Is McDonald's Chips Ahoy Frappé Worth Trying? Here's My Brutally Honest Review

For a food as tasty and ubiquitous as a chocolate chip cookie, there sure is a lot of variance out there. Homemade cookies, for instance, come in all shapes and sizes with a variety of different textures, like chewy chocolate chip cookies or even extra soft ones. Prepackaged cookies, likewise, are also different from brand to brand. Chips Ahoy! cookies, our family's chosen prepackaged brand, are a little harder and have an immediately identifiable prepackaged flavor (though there is an extra step that makes store-bought cookies taste gourmet). While I'll always prefer a homemade cookie, there's something comforting about opening a box of Chips Ahoy! and knowing exactly the flavor and texture to expect. This in mind, I figured I knew the flavor I was getting into with my first sip of McDonald's Chips Ahoy! Frappé.

The Chips Ahoy! Frappé is a blended mocha coffee frappe decked out with chocolate cookie syrup, whipped cream, and a sprinkling of more cookie pieces on top. With the release of this new drink, I picked up lunch for my family and nabbed one of these frappés to discover if it could live up to my cookie expectations, or if it was just a poor, crumbly attempt to capture this favorite cookie.

It's common to see restaurant chains roll out limited-time offerings during the fall and winter months. There's nothing quite like falling leaves and Christmas trees to get us ready to partake in the flavors of the season. However, these offerings typically connect to the time of year. It's rare to see an item that feels completely separate from the season presented for promotion, but that's what's happening here. The Chips Ahoy! Frappé is not a permanent addition to the McDonald's lineup. Instead, McDonald's advertises this cookie coffee drink as a limited-time offering. How limited exactly we can't say for sure, but it's available at participating McDonald's locations now and is slated to go nationwide on November 3.

Since prices across the country tend to fluctuate, you'll find that the drink might cost different at your local golden arches. I'm coming to you from Central Florida where a small is $3.50, a medium is $5.19, and a large is $5.49. I noticed that these are the same prices as the Caramel and Mocha Frappés, so count on spending as much as you typically do on a McDonald's Frappé.

For planning purposes, it might be helpful to note how the Chips Ahoy! Frappé compares to the typical Mocha Frappé from McDonald's. A medium Chips Ahoy! Frappé has 640 calories, 9 grams of protein, 102 grams of carbohydrates, 22 grams of fat, 76 grams of sugar, and 105 milligrams of caffeine. That makes it a heftier version of the McCafé Mocha Frappé, which has 490 calories, eight grams of protein, 72 grams of carbohydrates, 60 grams of sugar, and 20 grams of fat.

I compare this Chips Ahoy! Frappé to the Mocha Frappé because McDonald's crew members use the mocha coffee frappe base for this drink. The extra sweetness, calories, and carbohydrates no doubt come from the added chocolate chip cookie syrup and Chips Ahoy! cookie pieces.

On my initial sip, the very first thing I noticed was an underlying, boring chocolate flavor. It tasted like the type of mocha sauce I've had in other drinks from McDonald's, but it didn't necessarily remind me of a chocolate chip like you might find in a Chips Ahoy! cookie. In fact, I didn't really pick up any of the cookie bits that were supposedly blended in the drink — maybe they just became mushy in the liquid? — but the overall drink had a very smooth consistency. Considering its texture, the frappé performed its blended coffee responsibilities admirably.

In terms of a coffee drink, I didn't really taste any within the frappé. Perhaps the milk and the chocolate (and the allegedly blended cookies) cover it up significantly, but if you are a coffee lover, you're not going to get the satisfaction of espresso or coffee from this cookie flavored frappé.

If you've had prepackaged cookies before, you're likely well aware of the not-quite-fresh flavor they tend to have. It's somewhere between a stale and fake flavor, and it's the reason that homemade cookies are just superior. In a pinch, I'm always willing to set the flavoring aside and take the cookies for what they are. While the frappé didn't have the cookie flavor like I hoped it would, it did capture that odd staleness. Is that a good thing? Well ...

What's ultimately very disappointing about this type of drink is that it has an opportunity to have a really developed, deep flavor to it. A little extra consideration in developing that chocolate chip cookie flavored syrup could have produced a great frappé. It also needs significantly more cookie bits within the drink — or at least more liquid-resistant ones — as I didn't taste or feel the cookie pieces at all. Instead, I saw them on top, but even there, they didn't do anything to flavor the drink. In an attempt to save the experience, I leaned on a common milkshake hack (even though frappes and milkshakes are not the same thing): I dipped a French fry in the frappe to see if it would taste better. McDonald's French fries taste great with pretty much everything, so this was a saving grace, but I still can't recommend rushing out to try the Chips Ahoy! Frappé — and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it end up among the McDonald's menu items that failed.