Mrs. Fields Madison Ave, Chicago

Debbi Fields opened her first cookie shop in 1977, launching what would soon become a household name. Today, Mrs. Fields bakers from all over the world carry on her legacy, whipping up her signature semisweet chocolate-chip cookies with the same top-secret recipe that Mrs. Fields invented. They carefully fold real butter, whole eggs, and pure vanilla into delicate, buttery batters to create soft, chewy cookies that fill nearby nostrils with irresistibly sweet aromas. Using these same ingredients and recipes, they also bake up cookie cakes that can be decorated with colorful icing and personalized messages such as birthday wishes, inside jokes, or bank-account passwords. When they’re not handcrafting milk-chocolate-chip, cinnamon-sugar, and peanut-butter cookie batters into mini, regular, or cake-size cookies, these bakers are busy making gourmet brownies with pecans and walnuts.