Yes he most certainly does! After eating cookies all day every day, Cookie Monster certainly knows what makes a good cookie. While I may not be as qualified or experienced as he, I do have some particular criteria of my own.
Criteria
Number of Chocolate Chips: Unlike many of my peers in the class, I do not prefer to have an overabundance of chocolate chips in a cookie. Too many makes the cookie heavy in taste and tends to make me feel like it is “sitting in the bottom of my stomach” for the rest of the day. Too few make it nothing but dough with some sweetness but that which fails to meet my expectations for a chocolate chip cookie. For the standard size cookie, one that fits in the palm of my hand though is not the size of it, 5-7 chocolate chips is preferred, for anything above or below that range is too few and too many respectively. I also prefer the chocolate to be soft and gooey rather than hard and crunchy.
Dough: When eating a chocolate chip cookie the dough must compliment the gooeyness of the chocolate. It must be chewy, not hard. However, it cannot be gooey like the chocolate, but must have some sort of firmness about it. I actually prefer that the dough gets stuck in my teeth after eating it, so it must therefore have some sticky quality to it. Again, for this to happen there must be some balance between rigidity and softness. It also must be sweet and golden brown.
Scent: As long as it has a sweet smell I am happy. This is a very simple standard that is easily made by any cookie.
Freshness: Again, this is an easy quality to judge. The cookie is either fresh or old, and when you eat it you can certainly tell the difference. The old cookie will have a stale taste and will probably be harder than what it should be. A fresh cookie will have a strong scent, a perfect combination between softness and hardness, and a taste free of “staleness.” All in all, the cookie is either fresh or not.
Warmth: Does the cookie have the sense of having been taken right out of the oven or has it obviously been out long enough for it to cool down? This is probably the most stringent criteria I have. The best cookies are those that are kept warm and typically you can only find a cookie in such a state if it has just come out of the oven. Generally, these standards are met when the cookie is homemade, which, when made correctly, always tastes better than store-bought. However, some restaurants do warm their cookies as they are displayed to the customer. This is either a pass or fail criteria, and one that can lead to its overall success or failure.
Evaluation
While I was at Schnucks grocery shopping this past weekend I decided to stop by the bakery and grab a cookie so I could evaluate it with my given criteria and then report on whether it lived up to my standards or not.
Number of Chocolate Chips: This cookie was perfectly sized as it fit just within the palm of my hand. It also had seven chocolate chips which is enough to satisfy me with a cookie of that size. It was a perfect balance of dough and chocolate which is a quality that cannot be overlooked. I was very happy. Because the cookie fit within my range of chocolate chips and also met my size restriction, it was a perfect combination that did not leave me with a heavy feeling in my stomach or feeling groggy. The cookie gets an A+ for this criterion.
Dough: The appearance of the cookie was lacking a bit in that the cookie was a little too white and gray rather than golden brown. As a result, the cookie was a little too soft and did not have the firmness that provides for the “sticky” quality I desire. Simply put, there was not enough rigidity to the cookie. However, the cookie was not gooey either and was closer to what I would like rather that what I did not want in a cookie. It was also especially sweet. The cookie gets a B- for this criterion.
Scent: The cookie had a very sweet and fresh scent to it. It did not smell as if it had been sitting on the display shelf all day, but that it had been newly baked. The cookie gets an A for this criterion.
Freshness: Because the cookie had a fresh aroma, I assumed that it had been freshly made, which it had. Upon eating the cookie I immediately noticed that it was not stale by any means. It did not have the stale taste, and as I had already noted when examining my previous criteria, did not have a stale smell. The cookie also was softer than I would have liked which supports the idea that the cookie is fresher than it is stale. I even asked the clerk behind the counter when this last batch had been made and she told me that it had come out of the oven three hours ago. This was relatively new in my opinion. The cookie gets an A- for this criterion.
Warmth: This cookie, because it had been sitting out of the oven for three hours, it had lost its warmth. At the Schnucks bakery they do not warm their baked goods. This was less than optimal. However, because the cookies are kept in isolated shelving, they were above room temperature. Nonetheless, the cookie gets a C- for this criterion.
Overall, I was very pleased with this cookie and would give it a B grade. It excelled in size and number of chocolate chips as well as its fresh taste and sweet smell, but failed in the warmth criterion which is very difficult to meet. With all that considered, I would recommend this cookie only with the general warning that it will be neither warm nor chewy, but overall is satisfactory.
Would Cookie Monster be pleased? I think so.