We Tried 15 Crumbl Cookies And This Is How They Rank

Crumbl began with the goal of creating the most perfect chocolate chip cookie. Like so many other things, perfection is in the eye of the beholder, but Crumbl founders Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley believed they found it in their milk chocolate chip cookie, a frequently featured cookie in the chain's lineup. Of course, Crumbl is known for far more than its chocolate chip cookie, and it was simply the first recipe in a long, popular legacy of treats.

Each week, Crumbl releases a range of cookies and desserts covering a wide swath of flavors. Aside from the recurring options like milk chocolate chip and semi-sweet chocolate chunk cookie, the flavors change each week, with many Crumbl flavors that regulars hope to see again and even some cookies that should just stay discontinued. I've had the pleasure of trying Crumbl cookies a few times, but the prospect of sampling cookies for several weeks sounded like a delicious endeavor. Near the beginning of each week, I popped by my local Crumbl (since you can't find Crumbl cookies in the grocery store) to see which flavors I would be trying.

Throughout my sampling, Crumbl offered basic cookies, experimental type flavors, and fruity treats. Though the chain offers cakes as well as cookies, I chose to keep this ranking to those labeled as "cookies" to make texture a valid point of comparison. I found some new favorites, revisited flavors I had tried before, and even had some surprises along the way. Ultimately, I ranked these cookies based on taste, texture, and how well each committed to delivering on its given name.

As a fan of Reese's Pieces, it might seem a little strange for this cookie to be my least favorite I tried — but honestly, it just didn't have the sparkle that I had come to expect from a Crumbl cookie. It felt like a cousin to the chocolate chip or M&M cookie, but with Reese's Piece candies in places where you might otherwise find chocolate chips or M&Ms.

As I had come to expect Crumbl cookies to be rather soft, that the texture with this cookie was so much harder was off putting right from the start. What's more, I didn't feel that the Reese's Pieces added much flavor to it. All on its own, the texture wouldn't be enough to bring this cookie to the last place spot, but considering the fact that the flavor wasn't anything I craved, the Chocolate Reese's Pieces Cookie easily became one of my least favorite offerings. While the cookie wasn't necessarily bad, it wasn't worth the price of a Crumbl cookie or a precious space in the brand's lineup.

If there's one thing I've taken away from Crumbl cookies throughout this tasting, it's that the cookies tend to be super soft. The softest among them are the pie cookies. While Crumbl has both desserts and cookies, the brand specifies that even these pie options are actually cookies rather than being miniature pies, like in the smaller cake forms.

In any case, I found that these pie cookies look like pie but don't necessarily taste that way in either texture or flavor. In the case of the banana cream pie cookie, it reminded me of a banana pudding on top of a sugar cookie — but the whole experience was far too gooey to resemble a pie. Although I didn't mind the flavor of the pudding, it wasn't my favorite for how little it actually resembled the inspiration behind the name. I also think this is a rather strange option for a cookie flavor. Banana cream pie is such a singular preference, not necessarily something that many people will love.

Throughout the three weeks of trying cookies, I noticed that each week, there is one cookie that stood out for being exceptionally child-friendly. Typically, it had some kind of a candy or a little snack on top. In the case of one of the cookies I sampled, it was a sugar cookie with blue frosting and gummy sharks.

Although the sharks didn't really survive a quarter cut, I can imagine Crumbl's youngest customers enjoying that tasty gummy snack to ride off the frosting before even biting into the cookie. It seemed like a cookie absolutely fit for young customers to choose from the glass case displaying the options in store. I wasn't the best customer for this cookie, so it was not one of my favorite options. In flavor and texture, it reminded me of those soft cookies you can get as part of Aldi's (and many other grocery stores') baked goods lineup, leading with a very sweet frosting. With just how sweet the bite was, I could almost feel the cavities forming in my teeth.

The kids' cookies didn't stop with gummy toppings. Another week, I tried a cookie stylized after a frosting-covered Mother's Day Circus Animal cookie. In the middle of this sweet cookie, there was an animal cracker coated in the very frosting replicated on the rest of the cookie.

I liked this more than the shark cookie because it wasn't as crazy sweet, but just sweet enough. I found it was also a perfectly tender cookie, but the sprinkles speckling the actual cookie dough offered too much disruption in that bite. This cookie would have been far better if it simply kept the sprinkles to the frosted topping. Sprinkles throughout the cookie were just too much crunch. That said, I loved how well the cookie catered to the frosted animal cracker, and it was a delight to see, but not my favorite to eat. Clearly, a younger cookie lover was the more ideal snacker for such a cookie.

