How much fat in these cookies?

December 18, 2008 6:25 PM

Can you estimate the number of fat grams (and calories, if you're feeling spunky) in one of these cookies?

My fiancee says 30 grams. I say closer to 100. (Let's use Chocolate Chip for the example.)

posted by nitsuj to food & drink (11 answers total)

Please also note the text from the page linked above:

Our signature is the size of our cookies weighing nearly
one half-pound each! Unlike a store-bought, machine-driven
cookie, you can actually taste the real butter and hints of brown
sugar with every bite. Ah, the true beauty of our handmade
creations. The crispy texture on the outside and the soft, chewy
inside gives you the best of both worlds in one gourmet indulgence.
posted by nitsuj at 6:27 PM on December 18, 2008

Well, if we assume that it's a fairly basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, we can use the nutrition facts for the Toll House cookie. That recipe calls for a "rounded tablespoon", which is .5 ounces, and each "serving" (which must be just one cookie, if the recipe says it gives "60 servings") contains 6.2 grams of fat and 108 calories.

So, according to this, we're looking at about 50 grams of fat, which is right in between your two estimates.
posted by rossination at 6:35 PM on December 18, 2008

Well, one whole stick of butter doesn't even have 100 grams of fat, so I think your guess is probably way too high.
posted by adiabat at 6:36 PM on December 18, 2008

Well, one whole stick of butter doesn't even have 100 grams of fat, so I think your guess is probably way too high.

How do you know there's less than one whole stick of butter per cookie? (Not saying there ISN'T... just... saying.)
posted by nitsuj at 6:38 PM on December 18, 2008

Hmm, I get a rather different result from rossination's. Using this data for jumbo Toll House cookies, each jumbo Toll House cookie weighs 43 g and contains 10 g of fat and 200 calories. One pound is 454 g, so a half-pound cookie would weigh about 225 g. This works out to about 52 g of fat and 1046 calories.

I suspect that the "half-pound" weight of the cookie is before baking (isn't that how quarter pounders work at McDonald's?). The cookies would lose weight due to evaporation of water during baking, but I don't know how much they're likely to weigh when they're done. Just looking at the pictures on the website, they don't look all that gigantic, so I'm guessing they weigh quite a bit less than 225 g when they're cooked. If they weigh about 100 g after baking, they would have about 23 g of fat and 465 calories.
posted by Quietgal at 7:08 PM on December 18, 2008

I agree with Quietgal that the cookies don't look all that big. My standard chocolate chip cookie recipe uses two sticks of butter and makes several dozen good-sized cookies. The cookies on that website are definitely not the size of the disgusting, unevenly-baked cookie that would result if I baked half my dough at once.

Plus, a stick of butter is a quarter pound, and those cookies supposedly weigh a half pound. Even if you account for evaporation and the fact that the chocolate chips are responsible for some of the fat content too, I think we can pretty safely say that 100g of fat is way too high an estimate.
posted by adiabat at 7:27 PM on December 18, 2008

ok FINE :(
posted by nitsuj at 7:39 PM on December 18, 2008

I saw something weird in google search results on that website , and it's now in its own question.
posted by jepler at 7:50 PM on December 18, 2008

Question #8 in their FAQ encourages you to call their customer service number with questions about nutrition information...
posted by kalapierson at 8:39 PM on December 18, 2008

(And that number is 847-831-4500)
posted by kalapierson at 8:41 PM on December 18, 2008

BTW, it's "grams of fat", not "fat grams". If you wanted to know how many ounces of juice you had, you wouldn't ask "How many juice ounces do I have?"
posted by Mr. Gunn at 5:59 PM on December 20, 2008