Discover 20 great American cookies. Some are long time favorites while other cookies may be new to you. They all bring the yum.
1. Oreos
Oreos are chocolate sandwich cookies filled with sweet sugary cream. When you eat Oreos you need to make a decision – to dunk them in milk or not to dunk them in milk. You also need to decide whether to eat the cookie whole or to separate it so that you can eat the cream first and the cookie second.
Explore More: 10 Oreo Flavors
2. Chips Ahoy!
Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies may be America’s most popular mass-produced chocolate chip cookie. But they’re not the country’s first chocolate chip cookie. It’s not even close. They debuted more than 25 years after Ruth Wakefield baked her original batch of Toll House chocolate chip cookies.
Explore More: Toll House Cookie Recipe
3. Tate’s Bake Shop
Tate’s Bake Shop cookies are proof that cookies don’t have to be plump and chewy to taste great. They’re also proof that gluten-free and vegan cookies can taste great too. Popular flavors include chocolate chip cookies, butter crunch, coconut crisp, lemon and oatmeal raisin.
4. Nilla Wafers
Originally called Vanilla Wafers by inventor Gustav Mayer and Nabisco, America’s most popular wafer cookie kept the vanilla flavor but lost to letters in 1967. They’re also a popular banana pudding ingredient.
5. Famous Amos
Famous Amos cookies have a crispy texture which differentiates them from most other mass-market cookies. Plus, they’re bite-sized, which makes them extra fun to eat.
6. Barnum’s Animals Crackers
Nabisco started selling animal crackers more than a century ago. A key inspiration came from animal-shaped biscuits baked by British bakers. Another inspiration came from P.T. Barnum, the American showman of circus fame. Although these ‘crackers’ are no longer in cages, they’re still shaped like animals.
7. Entenmann’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Entenmann’s bakery was the first to sell chocolate chip cookies in see-through boxes. It was a good idea. Those bite-sized cookies are now the company’s most popular cookie product.
8. Lorna Doone Shortbread Cookies
Lorna Doone cookies are buttery, square-shaped shortbread cookies that channel shortbread cookies baked in Scotland. Some people eat them straight out of the box while others dip them in tea or coffee. How you eat your Lorna Doone cookies is up to you.
9. Nutter Butters
Nutter Butters aren’t the most popular American sandwich cookie. That honor goes to the Oreo. However, it’s easily the most popular American sandwich cookie that’s shaped like a peanut and made with real peanut butter.
10. Milano Cookies
You might think that Milano cookies hail from Italy, which would make sense since Milano (i.e. Milan) is Italy’s second largest city, however, you’d be wrong. Instead, the oblong sandwich cookie was created in Connecticut as part of Pepperidge Farm’s Distinctive cookie line. There are currently 13 Milano flavors on the market.
Discover More: Traditional Italian Desserts
11. Chessmen Cookies
Pepperidge Farm’s Chessmen cookies aren’t typical butter cookies for two reasons. First, they’re square instead of round. And, more important, the sweet, buttery cookies are adorned with images of chess pieces like knights, queens and kings.
12. Newtons
You may remember Fig Newtons from your childhood. Those iconic fig-filled rectangular cookies are now simply called Newtons and don’t always have fig fillings. Some Newtons are filled with strawberry paste.
13. Chips Deluxe Cookies
According to the Keebler website, industrious elves craft each Soft Batch Chips Deluxe cookie in a tree and bake them in a magic oven. While we can’t confirm that factoid, we’re certain that Chips Deluxe cookies are sold in flavors that include Coconut, Dipped DUOS, Fudgy and M&Ms. We can also confirm that Soft Batch Chips Deluxe is our favorite flavor.
14. Fudge Stripes Cookies
Fudge Stripes cookies live up to the hype since each ring-shaped cookie is topped with fudge stripes. Those stripes are only part of the shortbread cookie’s story since the entire cookie bottom is coated with fudge too.
15. Sugar Wafers
Europeans have been eating Neapolitan wafers layered with hazelnut cream since 1898 when Josef Manner started selling Manner Wafers in Vienna. More than a century later, Manner Wafers are sold in countries around the world including the USA. However, most Americans opt to buy Keebler’s Sugar Wafers version at local convenience stores and supermarkets instead.
Explore More: Vienna Food Favorites
16. Grandma’s Jumbo Cookies
You might be surprised to learn that Grandma’s cookies was founded in Portland founded in 1914 by a man, Foster Wheeler, who clearly wasn’t a grandma. However, if you’rea cookie fan, you won’t be surprised to learn that Grandma’s jumbo-sized cookies come in multiple flavors that include brownie, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and peanut butter.
Explore More: Portland Food Favorites
17. Grandma’s Sandwich Cookies
Grandma’s sells two sandwich cookie flavors and neither is chocolate. Instead, the two flavors are vanilla and peanut butter.
18. Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies
Despite its name, the Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie isn’t a pie. Instead, it’s a jumbo oatmeal cookie sandwich with cream in the middle. It’s also Little Debbie’s signature product, outselling desserts like Cosmic Brownie, Nutty Bar, Swiss Cake Roll and Zebra Cake.
Explore More: Global Desserts
19. Milk Bar Cookies
Milk Bar rocketed to fame in 2008 when the NYC bakery opened thanks to Christina Tosi’s burgeoning fame and menu items like cereal milk ice cream, crack pie (now called milk bar pie) and compost cookies. Crowds queued for those treats as well as the bakery’s bite-sized cake truffles for years. Today, Milk Bar cookies are sold nationally at grocery stores around the country and online.
Explore More: The Best NYC Bakeries
20. Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding Cookies
Made with real butter, real bananas, real chocolate and crunchy vanilla wafers, Magnolia Bakery’s premium-priced cookies currently come in three flavors – classic vanilla, classic vanilla with white chocolate chips and confetti with white chocolate chips. Each box has four jumbo-sized cookies.
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