If there's one thing I've learned about summer flavors, it's that companies are generally far too confident in the ability to create a dessert resembling a campfire s'more. Nevertheless, every summer, various chains attempt to create s'more-flavored options. McDonald's, for one, unveiled a completely underwhelming s'more McFlurry. In similar fashion, Crumbl offered a s'more cookie.

The base of the cookie was graham cracker flavor; it had a small pile of melted marshmallow and a drizzle of chocolate. My biggest issue here was that it just didn't taste like a s'more because the balance was so far off. The graham cracker type cookie was just too much, and there needed to be both more chocolate and marshmallow. S'mores taste so good because all the elements are balanced. Without balance, however — like in this cookie — you end up with a kiss of melting marshmallow drizzled on graham cracker.

There's little better than enjoying a warm cookie like this one was served to me, so my hopes were high for the chocolate crumb cookie. It made a solid first impression with a tasty, soft and sweet bite. The frosting was exceptionally notable here, even more than other cookies. I enjoyed the feel of the soft bite and likened this to a cookies and cream style delight, but the real magic of the cookie came from the frosting.

Unfortunately, after a few bites I found the frosting may have been a little too sweet, nearly teeth chattering so. I couldn't eat more than a quarter of the cookie at a time, even if it offered a satisfying bite. I also wished that the cookie hadn't been so crumbly. The crumb makes sense for the topping of the frosting. But the chocolate cookie itself felt more crumbly, and that gave the whole thing a less cohesive bite — like eating smashed together crumbs rather than a whole, solid cookie.

This tasting wasn't my first time trying Crumbl's basic chocolate chip cookie. In fact, among the best and worst chain chocolate chip cookies, I regarded it as one of my favorites. However, compared to some of the other more creative flavors Crumbl rolled out over these weeks, I found it on the more muted side.

Crumbl's milk chocolate chip cookie may have been the one that started it all, but to me, it tasted like the kind of chocolate chip cookie that you might give to someone who doesn't enjoy even a hint of bitterness in their chocolate. I, on the other hand, love more bitter chocolate, so, predictably, I found that I preferred the semi-sweet chocolate chunk cookie. Compared to that cookie, the flavor here felt too muted for my tastes. I appreciate the smoothness of it, and it had the kind of soft cookie Crumbl rolls out in other flavors. It just needed more flavor to be craveworthy. While milk typically goes well with a chocolate chip cookie, dipping this cookie in milk would do nothing for it, and it would likely become far too soft.

When it comes to cookies, it seems anything is fair game, including breakfast. This treat is inspired by that most sweet of breakfast foods: French toast. While it was well executed, I'm not sure it worked as a cookie.

Thicker than most of the cookies I tried, the French toast cookie largely felt like a dressed up piece of bread. Crumbl called it a "a fluffy, buttery cookie," but cookies need a little more bite and less smash. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for sweet breads, but it's just not a cookie. The issue here was with classification more than anything else. The flavor was heavily maple, and I didn't enjoy it as a cookie, even if it might be a nice brunch pastry treat.

My family absolutely loves all things lemon. A raspberry lemonade is one of my favorite drinks to order for lunch, so I was eager to try this cookie. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as raspberry mixed with lemon as I would have liked, but rather a more lemony cookie with a little coloring to suggest a raspberry flavor, in much the same way that pink lemonade is basically regular lemonade with a little coloring.

Rather than including a slice of lemon on top as Crumbl did on this cookie, I thought it would be better to include a raspberry, thereby leaning more into that berry flavor. Perhaps a mixture between the lemon frosting and a raspberry jam would take this one into true raspberry lemonade territory. After all, the cookie itself has an obviously lemon flavor, so there really needed to be more obvious berry balance somewhere.

Of the three notable kids' cookies I sampled across the weeks, the dirt cake cookie was easily my favorite. Inspired by the classic dessert meant to look like dirt, often including charming gummy worms, the cookie took on a similar look. It included a chocolate base with chocolate frosting on top and chocolate crumbles to finish it off. Each cookie also had a gummy worm, of course.

