• Quick – doesn’t take half an hour to prepare, and another ten to make
• Easy – it comes in a handy container! Sometimes it’s even pre-cut!
• Yummy – produces good cookies

Generic Nestle cookies. Other brands come in similar tubes.

Cons

• You can’t eat the dough – contains raw materials. You can eat the homemade dough with an egg substitute (flax).
• Ultimately, it costs more – you can make more batches homemade with the same amount of money used to buy a few of those containers.
• People can get sick from the dough!
• Too tempting and easy – increases chance of cookie snacking
• It doesn’t feel the same when you make them – no real sense of accomplishment

Real dough. Yum!

My Conclusion

Ultimately, in the end, real handmade cookie dough wins. You get a happy feeling when you eat them, knowing that you accomplished a baking feat. It decreases chances of snacking on this delicious treat, because it’s more labor intensive. HOWEVER, that does not mean that buying the pre-made stuff makes you a bad person. I would do the same, if I didn’t have the time to make cookies from scratch. So, in the end, they’re both good. But homemade is just a bit better

Your Conclusion

Now that you’ve heard my position, which side are you on? Leave your thoughts in the comments bellow. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and arguments.

Fondantly Yours,

Pearlflame

As an avid cookie baker, the other half is Christmas cookies.  Like probably 90% of America, my go-to cookie is chocolate chip, but there’s no holiday cookie like a sugar cookie.  And since I’m officially no longer living with my parents, last year I was so excited to go to Williams-Sonoma and pay way too much for my own Christmas-themed cookie cutters!  There’s nothing like an elf, a snowman, and a beautiful snowflake to make you feel grown up.

Sadly, I’m still at that point in my life where it would be weird to have my friends over for a formal holiday party, so I face the dilemma of making cookies and then having them sit around my apartment calling my name.

Caaaaate we’re fresh out of the oven, so waaaaarm and gooey in the center!  Pour yourself a glass of cold milk and eeeeaat meeeee!

I am not even exagerating (you know you hear it too), which is why I take any special event as an excuse to make cookies and bring them out of the house.  In fact, this weekend one of my boyfriend’s coworkers is having a holiday party, so what do you think was the first thing to come to mind??

Now, I’m adamently against store-bought cookie dough because I want to be able to take full credit for any compliments coming my way.  However, it’s been a particularly rough week at work, so I decided for the sake of time management to take a Sandra Lee approach to making cookies for this party than full on Martha Stewart.

It pains me to admit it, but I went to Safeway and bought a tube of pre-made cookie dough.  That night I did a run through, just to make sure they would tast good and I could decorate them nicely.  Even though I have the baking thing down, with my decorating skills, I may as well hire a 5-year-old to do it for me.  I wish I could blame my gimp hand, but really it’s always been this way.

Let me tell you, this was the worst cookie dough I have ever worked with.  Despite how time consuming it was last year to make homemade sugar cookie dough, this pre-made stuff was so frustrating.  It was super sticky when I tried to roll it out, and when I finally got it just right to cut my shapes, the dough either stuck to the parchment paper (despite copius amounts of flour) or broke when I tried to pick it up.

After many attempts, I finally got 6 viable snowmen onto a cookie sheet and put them in the oven.  12 minutes later I was so pumped to pull out the first batch and start decorating!  Sadly, things did not go as planned.  Rather than pulling out 6 beautifully shaped, freshly made snowmen, I got this:

He melted

Seriously, if I had been PMSing, I probably would have cried.  That’s how crazy I am about my cookies turning out perfect.

Needless to say, I will NOT be taking these cookies to the holiday party and I will NOT be buying this pre-made cookie dough crap again.  If Martha can perfectly fold a fitted sheet, make placecard holders, teach children how to set a table, and make Christmas cookies from scratch all in a day, then damnit – so can I!

Good thing the pre-made cookie dough tastes good raw since I have a whole tube of it left…

XOXO

Cate