Good news for the time-pressed: Chocolate-chip cookies made with store-bought dough can taste almost homemade.

Our trained panelists tasted cookies made from seven preformed cookie doughs, frozen or refrigerated, and cookies made from scratch using the Nestlé Toll House recipe. The best of the bunch, all from frozen doughs, tasted close to cookies made from scratch. They had a mix of buttery, caramelized, and other cookielike flavors, plus chocolatey chunks or chips that were especially big in dough from Omaha Steaks and Fat Boy.

Lowest-rated was refrigerated Nestlé dough, which made cookies bearing little resemblance to those from the recipe. They didn’t taste fresh-baked, did have a bit of old-fat taste, and were smaller than most. But even the lowest-rated from dough were better than typical store-bought packaged cookies.

Calories per cookie range from 100 to 150; fat, from 5 to 8 grams. They basically correspond to cookie size, listed at right.

CR’s take. If you crave a sweet treat but want to avoid mixing and some cleanup, you’ll be a smart cookie if you try one of the very good doughs. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are available in those stores; Omaha Steaks and Fat Boy are sold online or over the phone (www.omahasteaks.com or 800-960-8400; www.fatboycookiecompany.com or 888-328-2690). David’s, rated good, is at www.davidscookies.com or 800-217-2938. If you want to tell Aunt Millie you used her recipe, it’ll be our secret.


Ratings

*Shipping is included except for Omaha Steaks, where costs vary with promotions.