6 Toll House Cookie Dough Flavors, Ranked

When you're in the mood for a cookie, there are a few routes one might reasonably take. The first would be to make your own cookies from scratch, be they brown butter chocolate chip cookies or buttery sugar cookies. Another option — one arguably less delicious, though — would be to buy a pack of Chips Ahoy! or Oreos and call it a day. Then there's the in-between option, which would be to purchase a package of Toll House cookie dough and bake the cookies yourself. This option spares you the need to make from-scratch cookie dough, offering the convenience of ready-to-bake dough that still delivers some darn tasty cookies with that melty fresh-from-the-oven feel.

Of course, with so many cookie dough options out there, it can be hard to know which one to choose. To make your cookie decisions a little easier, I've baked up and sampled six different Toll House cookie dough flavors, ranking them in an effort to pinpoint the very best one. When ranking these cookie dough flavors, I based my decisions on the texture of the baked cookies, how well the inclusions worked in a given cookie, and, ultimately, just how tasty the cookie ended up being.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

I am not here to deny the deliciousness of a peanut butter cookie, but of the six cookie flavors that I tried for this ranking, Toll House's peanut butter chocolate chip cookies were the weakest link. This isn't to say that these cookies tasted bad, but stacked up against so many other tastier flavors, these PB ones very much paled in comparison.

The first thing I noticed about these cookies was that the dough itself was a lot softer than the other doughs, which meant that the cookies baked up very soft. To me, the perfect cookie is soft in the middle and a little crispy around the edges, but this flavor simply yielded very soft, almost fall-apart cookies, which isn't my favorite texture. But, texture aside, I also found the flavor of these peanut butter cookies to be a little too one-note. They were supposed to be peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but I could only taste peanut butter (or PB chips) bite in and bite out. Obviously, this isn't a bad thing for those peanut butter lovers out there, but I wanted these cookies to have a bit more of a chocolatey punch to contrast against all of that nutty PB richness.

Sugar cookies no doubt have an important place in the cookie world. Ideal for those who don't care for chocolate or for decorating around the holidays, sugar cookies are somewhat of a blank slate, really allowing the simple flavors of butter and sugar to shine. I'm certainly not going to deny the deliciousness of a classic sugar cookie, but I would be lying if I said that they weren't a bit boring or unexciting compared to other cookie flavors out there.

Enter Toll House's sugar cookie dough, a flavor that offers up exactly what you'd expect from plain old sugar cookie dough ... and that's more of a weakness than a strength. These cookies spread a decent amount in the oven, resulting in very thin cookies that leaned more into chewy-crispy texture territory than soft and fluffy. I thought that these cookies, flavor, texture, and all, were simply fine. A classic sugar cookie no doubt, and one that would be good for decorating with frosting. However, as-is, the sugar cookie flavor definitely paled compared to others on this list, simply because it's a bit too plain and a bit too forgettable. 

Chocolate chip reigns supreme in the world of cookies, and for very good reason. The contrast between soft, buttery cookie and rich, melty chocolate chips is hard to beat, though not all chocolate chip cookies are created equal. Some are thick and loaded with chips and chunks, whereas others are more sparing with the chocolate inclusions, leaning more toward a thin, chewy, and crispy texture.

As for where Toll House's chocolate chip cookies fall on the cookie spectrum, I'd say they're somewhere in the middle, leaning a little more toward thin and chewy, and not too heavy on the chocolate chips. These were some solid cookies — classic, sweet, chocolatey, chewy — just about anything you'd reasonably expect from premade chocolate chip cookie dough. However, I did find myself longing for a little more chocolate, and I wish that the cookies didn't flatten out quite as much as they did. I love a thin and chewy cookie just as much as the next person, but when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, a little bulk and thickness never hurts. This is a good middle-ground cookie dough flavor, not the best in Toll House's lineup but a classic nevertheless. 

