Just like mom used to make

Gritty and dry are not words normally associated with a delicious chocolate chip cookie, but that is how Consumer Reports described most of the cookies tested in its December issue, including Target’s Market Pantry and Archer Farm’s brands.

Consumer Reports compared 18 cookies and rated one as excellent and only three as very good. Fourteen others were rated good, but when describing the cookies taste, the words gritty and dry were used extensively. Market Pantry cookies were characterized as, “crunchy and slightly dry, small gritty chips,” and Archer Farms was described as “large, chewy, soft and gritty with big soft chips, with hints of dried fruit flavors.” Market Pantry was singled out as being the least expensive on a per serving basis, the description of Archer Farm’s sounded a little more appealing, even though any time the word gritty is used in the description of an edible product it is never good.

Consumer Reports said trained tasters evaluated the cookies and determined the best came from a small bakery called Tate’s Bake Shop on the Eastern end of Long Island, New York in the town of Southampton. It products are sold in such pricy supermarkets as Whole Foods, Balducci’s, Bristol Farms and HEB’s upscale Central Market stores. The other top rated cookies were from Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway and are prepared in a different manner (baked on-site) than the packaged varieties that didn’t far as well.