Review: Toll House Remix Cookie Doughs Put A Spin On Classic Chocolate Chip

When you think of chocolate chip cookie brands, which ones come to mind? Pillsbury? Maybe. Great Value? Unlikely. Toll House? Who could forget about Toll House? The brand has populated refrigerated aisles for years, encompassing not only the classic chocolate chip dough, but also cookie-inspired spinoffs, including its own ice cream sandwiches, which I tried for another ranking. Although it has some other products, most people associate the label with its tried-and-true break-and-bake chocolate chip cookie dough, and it's unsurprising that it's many people's go-to when the craving for homemade-ish treats strikes.

However, Toll House has recently put aside its classic and beloved refrigerated cookie dough recipe to release a more fun rendition: the Remix series. These three refrigerated cookie dough products, which come in Inside Out Cookie With White Candy Morsels, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, and Brown Butter Chocolate Chip flavors, offer a more gourmet take on a store-bought favorite. But are they worth buying? To find out, I fired up my oven, grabbed my baking mitts, and baked these cookies as directed on the packaging to see how their taste and texture stack up against the beloved Toll House original recipe, as well as how they compare to other store-bought and homemade chocolate chip cookies I've enjoyed before.

Some recommendations are based on first-hand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer/distributor/etc.

Quality control is a major component of testing anything. In order to give these Toll House cookies equal opportunity to succeed, I kept the dough as chilled as possible — leaving it in my fridge until the oven was preheated to the 350 degrees Fahrenheit listed on the packaging. The cookies all had the same instruction: Bake for 10 to 11 minutes. I erred on the lower side here, as I would rather the cookies be underbaked rather than overbaked. I let them sit on the baking sheet for a few minutes to firm up after they exited the oven, then transferred them to a wire rack to cool them completely before tasting. 

I have high standards for cookies in general (I tried 16 varieties of store-bought chocolate chip cookies – so can you blame me?), but I had a hunch that a refrigerated dough wasn't going to come close to my homemade recipe. As such, I evaluated the taste and texture of these cookies compared to other refrigerated doughs I've had in the past, including the classic Toll House recipe. The cookies should not be overly sweet, balance softness and crispness well, and offer a reliable and easy bake that doesn't stress out the person who's making them. Since the instructions were the same for each batch, though, I quickly realized ease-of-preparation wasn't going to be as big a factor here as flavor and texture would be.

These three new Chocolate Chip Remix Cookie Doughs are permanent additions to the lineup and are available at grocery stores nationwide for around $3.96 per package, though prices vary based on location. Each pack contains 20 squares of dough.

These Inside Out Cookies, which feature a chocolate base and white chocolate chips, are a gimmick. Plain and simple. For one, I think we can all agree that white chocolate chips in a cookie are pointless. They're sweet, sure, but they're not really chocolate, and the only thing that they add to a cookie, aside from an occasional pop of white, is an annoying, cloying flavor. That is certainly the case with the white candy morsels (not "chocolate") in each of the dough squares.

As I expected, this cookie was sweet. It wasn't, spit-it-out-immediately or don't-tell-my-dentist sweet, but it was one of two that I sampled that I had to put down after a bite because my palate was overloaded. The white chocolate, paired with an already sweet base, was to blame. Plus, the chocolate flavor of the cookie didn't taste high-quality by any means (that said, we're talking store-bought cookie dough, not gourmet).

I will give Toll House credit for the texture of these cookies, though. They were pliable and almost brownie-like. However, hough they lacked the dark, fudgey flavor of a real brownie. It's like the cookie was simply wearing a brownie costume. I get Toll House wanting to be novel for novelty's sake, but I would have preferred it if it was a bit more intentional with the direction it was trying to take this cookie in.

I could wax poetic about how much I love brown butter as an ingredient. This is your sign to start using it more often, whether in sauces, spreads, bakes, or pasta dishes. It's long been a staple of the restaurant world and is made by toasting butter's milk solids to bring out a darker, hazelnutty, and deeper butteriness. As such, it's a great addition to cookies ... provided that it's well-executed.

Unfortunately, my fears with this Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookie dough were very much realized. A brown butter cookie needs a balance between sweetness and brown butter flavor. Too often, the sweetness eclipses the nuance of the brown butter, negating the purpose of adding it to the dough. This Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookie was not as sweet as I remember the Nestlé Toll House dough being, but the sugar content could still have been dialed down a couple of notches to bring out that brown butter flavor. Aside from a slightly darker color than other store-bought cookie doughs (which one of our writers tried and ranked), you wouldn't be able to tell this dough is brown-butter-based. The aroma isn't hazelnutty, and it doesn't give the impression that whoever made it put any more care into it than the rest of the mass-produced cookies.

My other qualm with this cookie is its appearance. The cookies retained a square imprint as they baked, which was not the case for the other doughs I tried. If you brought these cookies to a potluck and tried to pass them off as homemade, you'd probably get some suspicious looks.

You may not like oatmeal raisin cookies, but what about the less divisive oatmeal chocolate chip? I may get a lot of flak for this, but I strongly believe oatmeal belongs in cookies. I am a veritable oatmeal lover, so part of this opinion stems from my adoration for the breakfast food, but as a baker, I can also appreciate that the oatmeal adds softness and pliability to doughs because it absorbs moisture. Therefore, if you're after a soft cookie (and want to level up your cookie ice cream sandwiches), you should reach for an oatmeal cookie — like Toll House's. 

Out of all the raw dough that I touched, this one was the least sticky, and I suspect this is because the plentiful oatmeal flakes absorbed all of that liquid. The squares did not bake like the square-imprinted Brown Butter Cookies, nor were they as oddly textured as the Inside Out Cookies. The description says that the batter contains cinnamon, but I didn't detect this until I'd had about two cookies. The primary notes I was able to discern included a plentiful portion of chocolate chips and a chewy cookie base. 

I would recommend underbaking them, perhaps for around 9½ minutes, to almost amplify that brown sugar flavor and ensure a molten texture. I happily finished the four that I baked in no time at all.

Going into this review, I had a feeling that I wouldn't find a store-bought dough that was going to be able to replace my tried-and-true favorite homemade cookie recipe. However, since oatmeal, brown butter, and cocoa powder are all excellent in cookies in general, I figured that, at least, these cookies would be a general upgrade from the standard Toll House chocolate chip cookie — and I was right. 

Out of the bunch, the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip was my favorite, thanks to its structure and ratio of chocolate to oatmeal to cookie base. While the cinnamon flavor felt like an afterthought, I thought that the execution of this variety was better than the two other Remix flavors. 

The Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookie dough, while masterful in concept, was a bit too sweet for my liking, and its cloyingness overshadowed the hazelnutty undertones I was looking for. The Inside Out cookie dough was a fun idea, and brownie lovers would likely appreciate it, but the execution was not perfect, and I could have done without the white morsels. I wouldn't say no if I were offered any of these cookies, but I wouldn't go out and buy the Inside Out or Brown Butter cookie doughs. 

Overall, these were some of the better store-bought cookie doughs I've had. I think that folks who want to get creative with their store-bought dough, but don't want to really abandon the take-and-bake concept, will appreciate these new products.