How to Make Safe, Edible Cookie Dough

Life is tough for cookie dough lovers. No matter how many times the CDC reminds you that cookies in their unbaked form are unsafe to eat, the right mixture of butter, sugar, raw eggs, and flour never stops being a tempting treat. But you don't need to wait in line at a trendy cookie dough cafe to get your fix without the health risks. It's easy to make edible cookie dough at home—and it's just as satisfying as the other stuff.

The Seattle Times recently shared Olivia Hops's recipe for safe-to-eat chocolate chip cookie dough from her book, The Edible Cookie Dough Cookbook, which was published earlier this year. It includes many of the same ingredients you'd expect to find in regular cookie batter, like butter, sugar, flour, vanilla, chocolate chips, and salt. Eggs (and the Salmonella they potentially carry in their raw state) are the only major exclusion.

Hops has made one more noticeable tweak to the recipe: She calls for all-purpose flour that's been heat-treated, which means it has been heated to at least 160°F in the microwave. Even if dough doesn't use raw eggs, it can still be dangerous to eat if it contains raw flour. Most flour isn't treated to kill germs before it's packaged and sent to the supermarket, so it may be harboring E. coli.

After treating your flour, proceed with the recipe as you would if you were baking regular cookies. Cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, then mix in the vanilla until combined. Whisk the remaining dry ingredients in a medium bowl and then keep adding a little bit to the wet mixture, mixing on low as you go. Incorporate the chocolate chips by hand before digging in.

"Feel free to switch the type of chocolate chips you add or even to add multiple types of chips," suggests Hops. Click here for the full recipe.