We've long been told that cookie dough is bad for us due to the presence of raw eggs and the risk of contracting salmonella. That's likely why your mom swatted your hand away from the mixing bowl growing up (but you went back to sneak some into your mouth anyway).
Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says cookie dough is a don't because of raw flour, too, which can contain E. Coli, a major bummer of a bacteria that leads to some seriously unpleasant symptoms and can even lead to kidney failure. Yikes.
But, for the sake of cookie dough lovers everywhere, surely there has to be a workaround to this problem. It turns out, there is.
You may have noticed a crop of edible cookie dough companies opening online shops or stocking grocery store shelves in recent years. They often market their products as safe because they don't contain raw eggs.
The bonus is that some of these raw doughs are also made with heat-treated flour, a process that kills bacteria in raw flour.
"I wouldn’t trust any cookie dough that doesn’t" use heat-treated flour, says Rana Lustyan, founder of Edoughble, a ready-to-eat cookie dough company. "It’s not worth the risk."
Birthday Bash cookie dough from Edoughble, which uses
Birthday Bash cookie dough from Edoughble, which uses heat-treated flour in raw cookie dough that makes it safe to eat. (Photo: Edoughble)
Don't assume gluten-free doughs are any safer. As Lustyan points out, rice flour or chickpea flour are still made from crops that come out of the ground and aren't meant to be eaten raw. She's launching a vegan and gluten-free dough in the fall that relies on heat-treated oat flour.
Lustyan sources flour from Siemer Milling Company, a grain processor based in Teutopolis, Ill. Heat-treated flour is also what makes cookie dough found in ice cream or candy safe to eat, says Sunil Maheshwari, vice president of Siemer Specialty Ingredients.
"That's the only way you can get rid of the microbes in a wheat flour," he says.
Heat-treated bags of flour aren't typically available in your average grocery store. Their moisture content can affect the baking process, which kills off any bacteria.
The Cookie Dough Cafe, which sells jarred edible cookie dough in flavors like chocolate chip and cookies and cream, and DO in New York also both rely on flour that goes through a heating pasteurization process. Even Nestle Toll House switched to using heat-treated flour for its refrigerated cookie dough in 2010, after a recall of the dough in 2009 was found to be linked to flour.
Pillsbury refrigerated cookie doughs include heated flour, but the brand still recommends customers stay away from eating it raw.
"We advise against consuming raw dough or batter," says Mike Siemienas, a spokesman for General Mills, which owns Pillsbury refrigerated and frozen products. "We want to make sure, for our doughs, that you're cooking them properly."
Lindsay Larner, founder of The Cookie Jar D.C., uses flours customers can find in the grocery store. But she says she's had zero safety issues since launching her business in February.
So proceed with caution, but know that you can still lick that spoon if you're careful.
