Trying the new Bettergoods sea salt chocolate chunk cookie mix

Even when I’m not looking for new box mixes, I end up on the baking aisle in every grocery store I am in. Just this last weekend I decided I had too many mixes at home waiting to be baked and I definitely didn’t need to buy anymore. Of course the universe, or Walmart, had other plans because I found a brand new to me mix. Bettergoods is Walmart’s brand similar to great value but supposedly a little higher quality. They had some cookie mixes on display and I picked up the sea salt chocolate chunk cookie mix. The packaging claims to be “extra rich” and they claim the mix contains “fair trade chocolate chunks, brown sugar, and real sea salt”. Let’s dive in and see if it’s as good as they claim.

This mix is standard in it’s required ingredients, just butter and an egg. They recommend mixing these together then adding in the powdered mix from the box so this is what I did. It took awhile for the cookie dough to come together. It was very dry and I thought I was going to have to add some water to get it to actually combine but finally after ages of mixing it came together. The dough was not pleasant in flavor. It had a terrible after taste and underlying flavor that I couldn’t put my finger on. The chocolate chunks were the only redeeming quality and they varied in sizes like it had been chopped up rather than traditional chunks but I liked this more.

The packaging provides options for 1 tablespoon sized cookies, 2 tablespoon sized, and a cookie cake in an 8 inch pan. The box claims to make 28 2-inch cookies if you use the 1 tablespoon size and this is what I did. However it claims if you use the 2 tablespoon sized scoop it will make 12 3-inch cookies which doesn’t make much sense when you do the math. I used the 1 tablespoon sized scoop and got only 21 cookie dough balls scooped out which is definitely less than they claim.

I baked one pan of 12 cookies at a time at 375. The box claims the bake time is 7-9 minutes and I found at 8 minutes the cookies were cooked perfectly so Bettergoods gains some points for having an accurate bake time. These cookies came out looking almost exactly like the picture on the box. When I first picked it up I thought the image on the box showed some sad cookies but it was very realistic unlike some other companies who falsely advertise large thick fluffy cookies and then provide you with a recipe for sad flat cookies. This mix however advertised average flat cookies and it provided exactly that.

I took one bite of a cookie and immediately thought absolutely not. The after taste from the dough was lingering and something was off. I looked at the box mix ingredients and found the first ingredient to be whole wheat and it contained molasses powder. This box did not advertise being whole wheat and I wouldn’t have purchase it if I knew it would be. Whole wheat cookies are not my cup of tea. You might like these if you like whole wheat but even after giving them a few tries, I did not enjoy these cookies at all.

I picked this mix up for $3.97. This is in fact more expensive than almost all other brands. Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Dolly Parton, Krusteaz can all be found cheaper. I recommend Krusteaz if you’re looking for a good chocolate chip cookie mix.