The chocolate cookie was rich, and I liked the frosting, but it reminded me too much of pudding for it to easily reach into my favorites. I'll admit that the frosting was reasonably textured for the situation, but overall, it still wasn't my favorite texture combination, even if it worked well for the theme. Since this cookie was designed for a young audience, I felt that it was a little crumbly and messy for little hands, and I can imagine it being difficult to eat for a young one.

Similar to the banana cream pie cookie, the blueberry cheesecake cookie resembled the dessert for which it was named. Unlike the banana cream pie cookie, however, this one was delicious. The frosting was where a majority of that cheesecake flavor came from, and the blueberry topping added a fruity touch.

I would have liked to have seen even more of the cookie devoted to the actual white cheesecake because the part that aims to be the crust is really trying to steal the spotlight. No offense to graham crackers, but anyone who ordered a cheesecake but got the crust in such a large percentage would no doubt be less pleased with the dessert. Certainly, this disproportionate situation wouldn't be as egregious in a cookie, but it should have leaned more into the cheesecake for an even better experience. 

I love a truly great chocolate chip cookie, and unlike the milk chocolate cookie, Crumbl's other basic offering, the semi-sweet chocolate chunk cookie is exceptional. Served warm, it had a gooey, just-from-the-oven feel. This cookie is a hug with baked-in chocolate.

There was a nice balance between sweetness and the amount of bitterness in the chocolate to make it interesting. I was skeptical of that salt on top, but it added the most perfect accent to the chocolate. With chunks rather than chips, the cookie had a more rustic, homemade feel, a welcome change from the meticulously designed cookies that filled out the rest of the box. Cookies that are too perfect sometimes lose that feeling of homemade and lean into something of a machine-made look, but this cookie didn't have that problem. The only reason the semi-sweet chocolate chunk cookie isn't ranked higher is because there were other flavors I enjoyed even more.

More often than not, when I choose a dessert, I pick something fruit-based. I love chocolate, but fruity flavors typically have more of a pull for me. More importantly, cake has never been a favorite dessert of mine, largely because they don't always have enough moisture. For both reasons, I was more than a little surprised that I found the chocolate cake cookie so exceptional.

The moisture in the chocolate cake cookie was exactly where it needed to be, offering the perfect balance of fluffiness and moistness. It reminded me of some of the best chocolate cake I've ever had — the kind that you take one bite from and immediately gesture to it as something everyone in your party needs to try. Rich and decadent, I fell in love with this very chocolatey dessert. Though it was served warm, the cookie was just as good in subsequent days, freshly removed from the fridge where I stored my leftovers.

Though I imagine the graham cracker crust between the blueberry cheesecake cookie and lemon were similar, the balance was much better with the lemon cheesecake cookie than with its blueberry brother. This tasted like your favorite lemon bars and cheesecake all mixed into one, a true best-of-both-worlds like situation.

The tartness and sweetness were there in even measure, with all parts of the cookie at the ideal flavor level. Again, the cheesecake flavor came from that frosting, and it was topped with lemon curd to add a zesty, citrusy element. Since lemon has such a tart taste to it, I found it blended in nicely, even accentuating the cheesecake in a way I didn't fully expect but absolutely loved. This cookie was the epitome of the ideal summer treat and one I would happily have over and over again. After trying this cookie, I knew it would be a hard one to beat — but I must admit, as delicious and refreshing as the lemon cheesecake cookie was, I stumbled upon an even better cookie.

I laughed when I saw this cookie on the Crumbl listing. It's just so meta, but honestly, after one taste, I was obsessed, and this cookie was positively phenomenal.

The cookie was a brown sugar cookie with cookie dough frosting and bits of cookie dough sprinkled on top — the kind you find mixed into cookie dough ice cream. Though I was skeptical, the degree to which that cookie frosting tasted exactly like real, raw cookie dough was astounding. The brown sugar cookie on the bottom tasted like a chocolate chip cookie without the chocolate chips, and the whole experience had a slight nuttiness too. This was the ideal cookie for cookie lovers and cookie dough risk-takers alike. While it's regretfully unsafe to enjoy raw cookie dough, this cookie was a great substitution. Crumbl has some wild ideas that aren't always amazing in execution — but this wild idea is unforgettably tasty.

Over the course of three weeks, I tried each unique cookie Crumbl offered. I ranked them according to the flavors I experienced, texture of the cookies, and how well each played into its given name. Cookies that were delicious with a pleasing texture and accurate stewards of their namesake scored higher in my ranking compared to those that didn't stand out for flavor, had a texture I didn't enjoy, or grossly misrepresented their name.