17 Edible Cookie Doughs You Can Eat by the Spoonful

If you're a parent, you may have seen it: Kids are cuckoo for edible cookie dough. It’s not as crazy as it sounds at first blush—cookie dough has been a popular ice cream flavor for years. But this is not just making cookie dough and eating it—that would run health risks, from the raw egg to raw flour included (yes, raw flour is also not safe to eat!). These recipes make edible cookie dough safe, from heating the flour enough to leaving out the egg, natch. These no-bake doughs will keep, refrigerated in an airtight container, up to one week—that is, as long as you can keep your kiddo from re-dipping their spoon right into the communal vat, which is a big if, of course.

Looking for a classic chocolate chip cookie dough recipe that’s safe to eat raw? Our recipe developers have it. With its intense buttery flavor, vanilla aroma and crunchy sugar crystals, it’s hard to say what exactly makes this edible cookie dough so irresistible. Share a batch with friends and family and decide for yourself.

You certainly can eat edible cookie dough with a spoon, but it’s kind of fun to shape it into cookies, too. This dough is based on peanut butter cookies, so it’s creamy and satisfyingly peanutty. The recipe suggests sandwiching it between cookies—genius! Vanilla wafers, yes, but we love it on chocolate graham crackers as well.

Monster cookies get their name because they’re typically oversized, and packed with all the goodies: chocolate chips, candy, coconut, oats. Molly Yeh translates this into cookie dough along with a healthy dose of her beloved sprinkles. The dough eats almost like a super dense ice cream.

There was no way you were getting out of here without a classic chocolate chip cookie truffle. The shell is semisweet chocolate, of course! Because it’s almost the whole point of the cookies and the dough.

For your typical snickerdoodle, you roll balls of sugar cookie dough in cinnamon, to get that crackly spiced shell as they spread in the oven. Obviously that’s not an option here, so the cinnamon goes right in the dough. Some yogurt contributes moisture and helps hold things together, acting the way an egg might but remaining food-safe.

If you’re ready to take your edible dough consumption to a whole new level, enter this bark. First you make a nut butter layer and freeze it; then top with a swirl of bittersweet and white chocolate and a garnish of chopped salted peanuts. When it emerges from the freezer, you’ll have crunchy shards of tastiness that then keep in the fridge.

This is the ideal cookie dough for the lover of chunky peanut butter. In addition to the peanut butter in the dough, you’ve got honey-roasted peanuts mixed in for hits of sweet and salty. You’ll go nuts for it.

Chocolate and peanut butter were born to go together, so it is a no-brainer to combine them in this fashion. In the center is your classic peanut butter dough, made with light brown sugar and chunky peanut butter for a little nutty crunch. We call for milk chocolate chips here, but you can truly go in any direction with these.

Why should cookies have all the fun? Brownies are bar cookies, after all, and besides, this will indulge anyone who can never resist licking that bowl. It’s creamy and fudgy, just like the best kind of brownie.

Oatmeal raisin is another classic cookie, and we feel that it lends itself quite well to dough form. That creamy dough is punctuated occasionally by the chewiness of raisins and subtle chunkiness of the oatmeal. Just like the cookie, it strikes that balance of nostalgia and comfort.

Cake batter is so festive and delicious, and here it becomes, not cake, but edible cookie dough. Choose your sprinkles based on the occasion—you can go pink, as pictured, or chocolate, but rainbow will really bring a confetti cake to life. White chocolate chips, too, enhance that classic cake batter flavor.

Using cookie dough as the center of a truffle is an idea that can be generalized to all of these cookie doughs. This one has snickerdoodle as its heart, and then is covered with a shell of white chocolate. Why white? It does a wonderful job of being a creamy flavor carrier that helps bring out the essence of the rest of the ingredients.

In the continuum of edible cookie dough you have those things that you might see on health food menus as “energy bites”. These are typically bound with nutrition-packed items like nut butters or pureed dates or prunes. And they are quite delicious. These are packed with oats, coconut, flax seeds, nut butter and hemp seeds, for a textural sensation that will indeed give you an energy boost when you need it.

Key lime is so unexpected for any cookie, but particularly for cookie dough! This dough is infused with key lime juice but also light brown sugar, which calls to mind a shortbread crust on a key lime pie. The white chocolate shell is like the dollop of whipped cream on top.

Gluten-free eaters can get in on the edible fun, too! This dough is made with a combination of gluten-free flour and almond meal, and invites a veritable party of sprinkles, milk and white chocolate chips and even carob chips. You can take this in a few directions, too. Eat it off the spoon, make sandwich cookies with it or serve it with sliced apples.

Oatmeal raisin is a good candidate for truffling as well. Here, it’s dipped in a coating of melted butterscotch chips, which complements those old-fashioned flavors. We love them any time, but they really do dial up those fall vibes.