has a very weird undertone to it, like they mixed dark chocolate and milk chocolate.” Another participant said the cookie tasted like it contained nuts. Crumbl’s chocolate chip cookies have a somewhat crumbly texture from my personal experience—another student also described the texture as powdery, but they also described it as undercooked. On the other hand, some students thought the texture was great; one said the cookie “had really great dough” (Photos/Alex Ngo).
