What do 11 cups of all-purpose flour, 5¼ cups brown sugar, 10 eggs, 2¼ pounds of butter, and 8½ cups of chocolate chips add up to? A lot of chocolate chip cookies.

We were late to the baking while on lockdown party. Somehow, we missed the memo that the top things to stock up on were flour, sugar, and yeast. Instead we were outside working in the garden, getting our hands dirty, and chatting with our neighbors from a safe distance. For us, being in the garden connected us to life and growing things and people. These were the things we needed to get us through the uncertainty of life in lockdown.

Once things started opening again, we found ourselves, conversely, retreating inside to the kitchen, looking for a new way to create while keeping ourselves safe. On our short trips to the grocery store, we quickly scooped up flour or sugar or vanilla extract when we found it to restock our shelves. And with so many companies releasing recipes from secret vaults, we came up with The Unofficial Chocolate Chip Cookie Project.

There was nothing scientific about this project. It started with Hilton releasing its DoubleTree Signature Cookie recipe at the beginning of April followed, not long after, by Disney/Pixar releasing its Jack Jack Num Num Cookie recipe. From there we picked a few other recipes that sounded interesting and the project was born.

Each weekend we selected a recipe and made a batch, trying our best to follow the recipe faithfully. As much as we love our sweets, our little family could not (and should not) eat a batch of cookies a week. My co-workers became the lucky guinea pigs in our not-so-scientific project.

In no particular order, here are the cookies we tried out. In the related posts we share the recipes, any modifications we made, and our thoughts. It’s fair to say that in this project, all cookies were delicious and all were winners in our book.

• Doubletree Signature Cookie
• Ghirardelli Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie
• Jack-Jack’s Num Num Cookie
• Joanna Gaines’ Chocolate Chip Cookie
• Copycat Levain Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie

Since everyone will want to know the winner, to a person, the top cookie was the DoubleTree Signature Cookie.

And finally, while they weren’t part of our tasting project, we want to include honorary mentions of the Pioneer Woman’s Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookie and the Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookie. Both recipes are consistently popular and deserve to be part of this group. In fairness they should go up against the DoubleTree recipe but does it really matter?

Give these recipes a try, enjoy the delicious results, and decide for yourself!