5-Ingredient Edible Cookie Dough Recipe

Growing up, the best part about making cookies was always licking the mixing spoon. Our younger selves had no concerns about getting sick from raw eggs (not to mention the hidden risk of eating uncooked flour). We unceremoniously ate as much cookie dough as we pleased, often overeating and ending up with a stomach ache by the time the baked cookies were finished.

That glorious memory of cookie dough is still there, but we know more about the risks today, so we tend to avoid this tasty treat. Luckily, there's a way to make a raw cookie dough that's specifically designed to be safe to eat. It doesn't contain any eggs, and we found a way around that pesky raw flour problem. The best part about this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe is that it's easy to customize, too. Add in sprinkles, peanut butter, oatmeal, raisins, or cocoa powder. Use almond flour, oat flour, or gluten-free all-purpose flour if you're gluten-sensitive, or use vegan chocolate chips and vegan butter to make this recipe with plant-based ingredients. The options are endless!

Our 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe contains five pantry-staple ingredients: brown sugar, salted butter, milk, all-purpose flour, and chocolate chips. You can use either light brown sugar or dark brown sugar, depending on your taste preferences. The major difference between the two ingredients is the amount of molasses they contain. According to FineCooking, light brown sugar only contains 3-1/2 percent molasses, so it's lighter in both color and flavor. The 6-1/2 percent molasses content in dark brown sugar has a much deeper flavor that can overpower the cookie dough's delicate flavors.

If you think you might want to bake some of this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe, you'll want to add an additional ingredient: 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Serious Eats explains that baking soda is a leavening agent. It reacts with the acidic molasses in the brown sugar to create carbon dioxide, causing the cookies to rise in the oven. Baking this cookie dough without it would create a flat, dense cookie that's not all that satisfying.

You'll find the full list of ingredients for this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe, including the step-by-step instructions, at the end of this article.

This recipe is very flexible, so feel free to make substitutions based on your diet or preference. For starters, you can play around with different types of gluten-free flours and use them instead of the all-purpose flour.

When it comes to butter, it's okay to substitute unsalted butter if that's all you have on-hand, or you can go dairy-free and use vegan butter. Salted butter allows us to reduce the overall number of ingredients because we don't have to add salt to the mix! But your cookie dough will turn out just as tasty if you add a pinch of salt to the recipe.

As far as milk goes, you can absolutely use your favorite non-dairy milk alternative. Milk adds moisture to the cookie dough, which is necessary in the absence of eggs (an ingredient normally included in baked cookie recipes). In a pinch, you could also use water, or add 1-1/2 teaspoons dried milk powder to three tablespoons of water.

Vanilla is listed as an optional ingredient in our 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe. You certainly don't have to use it, and you absolutely shouldn't make an extra trip to the grocery store if you don't have any on hand. But, if you do have some in the pantry, you may as well add it to this recipe. Vanilla extract not only smells amazing, but it also adds a ton of flavor to baked recipes. The Kitchn says it enhances other flavors, giving the cookie dough a level of depth that's not possible without it.

It's worth noting that vanilla extract is 35 percent alcohol. That alcohol normally burns off during the baking process, but we're not baking this edible cookie dough. It's unlikely that the 1/4 teaspoon we'll use to create 24 bite-sized dough balls is enough to cause any intoxication issues. That said, you'll want to skip the vanilla extract or choose an alcohol-free brand if you want to avoid adding a small amount of alcohol to this recipe.

Chocolate chip cookies are a classic, and they also happen to be our favorite. So, naturally, we included chocolate chips as one of the five ingredients in our 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe. We used regular semi-sweet chocolate chips in our initial batch and thought they were a little large for our bite-sized cookie dough balls. They weren't a problem when we left the cookie dough whole and ate it with a spoon, but we used mini chocolate chips the next time we rolled the cookie dough into individual portions.

Instead of semi-sweet chips, feel free to use dark chocolate chips (or even white chocolate chips). Vegan chocolate chip brands are a good option to make this recipe dairy-free, too. Of course, if you're not a chocolate fan, feel free to skip them and use alternative ingredients. You can use peanut butter chips, nuts, quick oats, raisins, or sprinkles instead. Using a quarter cup should be just fine for most of these ingredients (although you probably only need two tablespoons of compact ingredients like sprinkles).

The first step in this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe might seem odd, especially considering that it's a "raw" recipe. It's not a step that you want to skip, though. You see, most people think that raw eggs are the reason not to snack on cookie dough, but the flour is also a problem.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) advises that flour is a raw ingredient, even though it doesn't look like one. They caution that "you can get sick after eating or tasting unbaked products that are intended to be baked, such as dough or batter." That's because the flour hasn't been treated to kill potentially dangerous bacteria, like E.coli and salmonella.

Luckily, there's a really easy workaround to this: Cook the flour. You can bake it in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven, spread out on an even layer on a baking sheet, for about five minutes. It's also easy to heat flour in the microwave in 15-second intervals, stirring after each interval, for about a minute total (until the flour reaches 165 degrees). The last option is to toast the flour over medium heat in a nonstick skillet. Take care when using this method, as it's very easy to accidentally burn the flour.

Before you move on to the next step, let the cooked flour cool completely. If it's too hot, it will melt the butter, creating a gritty cookie dough. Feel free to place it in the freezer for a few minutes to speed up the process.

When you're ready, fit a stand mixer with the paddle attachment or grab an electric hand mixer. Mix the softened butter and brown sugar together until the mixture is light and fluffy, about two minutes. You can also mix these ingredients by hand, but the resulting cookie dough won't be as airy. Then, add the milk and vanilla extract (if using) before slowly adding the flour one tablespoon at a time. You may not need all the flour, depending on the moisture and humidity in your area.

From there, add the chocolate chips and mix until well combined. You can roll the dough into 24 bite-sized pieces for a portion-controlled dessert approach, or leave the dough together in a bowl and eat it with a spoon. Either way, keep it in the refrigerator and store it (covered) for up to five days. You can freeze extras in a freezer-safe bag for up to a month.

We were thrilled at how incredibly easy it was to make this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe. The ingredients are common enough that we had all of them on hand, so we could whip up this recipe whenever we want. We ended up with way more cookie dough than we needed, but the dough froze well, and it thawed within a few hours in the refrigerator.

More importantly, this cookie dough recipe was absolutely delicious. It brought us right back to our childhood, licking the mixing spoon when mom wasn't looking. We found ourselves rolling the dough into bite-sized balls to force a measure of portion control. When we took to the dough with a spoon, we ate way too much!

When we baked this 5-ingredient edible cookie dough recipe, we thought the cookies turned out just okay. We certainly have cookie recipes we prefer that contain eggs and baking soda, so we'll stick to this recipe as a snacking recipe only.