A quick question about cookies: How long can I keep them under room temperature before they spoil? Do they ever?
If it makes a difference, they’re kept in a sealed ziplock bag.
Just wondering. Thanks.
What kind of cookies? Homemade or factory made? With nuts? Without? Made with butter or margerine or Magical Mystery Grease-Substance X-195® ™
Seriously, the limiting factor is usually the life of the oils/shortenings. Eventually they get rancid.
One of the main reasons factory-made cookies contain specially-manufactured trans fats is that they can remain shelf stable for months if not years. That stability is bad once it gets in your body, but that’s not their concern.
A home-made cookie with lots of butter & no preservatives is probably not real tasty after 2 weeks and maybe even unhealthy after a month, sooner if it starts to grow mold. A similar-looking factory cookie with all trans fats and loaded with preservatives and without any oily nuts might still be safe to eat after a decade.
I have 2-year old Oreos in my cupboard right now that’ve been open for 6 months and stored in a ziplock since then; except for tasting a little “flat”, they’re fine.*
So the answer is, “it depends”.
- One of the ways to tell yuo’re getting older is that a package of Oreos can survive opened for a timespan measured in months rather than minutes.
Ah, thank you. I didn’t know they taught all that in pilot school 
Anyway, it started out as a big bunch of assorted homemade cookies sent by a certain kind stranger (you know you who are, thanks :D), but all that’s left are the chocolate crinkles:
.
As long as they’ll last a week or two, that should be fine. Would it help to refrigerate them? Would they still taste good if I do?
I have never made cookies that stayed around longer than a week.
This question boggles the mind.
However, I have a friend that I sometimes send cookies to, and I think he has kept them in the fridge/freezer with no ill effects. It may depend on the kind of cookie though. We keep thin mints in the freezer because we like them cold; I can’t see something like oatmeal cookies freezing very well though, as they tend to dry out easily.
I would think that cookies would be bad/stale/undesirable to eat long before they went rancid or began to grow mold.
“C” is for Cookie,
That’s good enough for me!
“C” is for Cookie,
That’s good enough for me!
“C” is for Cookie,
That’s good enough for me!
Cookie!
Cookie!
Cookie!
Starts with “C”!
Arrumm Yumm Yumm Yumm Rrm!
Okay, so if you’re in Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu, then Options. From there, you see a bunch of tabs, and you want the one that – oh, that kind of cookies. Nevermind.
You can keep them in the fridge for a while. My parents like to freeze them, but to me, the texture is never quite the same.
As far as I know, cookies don’t go bad so much as they go hard. The first time you chip a tooth on one, they’re ready to toss out.