Ina Garten Sells Cookie Dough on Goldbelly—Is It Worth the Cost? I Tasted It to Find Out

Nestled in sleek Barefoot Contessa boxes, the cookie dough comes frozen on dry ice for foolproof transport. The cookie dough balls themselves come in resealable plastic bags, which I love for preventing freezer burn between cravings. Frozen, it’ll keep in the freezer for up to four months or in the fridge for up to one week. Each dough ball weighs about two ounces and bakes to about four inches across.

To prepare them, all you need to do is preheat the oven, place the cookies on a lined sheet pan and bake them (15 to 18 minutes from frozen, or 10 to 12 minutes from refrigerated), rotating the pan halfway through baking. After 10 minutes of cooling, they’re ready to devour. Once baked, they’ll keep at room temperature for up to three days or in the freezer for three weeks.

The ingredients looked pretty standard (butter, brown sugar, white sugar, egg, vanilla, salt and coarsely chopped chocolate), but once I baked the cookies, I got more excited to taste them. These classic dark chocolate chunk cookies browned gorgeously at the edges. As their puffiness reduced on the cooling rack, shiny studs of chocolate erupted from the tops, beckoning me to sink my teeth in.

On the nose, the brown sugar notes shone through, thanks to the caramelized bottoms and edges. Eaten straight after cooling, the cookies boasted a soft, molten center and a just-chewy-enough rim that sticks to your teeth in the most satisfying way. While the cookie certainly wasn’t one-note, thanks to the slightly bitter dark chocolate and buttery base, I felt it was consistently sweet throughout and lacking even just a tiny bit of salt. I preferred them topped with a flourish of Ina’s favorite fleur de sel, as this added some nuance and enhanced everything that was already tasty about the cookie.

These cookies have the same ingredients as the chocolate chunk, except there’s cocoa powder in the dough and chopped white chocolate instead of dark. The chunks of white chocolate were visually striking, and the cookies baked wider and flatter than the chocolate chunk, giving them an appearance on par with that of cookies from a supermarket bakery or bake shop. While I wished the white chocolate was more plentiful (or at least more visible on the top), this didn’t stop me from enjoying its flavor.

This one smelled like fudgy brownies. Its craggy appearance also made me wonder if it had a higher butter content than the chocolate chunk. Once I tasted it, I audibly said mmm. The cookie itself is chewy and crisp all at once and has just enough salt to make the chocolatey notes reach their fullest potential. I loved the marshmallow-y white chocolate, which caramelized in some places, making for a candy-like stickiness and toasty flavor that’ll make you crave s’mores. I didn’t anticipate it, but this was my favorite cookie of the two.