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The Spruce Eats / Lecia Landis
There are few luxuries better than a freshly baked cookie, and luckily there are lots of options when it comes to doughs that can be stored in the refrigerator or freezer, ready for a preheated oven.
But not all store-bought cookie doughs are the same. From different flavors to various sizes and shapes, the varieties available can be overwhelming. Is chocolate chip different from chocolate chunk? Will one sugar cookie dough turn out softer than another? And which is best for cutouts? Out of all the store-bought cookie doughs out there, we found the ones most deserving of your oven.
Best Chocolate Chip
Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Bake-At-Home Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough
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Goldbelly
If a baking session with the Barefoot Contessa herself is out of your price range, opt for her chocolate chunk cookies instead. Three dozen ready-to-bake cookies can arrive right to your door in just a few days, thanks to Gold Belly’s quick shipping, complete with dry ice to keep things cold. Then it’s only around 20 minutes from the freezer to the oven to your plate.
One of the best things about frozen store-bought cookie dough is how long it lasts. Ina’s cookies will keep for up to four months in the freezer.
The Chocolate Chunk cookies are made with all the traditional chocolate chip cookie ingredients like eggs, butter, granulated sugar, light brown sugar, flour, salt, vanilla, and, of course, coarsely chopped dark chocolate for a warm, sweet, and slightly bitter chocolatey bite. While we’d opt for this dough, you can also choose 12, 24, or 36 of Ina’s Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk or Oatmeal Raisin, or a mix of the three.
Price at time of publish: $100
Number of Cookies Included: 36 | Allergens: Dairy, eggs, wheat, gluten, soy
Best Seasonal
Pillsbury Ready to Bake Hearts Sugar Cookie Dough
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Walmart
Pillsbury wastes no time each Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas season releasing its festive ready-to-bake sugar cookie dough. This year’s Valentine's Day cookie features two red and one pink heart inside the round cookie.
There is virtually no mess when baking these. Just place them on a cookie sheet, set the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes. The cookies flatten out perfectly to hold the shape of the pictures on them but are still soft and moist.
Price at time of publish: $4
Number of Cookies Included: 20 | Allergens: Gluten, eggs
Best Sugar
Cheryl’s Cut-Out Cookie Dough
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Cherylâs
For a treat with fewer ingredients than others, sometimes sugar cookies can come out dry and hard, even if you buy the dough pre-made. That’s not the case with Cheryl’s Cut-Out Cookie Dough, which comes in a 2-pound tub, ready to be rolled into cookies or rolled out for cookie cutters. When rolled out to a 1/4-inch thickness, each tub makes about 24 cookies.
Bake in the oven for 12 to 14 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for soft and moist sugar cookies ready for icing or sprinkles, or to be eaten plain. Cheryl’s also sells a convenient cookie dough and buttercream duo, so the only things you'll need are cookie cutters and an icing spatula, and you’ll be ready for holiday cut-out cookies.
Price at time of publish: $40
Number of Cookies Included: 48 | Allergens: Gluten, milk, eggs
Best Snickerdoodle
Tiff’s Treats Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough
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Williams Sonoma
Tiff’s Treats have been famous since founder Tiffany Taylor started making cookies while in school at the University of Texas in Austin. The snickerdoodle is only one of many flavors, but it ships frozen so you can have freshly baked sugar and molasses cookies topped with "snickerdust," aka sugar and cinnamon. Unopened, the frozen cookie dough is good for a year.
A set of a dozen is available, but you can also order two dozen. To bake straight from the freezer, place them in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 13 to 15 minutes, or 12 to 14 if the dough has thawed. They should have slightly brown edges and a soft, warm center.
Price at time of publish: $30 and $50
Number of Cookies Included: 12 or 24 | Allergens: Eggs, gluten, milk
Best Peanut Butter
Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
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Target
Even though peanut butter cookies have a very distinct flavor, there are quite a few ways to make them at home. From crunchy and sweet, to soft and chewy, to three ingredients and quick, there’s a PB cookie type you can make for any craving.
But sometimes even an egg, peanut butter, and sugar are too much to deal with. Have no fear, because there is a store-bought cookie dough option that PB lovers will drool over. Reese’s Peanut Butter cups are already a beloved candy, but you can also have them in cookie form.
Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough is sold in packs of 24 pre-rolled cookies. Simply place them on a cookie sheet, press them down with a fork (not necessary, but creates the iconic checkerboard look), bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 14 minutes, and voila. Press Hershey Kisses into the middle when they are still warm, for Peanut Butter Blossom cookies, or drizzle with melted chocolate. This cookie dough isn’t just for baking, either. It is safe to eat raw, and it can be used to make peanut butter truffles and other no-bake desserts.
Price at time of publish: $4
Number of Cookies Included: 24 | Allergens: Gluten, peanuts, egg
Best Chocolate
Sweet Lorens Fudgy Brownie Cookie Dough
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Amazon
Out of all the traditional cookie flavors, chocolate lovers have only a few that put chocolate in the spotlight. Sweet Loren’s Fudgy Brownie Cookie Dough features sugar, chocolate, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, molasses, sea salt, oat flour, and chocolate chunks, so you’re guaranteed a huge chocolate flavor in each bite. The cookie dough comes in a package of 12 pre-rolled dough balls that are safe to eat raw, since they are made without eggs and with a certified gluten-free oat flour and tapioca and potato starch blend.
Price at time of publish: $5
Number of Cookies Included: 12 | Allergens: None
Best Oatmeal
David’s Preformed Oatmeal Raisin Frozen Cookie Dough
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Davidâs
The first David’s Cookies shop opened in New York City in 1979, and since then it has been offering a multitude of different types of cookies to anyone with a sweet tooth worldwide. Sometimes oatmeal raisin cookies get a bad rap, compared to other flavors like chocolate chip, but David’s can sway any skeptical cookie lover. In fact, almost 1,300 reviews on the company’s website give this dough a full 5 stars.
