National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day was observed on Aug. 4, but that’s not why Salt Lake magazine decided to hold a best chocolate chip cookie contest. Like most magazine articles, this one started with a trend. Chocolate chip cookies, especially fresh-baked ones, are a definite trend. Of course, they’re more a mainstay than a trend in sweet-toothed Utah—Debbie Fields’ ubiquitous cookies were headquartered in Park City until she sold the company. We asked Salt Lake magazine readers (that’s you) to send in their favorite bakeries and spots for great cookies and assembled a team of judges to sample the top suggested cookies.
Winner: Süss Cookie Co. The name: “Süss” means sweet or cute in Swiss German. We generally think of cute implying small. “In England, biscuits <cookies> are small and you dip them in tea,” said Stuart Melling. This cookie was certainly not small. Judges liked that it had lots of vanilla and semisweet chips. This was dubbed the “Goldilocks cookie”—not too big, not too sweet, not overpowering. In fact, just right. Well, Val did wish for a few more chips.
The judges had scoresheets with suggestions for qualities to be considered when tasting each cookie—appearance, texture, cookie flavor and chocolate flavor. But in the end, the assessment of cookie excellence is subjective. Theoretically, each cookie quality rated a numerical score, but the only score that really counted was the overall score—one through 10 for each quality. So, the highest possible score was 50. The lowest score was 19. The highest score—44.5—was awarded to Süss’ cookie.
- Süss Cookie Co., Midway, 801-508-4548, susscookieco.com
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