Wendyl Wants To Know: Cook-at-home cookies a tasty occasional treat

Mrs Higgins Double Chocolate Frozen Cookie Dough $8.50 for 16 cookies. Photo / Wendyl Nissen

These cookies are incredibly popular with people who have bought them fresh-baked from the stores. I was recently asked to buy and bake these for my daughter's birthday party and so it presented a good opportunity to see what is in them.

They come frozen as cookie dough, and you simply put them on a baking tray and cook them.

In my case I got creative and after they had cooled added canned chocolate mousse (more on that next week) and a candle in each one.

Unfortunately by the time it came to blow out the candles the mousse had reduced to a muddy looking mess, the candles had all fallen over but one and the whole lot looked rather unappetising.

My daughter suggested that next year we might just return to my tried and true banana birthday cake.

Sugar
These are high in sugar. Per cookie or 30g biscuit you will get 12.6g or three teaspoons of sugar.

Wheat flour

Dark compound chips (17%)
(sugar, vegetable fat (emulsifiers (492, soy lecithin), acid (330)), cocoa powder, milk solids, emulsifiers (soy lecithin, 492, 476), flavour)

These are the chocolate chips in the dough. These are standard ingredients for chocolate with sorbitan tristearate (492), which is a surfactant used here as an emulsifier. There is also citric acid (330) and polyglycerol polyricin-oleate (476), which is produced from polyclycerol and castor oil and is in here as an emulsifier. There is also artificial flavour.

Egg
Good to see real egg rather than powdered in this mix.

Cocoa powder
This will be in here as a natural flavour.

Raising agent (500)
This is baking soda as you would use in home baking.

Flavour
This will be artificial flavour.

My recommendations
For a one-off treat there isn't too much in here to worry about. There is artificial flavour and three teaspoons of sugar per cookie, but for a party these are a great quick treat to whip out of the freezer. And there are no artificial colours or preservatives.

Highlights
• Uses artificial flavour.
• 3 teaspoons of sugar per 30g cookie.
• No colouring.