Product Review: The Good Cookie(s)

If you like (or love) oatmeal cookies, the Good Cookies are right up your alley! All five flavors are gluten free/dairy free, delicious and pretty good for you too! Sold by the dozen, they are baked fresh and are the perfect combination of soft 'n chewy + crunchy cookie awesomeness. Not excited yet? Just keep reading...

Flavors: "Pure and Innocent" (Peanut Butter & White Chocolate Chip), "Rais'n Shine" (Good ol' Oatmeal Raisin), "The Choc-o-holic" (Double Chocolate with Chocolate Chips), "Goodie Goodie" (Cranberry & White Chocolate Chip) and their signature, "The Good Cookie" (Peanut butter Chocolate Chip)

Overall Score - 4/5 stars

Taste
Becky: First, go buy a quart of milk (if you don't already have some).  Second, pour yourself a large, ice cold glass.  Next, open your package of The Good Cookies, and just start eating.  Trust me, you will be in cookie heaven.  The taste of each and every of the five flavors of cookies are so unbelievably delish.  My personal favorites?  The Choc-o-holic, and the "Goodie Goodie" (Cranberry White Chip).  All the flavors do have an overtone of peanut butter flavor (it's used in all the cookies - beware, those who are allergic), but it's not overpowering - except  in the Peanut Butter and White Chip flavor, where it's the main attraction! -  and honestly, all have unique enough personalities that the common ingredient makes no difference.  OH yeah - these are called "GOOD" for a reason!

Kelsey: As someone who never liked oatmeal raisin cookies (in fact, I avoided them like the plague as a child) I was awed by these cookies. I wasn;'t totally in love with the general peanut-buttery taste, but it definitely does not detract from the five distinct flavors and isn't pronounced unless you a) eat all of them in one sitting (which I definitely did not do... at all... stop looking at me like that!) or b) are on the lookout for those nutty undertones. My favorite? The straight up Rais'n Shine and the Choc-o-Holic - yum!

Texture
Becky: Homemade.  Need I say more?  Okay, yes, I'd better, because I feel like rhapsodising for a moment.  These cookies have the soft and tender crumb I've been working so hard for in my own kitchen since I was a child.  Each cookie is firm enough to not fall apart, yet delicate enough to literally melt in the mouth.  Oatmeal, along with peanut butter, is another common ingredient, and for me that adds a nice element of interest.  I also feel far less guilty eating these cookies (okay, okay, gorging on them, just keep it quiet) because I can convince myself that they're healthier for me!  I kept thinking I'd like to make ice cream cookie sandwiches with these, and the texture is definitely right for that use: soft and moist, yet firm enough to withstand a little melted ice cream. Additionally, it's important to note that I kept these cookies in my freezer until review time (moment of truth - I ate a bunch before putting them there) and they lasted like a dream with no issues.

Kelsey: The only thing stopping you from believing that you baked these amazing cookies yourself is that your kitchen is not perfumed with the aroma of freshly baked cookies and they aren't quite fresh-from-the-oven-warm, but really, that's it. They're just like homemade (because they are) and as far as I'm concerned, that's a win right there. They're just the right amount of soft & chewy and crunchy-cookie, perfect for light dunking, straight-up devouring or whatever else you could think to use them for.

Storage
Becky: I felt like my Aunt Irma and Uncle Ollie had arrived for a visit when these cookies showed up on my doorstep.  You see, they always brought these really delicious baked goods from a bakery near their house, and I always looked forward to tearing open the tissue paper to see what goodies they'd brought.  The box arrived from The Good Cookies, and lo and behold, inside were two lovely bakery boxes.  And inside the bakery boxes?  Jaunty pink tissue paper.  And inside the paper?  Neatly packaged cookies, with really cool stickers detailing the contents, ingredients, and all the other necessary information.  I've previously divulged that I tucked into a bunch of cookies before freezing them, so some of the plastic wrappers were opened already.  Guess what?  It didn't matter to the freshness of the cookies at all - they stayed fresh as the day they were baked, and as tasty, too.  The only thing I'd hope to see happen in the future is a resealable wrapper, for those who aren't gluttonous like me.  Who needs to worry about storage, though, when these won't really last that long anyway?! 

Kelsey: Bakery boxes. Pink tissue paper. What else do you need?! Oh, right, cookies. So of the remaining half that I didn't inhale (ahem), I put a few in a ziploc-type bag in the freezer, a few just in a baggie on the counter and left the rest in their unsealed cellophane wrapper (blasphemy, I know) and guess what? They all held up almost equally well. The freezer didn't work for me at all because when I want a cookie, I am not about to wait for it to slowly and delicately defrost but I also recognize the horrors of microwaving a frozen cookie (or at least, I do now!), and while those in the sealed baggie did stay fresh after two weeks (my mandatory waiting time for baked goods), those left in the opened cellophane held up remarkably well. Obviously you probably won't just leave them out the way I did, but even if you do, they'll stay pretty darn fresh for at least a week. Wowza!

Availability
Becky:
The Good Cookies website offers all the cookie flavors, sold by the dozen.  They may also be found in various stores in the Los Angeles, CA area (including Malibu), and two stores on Long Island, NY.  Hopefully word will spread (I've already started alerting my local stores) because these are a worthwhile addition to the gluten free bakery section of any market.  Oh, heck - they're a worthwhile addition to ANY section - unqualified - of the baked goods aisle!

Cost
On the website The Good Cookies sell for $8 per dozen.  I think that for the home-baked quality and gorgeous custom packaging of these delectable (and generously sized) cookies, that's a pretty decent deal at sixty-seven cents per cookie!  Shipping always adds more to the cost, if you are unlucky enough to not live in L.A. or Long Island, so be sure to budget for the added expense.  Overall, definitely one of the most cost-efficient gluten free cookies I've tested to date.  And well worth it!