Peanuts or perhaps pecans may be the first type of nut to come to mind when thinking of cookies, but macadamia nuts are not to be overlooked. The creamy, crunchy, rich macadamia nut doesn't have that typical nuttiness to it (especially compared to something like a peanut or almond), making it a great cookie mix-in for those who want the crunch without the nuttiness. And, there's really no better chocolate to pair such a creamy, rich nut with than the equally rich and creamy white chocolate chip.

Toll House has pretty much nailed the white chocolate chip macadamia nut formula here, resulting in cookies that are irresistibly delicious. The cookie itself sort of takes a backseat to the inclusions, allowing the sheer richness of both the white chocolate chip chunks and the macadamia nuts to really shine. My only complaint is that I wish there was a little more balance between chip and nut, because most bites were more white chocolate-forward than macadamia nut-forward. Otherwise, these cookies had a nice chewiness to them and a rich flavor thanks to the chips and nuts, and they really stand out amid other flavors on this list that are very milk chocolate- or peanut butter-forward.

If there's one cookie dough flavor on this list that was undeniably loaded, it would be Pecan Turtle Delight. These Toll House cookies promised semi-sweet chocolate chips, pecans, and caramel, though I was admittedly dubious as to whether they would be able to deliver. And, much to my delight, they were positively chock-full of all the goodies, all wrapped up in a soft, slightly chewy cookie.

While I can see this cookie flavor being a bit polarizing because of the pecans, I do think it is one of the absolute best in Toll House's lineup. The pecans add a certain richness and crunch, while the chocolate chips add the perfect hit of rich, slightly bitter chocolatey goodness. The real star of these cookies, however, was the caramel. The sticky-sweet stuff was baked right into the center of each cookie, meaning that when I broke a freshly baked cookie in half, there was a thick string of warm, melty caramel waiting for me. The combination of caramel, chocolate, and pecans was simply delicious, and my only complaint is that these cookies were almost a touch too rich (if that even truly counts as a complaint). 

I'll admit that I questioned just how different Toll House's Chocolate Chip Lovers cookie dough flavor could be to plain old Chocolate Chip, to the point where I really didn't expect this flavor to stick out to me or leave a lasting impression. However, just opening the cookie dough package and seeing the sheer amount of chocolate chips and chunks certainly had me intrigued, and once I saw how the Chocolate Chip Lovers cookies baked up, I was completely sold.

There are two main reasons why this flavor is taking the top spot in Toll House's lineup. For starters, the texture of this cookie was impeccable, and I mean bakery-level quality levels of impeccable. These cookies baked up so perfectly, remaining surprisingly thick and not flattening out quite like the other cookies on this list did. The other reason is that the combined effort of the chocolate chunks and chocolate chips made for an impossibly rich and absolutely delicious cookie, especially when combined with that thick cookie dough base. I just can't imagine how refrigerated cookie dough could get any better than this, and that alone makes the Chocolate Chip Lovers cookie dough flavor an obvious winner in general, and an obvious choice for the first-place slot on this list.

When ranking these Toll House cookie dough flavors, my decisions mostly came down to how good I thought a cookie tasted and how well I found it to work as a whole, considering texture, inclusions, flavor, etc. None of the cookies in this lineup were bad, so ranking them really did come down to a subjective standpoint. I chose the last-place cookie dough, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, because I found the dough to be a little too soft texture-wise and the flavor a little too one-note. Meanwhile, the first-place cookie dough flavor, Chocolate Chip Lovers, knocked it out of the park in terms of perfect cookie texture and plenty of mix-ins. 

As far as baking ease or quickness, I didn't take either of these into ranking consideration because they were all incredibly similar (if not identical). The cookie dough was already portioned in the packages (except for in the sugar cookie tub) so it really was a matter of breaking off a chunk, placing it on a baking sheet, and baking for anywhere from 10 to 13 minutes. Some of the cookies were portioned larger and therefore called for slightly longer bake times, but as far as ease of baking and quickness, all of the cookies fared about the same. So, ranking the cookie doughs truly did come down to how well the texture turned out post-bake and how good the cookie tasted.