Price: $3.99
Serving: 1 cookie, 1.16oz
Calories:150 per cookie
 Calories from Fat: 70
Fat: 12%, 8g
 Saturated Fat: 16%, 3.5g
 Trans Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 2%, 15mg
Sodium: 5%, 115mg
Protein: 1g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 19g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 12g
Weight Watchers: 4 POINTS per cookie

Pillsbury says: Enjoy the wholesome goodness of our latest batch of cookies, made just like you would make them at home. We use the same ingredients, the same process and have the same pride in the delicious outcome. Simply… enjoy!

Mark says: You have to be drunk or hungover to mess up cookies. They contain a short list of ingredients and as long as you mix everything together in the right order (butter and sugar, then eggs and vanilla, then the flour and powder stuff, then chocolate chips) you end up with perfectly delicious chocolate chip cookies. But that means you need big bowls and stuff to mix the cookie dough. And an oven so that you can back a lot of cookies at once.

I don’t have big bowls. And I don’t have an oven. I live in a studio apartment with zero amenities. So we’re talking toaster oven here, folks. And the toaster oven works to make most of my favorite meals: 4 english muffin halves, each with pizza sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni. Or chicken strips. Or those filets of fish that come in that yellow box.

Where was I? Cookies. I’m usually stuck with the cookies you buy at the grocery store. Those refrigerated Tollhouse cookies seem alright, but the minute I take a look at the ingredients (corn syrup solids? sodium benzoate?) I feel like I’m in a chemical factory.

Last weekend when I made my usually post-night-out grocery trip I saw these cookies and thought to myself ‘Mark, you should get these all natural cookies and do something good for your body for once.’ Okay, so it wasn’t my actual brain saying that…it was my mom’s voice inside my head, haunting me with nutritional advice.

About cookies.

I might not live at home anymore, but I still listen to what my mom says. So I grabbed these cookies and realized that I’d made an unsound monetary policy. $3.99 for 12 cookies is not my idea of a good deal when you have to bake the cookies at home. But by the time I noticed the price I was already in the checkout line and there was no way I was going back to the refrigerated section to choose some different cookies.

When finally got home I opened the package and pulled out six of the twelve cookies, figuring I could make the package last for the whole weekend. The cookies needed only 13 minutes in my toaster oven (it is a decent toaster oven, I paid more for it than most people pay for microwaves), and they filled my shoebox of a home with the smell of fresh baked cookies. Because that’s what they are…fresh baked cookies.

These cookies aren’t like homemade. They have fewer chocolate chips than the ones my mom makes, and if you really think about it, the flavor is sort of different. I checked the ingredients later and I think it is because the cookies are made with vegetable shortening (Crisco), not butter. My mom makes them with butter. What is also interesting is that the cookies are darker than I expected them to be. I wonder if this is because they don’t contain any regular white sugar either.

I think if I made these cookies and brought them to someone’s house, they would think that I actually made the cookies myself. But if you, like me, consider yourself a cookie connoisseur then these cookies are not going to make the mom-comparison cut.

Ingredients: Wheat Flour Bleached, Brown Sugar, Semisweet Chocolate Chips (sugar, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural flavor, milk), Vegetable Shortening (palm and canola oils), Water, Eggs, Baking Powder (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate), Salt, Vanilla Extract

Price: $3.00 (after a $1.00 coupon)
Serving: 2.8oz. (the package is 8.5 ounces, 12 bites, 4 bites/serving)
Calories: 220 per serving
Fat: 20%, 13g
Cholesterol: 7%, 20mg
Sodium: 24%, 590mg
Protein: 6g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 21g
Fiber: 0%, 0g
Sugar: 2g
Weight Watchers Points: 5 Points

Pillsbury says:Bite-sized pastries stuffed with chicken in a buffalo style sauce.

Chavi says: The fact that these tiny little pastry bites are a “Product of Canada,” which is emblazoned across the box’s front, should be enough for a five-star issuing. But it took some taste-testing with a partner to really experience and evaluate this fairly new frozen food item. Sitting down to a Patriots game, we partook of this perfect snack-size food amid chips and salsa and chicken wings, and it definitely did stand out as something uniquely delicious.

The cooking time seems to be a little off, or it could have been that my boyfriend put them too close on the cooking sheet, but it took quite a long time for them to get crispy and brown on top. The dough around the innards of the bites was soft and delicious, and the insides — the buffalo chicken goodness — weren’t too spicy hot, but definitely just hit the spot. It might be too spicy for those who simply can’t handle a bit o’ spice, but those same people would probably be better suited to buy one of the other flavors: Cheese and Spinach or Mozzarella and Pepperoni. I anticipate more flavors in the future considering they’re perfect little snack-size bites.

But maybe that’s the downfall — they are so small, and a box has merely 12 little bites. I could easily eat the entire box in one sitting as a meal, but that’d be a whopping 15 points on the Weight Watchers scale. We split the box in two and paired the bites with a bunch of other food, and it worked out. But for the price and the size, I’m guessing these items will only be the kind to be purchased during a gnarly sale.

Price: $3.49
Serving: 4 pastries, 2.83oz
Calories:260 per serving
 Calories from Fat: 150
Fat: 26%, 17g
 Saturated Fat: 41%, 8g
 Trans Fat: 0%, 0g
Cholesterol: 9%, 25mg
Sodium: 19%, 460mg
Protein: 6g
Carbohydrates: 7%, 20g
Fiber: 4%, 1g
Sugar: 1g
Weight Watchers Points: 6 Points

Pillsbury says: Bite-sized pastries stuffed with cream cheese, mozzarella cheese and spinach. Pillsbury Savorings brings together the quality and comfort of warm, flaky Pillsbury dough and delicious fillings, that are sure to satisfy adult tastes.

Abi says: My puff pastry obsession of late started with an episode of Barefoot Contessa where Ina Garten made some simple, easy tarts. From there I made little pockets of puff pastry filled with chevre, chocolate, and jam. Not all at once, separate pockets. But I don’t always think about my puff pastry needs desires in advance of actually wanting to eat puff pastry. For this reason, I am glad for these Pillsbury snacks.

First, these have a perfectly reasonable serving size. I ate half a box (6) as the major part of a meal (Pastry bites and carrots = awesome dinner). They would also pair nicely with salad. Or you could eat these with pizza. The possibilities are endless.

Second, the instructions are great (emphasis and capital letters theirs, not mine):

1. Preheat oven and put pastry bites on a tray
2. Bake for slightly less than 20 minutes
3. COOL 5 minutes before serving. CAUTION! Filling will be very hot. Be cautious on first bite.

As the wife of a person who is often injured by the boiling-hot innards of puff pastry pockets, I understand the importance of such specific instructions. I also read the instructions out loud to my husband in a dramatic voice to really get the point across.

Third, these taste exactly the way you’d expect them to taste. Sure you have to be in the mood for store-bought dough and the friendly blandness of cream cheese mozzarella and spinach. But there’s something nice about popping a bunch of hard, green-filled rocks into the oven and being rewarded with a tray full of golden spinach puffs. Mmmm, spinach puffs.

Also, they’re cute and I lack the willpower to resist food I can eat sans utensils.