The 2018 Cookie Mission

I’m lucky enough to have lived with my best friend for the first three and a half years of my New York life. We moved in together having only met a few short months before on Birthright and just going off of our mutual friend’s assurance that we’d be great roommates.

Over those three and a half years, our lives intertwined together in so many ways. We’d spend weekends throwing little dance parties for ourselves, tossing clothes back and forth across the apartment while we got ready for nights out, and indulging in Sundays on the couch binge-watching terrible reality television.

So when Ashley told me she’d be moving out to live with her boyfriend, I was pretty sad. Of course, I was thrilled she’d found someone she was ready to take that step with but I thought I was losing my partner in crime. So it’s a good thing that she’s one smart cookie and had already cooked up an idea to make sure we still got our quality time.

Starting in January of 2018, we would begin our mission to investigate the best chocolate chip cookies in all of New York City. Once a month, we picked one of the pre-established bakeries that I had chosen prior to the mission, and we’d rate the cookie based on a detailed list of criteria. Not only were we engaging in our favorite activity (eating together) but we used our time to explore our city and have that quality time we missed so dearly.

As the months wore on and we became even more invested, those dates with each other became a bright spot in our months. I knew what location we’d be going to so we’d plan other activities to try and get the most of each day, and many times, we were delightfully surprised with what we stumbled into. The cookies were, of course, a fantastically delicious part of the whole thing but I can honestly say what I’ll remember most about this is wandering around with one of my favorite people and all of the little memories we created.

The Rules

1: Only one bakery per month.

2: Visit one bakery per borough.

3: No chain bakeries

4: Chocolate chip cookies only

5: Ratings had to be done privately with a grading scale of 1-10 in the categories of Cookie to Chocolate Ratio, Texture, Sweet to Salty Ratio, Freshness, and Price to Quality Ratio

The Findings

January – Milk and Cookies (Lower East Side, Manhattan) – Score: 7.7

This little bakery was charming and crowded with patrons of a Greenwich Village food tour. We bit into our respective cookies and tried not to reveal our delight to the other

February – City Bakery (Union Square, Manhattan) – Score: 7.0

City Bakery, a New York Staple, buzzed with activity and had a line wrapping around their circular order counter. Both of us enjoyed this giant cookie but felt that the nearly $5 price tag was too steep.

March – Baked (Red Hook, Brooklyn) – Score: 8.7

Everything about this day was magical. The cookie at Baked was a perfect balance of crispy outside and chewy inside, with thick chocolate chunks peppered throughout. Looking back, we probably should have given this cookie a 10 out of 10. Seeing Jessa Johansson from HBO’s Girls there was an added bonus.

April – Martha’s Country Bakery (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) – Score: 5.9

This cookie was our only cheat meal on a two week cleanse, so our anticipation was quite high. What we received at Martha’s was a travesty: two sad, flat, clearly microwaved cookies that couldn’t be picked up without disintegrating. We ate them out of duty, sad that we would have to wait an entire month for redemption.

May – Sweet Corner Bakeshop (West Village, Manhattan) – Score: 8.5

This was one of the highest rated places on our list and it didn’t disappoint. A perfect size, an almost perfect ratio of chocolate to cookie, and that chewy texture we both love. Not to mention their other pastries were out of this world.

June – Chip (Astoria, Queens) – Score: 7.7

Chip cookies are thiccc, like a cookie and a muffin made love and had this as a baby. The middle felt undercooked, kind of in the way where your mom would be nervous you might get salmonella from eating raw eggs.

July – Pink Canary Bakery (Long Island City, Queens) – Score: 7.9

At $2 each, it had a great value for a yummy cookie. If you are in Long Island City and need to satisfy your sweet tooth, Pink Canary Bakery is a great choice.

August – Levain Bakery (Upper West Side, Manhattan) – Score: 8.7

For those of you outside of New York City, Levain is legendary, with a perpetual line and frequent sellouts. The cookie lives up to its hype. Enough said.

September – L.a.SweetsNY (Harlem, Manhattan) – Score: 7.2

Here’s the deal – this bakery is counting toward our “Bronx” borough. We know, Harlem is not the Bronx. But let me explain. We went to the pre-determined Bronx bakery, and all they had were those crunchy yellow cookies with chocolate chips on top that no one actually eats. We tried three more places and no dice. We even bought one of those sad excuses for cookies, but we could not bring ourselves to grade them. L.a.Sweets was the one closest true bakery we could find. Cute place, cute cookie.

October – Mark’s Bake Shoppe (Staten Island) – Score: 5.3

After the long drive to Staten Island, our eyes were larger than our stomachs. Once we arrived at this bakery, we ordered an Italian rainbow cookie and a cupcake along with our staple chocolate chippers. The chocolate chip cookie was disappointing, so it was a good thing that we tried the other offerings. The Italian rainbow cookie may have been the best one I have ever tasted.

November – Maman (Tribeca, Manhattan) – Score: 7.1

Maman is oddly inside a Paper Source storefront. This might have been the only time we were not on the same page with our scores; Ashley thought the cookie was great, but I was less enthused. Ashley finished the rest of my cookie, letting no crumb go to waste.

December – Breads Bakery (Union Square, Manhattan) – Score: 8.9

It was bittersweet going into our final cookie, but the cookie at Breads Bakery was only sweet. The texture was near perfect, with a chewy center and a crispy edge. There was a generous but not overpowering amount of chocolate chips throughout. The cookies tasted fresh, baked that morning. Though the large, flat cookies were not as Insta-friendly as some of the others, this ended up being our highest rated cookie.