By Sydney Crandall
Picture this: you’ve just gotten out of your two hour biology lab that you spent meticulously analyzing cell types and writing (or trying to write) a grueling lab report that just seems impossible. It’s 3:30 pm and it hasn’t been too long since lunch, meaning you’re not exactly hungry, but deep down you know you deserve a little treat, and you’re right. What better way to reward yourself than with the $2.19 goodness that is a giant warm cookie from Hilltop Market. There’s only one remaining dilemma: , which one?
Alright, let’s be honest, before the poll was even sent out, we all saw the winner of this battle coming. The perfect amount of fudgy chocolate with pockets of chewy caramel and melted chocolate chips (we’re just going to pretend that the pecans aren’t there), the Turtle Cookie is the ultimate crowd pleaser. Miss Congeniality in any baked goods pageant. The turtle cookie is indulgent enough to satisfy every craving, but not too rich to the point that you feel like you just ingested an entire bottle of maple syrup. It is always a go-to for 16 out of the 65 poll answers. Aand if that doesn’t seem like a majority win to you, just keep in mind that the sugar cookie only won itself a whopping 2 votes. (Clearly no bias from the author of this article is present.)
In spite of not even needing to continue after the showstopper of a confection that is the turtle cookie, we’ll now move on to second place. One word comes to mind when dwelling on the concept of the runner-up: classic. Our second place winner, while maintaining its class and time-tested brilliance, however, is one step above. Sure chocolate chip is absolutely adequate in every sense of the word, but what’s the one critique that most people would give to a standard chocolate chip cookie? More Chocolate. And that, folks, is just what the Hilltop Market has given us with the Chunky Chocolate Cookie. The same beloved warm vanilla cookie dough with a good amount of chew, just this time with an amped up amount of the best part of the cookie. If that doesn’t sound like a deserving treat, then I don’t know what does.
Following the Willy Wonka worthy decadent desserts highlighted above, we now dive into the world of dessert inception, candies baked into cookies. Trailing the Chunky Chocolate cookie by only two votes, M&M packs enough punch in order to wedge itself tightly into third place. Only three votes ahead of Reese’s, the fact that both of these landed themselves ahead of the dependable and trustworthy, normal chocolate chip cookie speaks to their ability to hold their own. Both of these are largely similar to the above mentioned chunky chocolate chip, this time with the star of the show just subbed out with another. The same classic vanilla dough is still present in all of these, fortunately, the M&M just with a much more peanut forward flavor. The close scores between the two demonstrate the similarities in the cookies themselves. It isn’t that one is better than the other, they instead just cater to different crowds. Whether you prefer the peanut butter jazz added in, or chocolate in its pure, unadulterated form is up to you.
A shock to many, chocolate chip is seen towards the end of our extensive cookie line up. Still with 9 votes to its name, chocolate chip isn’t a bad option in the slightest, it is just often outshined by the brilliance that precedes it. A classic, but seemingly considered quite boring by the SVU crowd. Perhaps less shocking is the simplicity and monotony that is the plain sugar cookie with no frosting. With a mere couple of votes to its name, there’s not much more to say on the topic. So next time you find yourself needing a sweet treat between the hours of 9 am and 8 pm while on campus, take these vital pieces of information into careful consideration.
The Cookie Conundrum: Ranking Hilltop Cookies was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.