Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment

I love baking, and make a lot of my own biscuits and cakes from scratch. I've never really seen the point of buying cake mixes and cookie dough, as I don't see them as being cheaper or really any more convenient than making a simple batch of your own.

So when my daughter's class at school decided to fund raise by selling tubs of cookie dough, I thought I would actually buy a tub and see what it was really like instead of just judging without experiencing.

Once the dough arrived, we made two batches of chocolate chip cookies. The first batch we made using the dough, which you can freeze, keeps for up to 4 weeks in the fridge, and you can also re-freeze it!

We tasted the dough before cooking, worked out the cost per cookie and then tasted the cookies afterwards.

The bought cookie dough tasted nice but REALLY sweet. The cookies were also nice.

The next batch was made from scratch with this recipe:

100g (4oz) Margarine

75g (3oz) Soft brown sugar

2 tblsp Syrup

175g (6oz) Self Raising Flour

100g (4oz) Chocolate Chips

2tsp Milk

Beat margarine and sugar together, stir in syrup, flour and chocolate chips. Mix well. Place spoonfuls on the mixure onto greased trays and bake for 8-10 mins at 180C (350F). 

The uncooked dough was tasty and not so sweet as the bought dough. The cookies themselves also tasted good!!

Overall, although we liked both types of cookie, we all (our family and some friends) preferred the made-from-scratch home baked cookies.

When we worked out the price of the cookies, the bought dough cookies were 30c each, and the made from scratch just 15c each.

So for half the price and a nicer, more natural flavour, I will still be sticking to making my cookies from scratch.

It was a fun and very tasty experiment to do with the kids, and good for them to actually see and understand my reasoning rather than just accepting my opinion unquestioningly!

How about you? Do you make your own cakes and biscuits from scratch? Or do you use cake mixes and cookie dough?