Shipped frozen via two-day delivery are 14 pounds of pre-rolled cookies when you order from David’s. You have the option to select two boxes of Oatmeal Raisin, or Oatmeal Raisin plus another flavor like Candy, Peanut Butter Blast, or Snickerdoodle. In two days, you will have a freezer full of dough ready to make at a moment's notice.
Price at time of publish: $48
Number of Cookies Included: 96 | Allergens: Egg, milk, soy, gluten
Best Dairy-Free
Cappello's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
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Instacart
Anyone eating dairy-free or vegan can easily have warm, straight-from-the-oven cookies at their disposal, thanks to Cappello’s. The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough can be sliced and baked into 13 individual cookies or spread into a cookie cake. Anyone with a nut allergy should be aware that it is made with almond flour and coconut oil, but all other ingredients are grain-, soy-, and dairy-free.
Bake for 10 minutes in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven, or even eat raw from the fridge. This dough can easily be stored frozen, too.
Price at time of publish: $14
Number of Cookies Included: 13 | Allergens: Almonds, Coconut
Best Gluten-Free
Immaculate Baking Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Cookie Dough
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Instacart
Wheat is a main ingredient in many types of cookie dough, but if you’re looking for a store-bought option that is gluten-free, Immaculate Baking has you covered. The pack of 12 pre-rolled cookies contains rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch in place of wheat flour.
Thanks to the semisweet chocolate pieces, powdered sugar, eggs, molasses, cocoa, and sea salt, the cookies come out of a 325-degree Fahrenheit oven in 15 to 18 minutes, gooey and full of chocolate, with no gluten to be found, so everyone can enjoy.
Price at time of publish: $6
Number of Cookies Included: 12 | Allergens: Coconut, Soy, Eggs
Best Edible
Deux Cookie Dough
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Deux
For some, cookie dough is better than freshly baked cookies, and luckily there are companies out there that make safe-to-eat dough without the ingredients in the raw kind that can make you sick. Deux is one of those and has flavors like Chocolate Chip—made with oat flour, maple syrup, chocolate chips, coconut sugar, cashew butter, almond butter, vanilla, flaxseed, and salt—as well as Brownie Batter, Peanut Butter Cup, Birthday Cake, S’mores, Pink Frosting Cookie Dough, and more. Spoon the dough directly from the jar, or you can bake the dough into cookies, too.
Price at time of publish: $16
Number of Cookies Included: 12 | Allergens: Almonds, cashews, Coconut
Ready-to-bake cookie dough is super convenient, and thanks to Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Bake-At-Home Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough, it can taste professionally made, too. For a dairy-free dough, pick up Cappello's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, which is made with almond flour, coconut oil, sugar, maple syrup, vanilla, and sea salt.
What to Look for in Store-Bought Cookie Dough
Ingredients
Many cookies have main ingredients, like flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla, but when buying ready-to-bake cookie dough online or in a store, be sure to check the nutritional information. Fun flavors are being created all the time—like a nutty chocolate chip or candy-filled—and that may mean that common allergens like tree nuts, gluten, soy, and others are being used.
Baking Instructions
You can typically count on cookies being baked in an oven at a temperature of 325 or 350 degrees Fahrenheit, but that 25-degree difference is more than you may think. A higher temperature will cook the outside of the cookie more quickly, while a lower temperature will cook the outside and inside more evenly. For best results, follow the instructions on the packaging, as baking from frozen or refrigerated can yield different results.
Shipping Methods
Before being baked, ready-made cookie dough should be stored refrigerated or frozen, to keep bacteria from growing. Companies will almost always ship dough in different ways to keep it cold, like frozen with dry ice or in a styrofoam container. When ordering cookie dough online, check for shipping times. Some places offer faster shipping than others.
FAQs
Is store-bought cookie dough safe to eat before baking?
Some cookie dough you can buy online or at a store is labeled “safe to eat raw,” but others are not. While it’s common to have a little bit of the dough before baking, if the flour isn’t heat-treated, and the eggs are not pasteurized, there could be bacteria inside. That can lead to food-borne illnesses. Washing your hands before and after handling cookie dough, and baking the dough before eating it, can decrease the risk of getting sick.
Can you make store-bought cookie dough better?
It can be pretty easy to add anything you’d like into store-bought cookie dough if it is refrigerated or thawed from frozen. Even if it is sold pre-rolled, you can still add the dough to a bowl and combine it, once it is softened. Examples include adding your favorite nuts to a chocolate chip cookie dough, candy or Oreo pieces to a peanut butter cookie dough, or sprinkles to a sugar cookie dough.
Can you bake store-bought cookie dough in an air fryer?
Baking cookie dough in an air fryer is as easy as—if not easier than—in an oven. Make sure the device is set to the right temperature and that the cookies are spaced out appropriately. Keep in mind that because the space inside air fryers is smaller than in an oven, it will take less time for the cookies to bake. It never hurts to check the dough a few minutes in, but you should prepare for the cookies to take about half the time on the packaging to bake.
How We Selected
To compile this list, our team of editors spent hours researching the best store-bought cookie doughs on the market, evaluating their key features—like ingredients, baking instructions, and price—in addition to reviews from customers and other trusted sources. We then used this research to assign a star rating from one to five (five being the best; one being the worst) to certain products on the list.
Why Trust The Spruce Eats?
Amanda McDonald is an editor at The Spruce Eats and has over seven years of experience researching, writing, and editing about all things food—from what new products are at the grocery store to chef-approved hacks that keep tricky leftovers fresh for days.
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