During this pandemic, I got into baking cookies. Mostly I used boxed mixes or even some refrigerated cookie dough. I also did make some from scratch but my hesitation in making “from scratch” cookies is that I love the chocolate morsels I use and I have so many dark chocolate, milk chocolate, minis, really big morsels, and various brands of chocolate bits that I can use.
Add up all the factors and I am the taste-tester for various morsels and that’s waaaaaay too much chocolate in one day.
Photo courtesy of Amazon and Duncan Hines.
I was in the market a few months ago to do a pickup on a few items. I ran down the baking aisle and saw the various cake and cookie mixes from Duncan Hines. It’s been a long time that any box of Hines products captured my attention and the one that did was the MEGA COOKIE box. It’s a mix to make up a cookie that’s about 5 -7 inches across that comes with its own pan so that all you do is pull out a bowl and 3 ingredients and you are ready to go. There are 3 flavors: Sugar Mega-Cookie, Chocolate Chunk Mega-Cookie and Brownie Mega-Cookie. I bought the Sugar Cookie version because I knew my kid would love that. I knew I wouldn’t like it because I don’t like sugar cookies. The Chocolate Chunk was the other flavor I bought and I knew that box would be problematic, but I figured that Chocolate Chunk would be the favorite rather than the sugar cookie and we would split it 3 ways.
It took me 3 months to finally get around to whipping up both of the Mega-Cookies. The directions are super easy, but you do need to be precise in the amount of water, melted butter, and the other ingredients for these mega-cookies.
I mixed up the Sugar Cookie first and it came with sprinkles to add dress up the top of the sugar cookie once the cookie is ready to go into the oven. In the process of mixing up each cookie, I was very precise in measurements for the water, the butter, and whatever else was needed. After all, I wanted these cookies to taste good. The hardest thing in making these cookies was getting the dough to spread into the pan that was included in the box. I didn’t have a large enough spatula-type knife to get it to spread well.
The amount of baking time was about 17-22 minutes depending on the cookie. The Sugar cookie was 17 minutes (maximum) and the Chocolate Chunk was 22 minutes. I found that for my oven, I had to adjust the times a bit longer but that’s typical for my Samsung Oven.
As I took out each cookie at the end of the baking time specified for each cookie, I found that each needed a bit more time. So back in the oven they went. Chocolate Chunk took more time and I had to really be patient because the bottom of the cookie was spongy (meaning not fully cooked) while the top of the cookie was just fine. The Sugar cookie was perfect. It came out flawlessly despite that I added many more sprinkles to the recipe because I wanted the cookie to be fun.
I waited patiently for these cookies to cool off (and that was a real challenge in itself). When I carved out a tiny slice of the Sugar Cookie, I was surprised that the cookie was tender and really delicious. I did add more sprinkles to the cookie before it went into the oven and it worked well for this cookie. The Chocolate Chunk Cookie had a different result. Because the bottom of the cookie wasn’t completely done, I had to add in another 10 minutes in the oven. VERY odd for that to happen when the Sugar Cookie took about 4 minutes. The cookie was stiff on the top and cutting into it was difficult. The bottom was finally a bit crispy and wasn’t doughy.. but the texture of the cookie was fine if you like really crisp cookies but the flavor was very poor. I was shocked. I was thinking that may the cookie needed to cool off a bit more.. but the more it cooled off, the less flavor it had. My kid tried both cookies and loved the Sugar Cookie. She was very happy about it. The Chocolate Chunk was a failure. She thought it didn’t taste like it was good chocolate and the cookie itself had zero flavor despite being so crispy.
After getting feedback like that, I went to the Duncan Hines website and checked out the reviews on the Mega-Cookies. The Chocolate Chunk Cookies got the worst reviews and at best had 2 stars and at worst it was one star. I would have given it half a star since it really wasn’t very chocolatey.
Color me disappointed. I doubt I will try another Mega-Cookie baking run but I might if my kid wants the Sugar Cookie. I would suggest that you skip the Chocolate Chunk Cookie and think about cupcakes or muffins if you want your chocolate fix.
Duncan Hines Web page for the Mega-Cookies: https://www.duncanhines.com/easy-kits-mega-cookies
Stevie Wilson
LA-Story.com
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