Cookies are humankind's single greatest creation. Brain surgery, motorized vehicles, the world wide web - all are helpless against the restorative power of the cookie. Surgeons forget to tie off a vein, cars need mysterious things like timing belts, the internet eats your blog post. But cookies never fail. Even a stale Nutter Butter is better than botched brain surgery.

To help you reach your peak potential for cookie consumption, we present a series on the very best cookies in San Francisco. Because we didn't personally sample each and every cookie in this fair city, we can't claim that this is a complete list. If we did, we would be admitting kinship with those burger joints in the Mississippi back roads that herald the "World's Best Burger." Dude. Have you eaten a hamburger at every health-code-violating shack on earth? No? THEN HOW DO YOU KNOW? This is not a Mississippi back road and we pride ourselves on not taking a stand. Instead, we will share the extensive investigation due such a worthy topic (frankly, we've done less research for college term papers) and proffer the cookies our discerning palates deem Pretty Damn Good. Get your pencils ready.

SFist Amber, contributing. Check out the list after the jump.