Egg-Free Cookie Dough

I like cookies.

I do. I prefer them to cake, for instance. There are few things more indulgently delectable than a chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven, served with a tall glass of milk (or bowl of vanilla ice cream).

But do you know what I honestly sort of like more than cookies?

Cookie dough.

Yes. My cookie recipes never make quite as many cookies as advertised, because I eat several cookies' worth of dough.

I do not discriminate in my love of raw baked goods--my brownie pan is never quite as full as it should be by the time I'm done spooning tastes out of the batter, and cake batter is far, far superior in every way to finished cake.

I tend to pooh-pooh my way past raw egg warnings. Doughs and batters, fresh Caesar salad dressing and homemade mayonnaise--I enjoy them all with nary a thought to spare for food poisoning.

Now that I'm pregnant, however, I have resigned myself to a more cautious approach to food. Goodbye, alcohol; goodbye, sushi; goodbye, cookie dough.

Until the internet graced me with a recipe for egg-free dough, of course.

Yes, please.

Egg-Free Cookie Dough
Adapted from this recipe at DisneyFamily.com; this recipe from Love & Olive Oil is similar, but requires more ingredients and I haven't actually bothered with it yet. Note that normal people use these recipes to form adorable little cookie dough balls that they drizzle/coat in chocolate and serve on fancy platters at parties. I just stick the bowl of dough in my fridge to eat as the mood strikes me.

Soften 1 cup (two sticks) butter by leaving it out on the counter for an hour, or hacking at it with a knife for fifteen minutes, or, if you like to live life on the edge, microwaving in 5-10 second intervals.

I bought a one pound block of butter from a local dairy,
so it wasn't in neat little sticks. If you, too, lack stick butter,
remember that 1 pound = 2 cups = 4 sticks.
So this is a half pound of butter (aka 1 cup aka 2 sticks)
 in pieces that I hacked apart and weighed on my kitchen scale.

You should be able to easily leave a thumbprint in softened butter, but it should not be in any way melty or liquid.

Thumbprint.

Put your butter in a large mixing bowl, one that will happily accommodate a beater. A deep bowl is a good idea, as butter and sugar in a wide, shallow bowl will go flinging about your kitchen and into your hair. Not that I know this from personal experience or anything.

Add to your butter 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar.

Sugar and butter.

Cream your butter and sugar together. This means beat it with your beater until it's a creamy, coherent substance. The DDH is exceptionally good at this, and the batch he made was smoother and more delightful than the one I did. I tend to get impatient and stop before everything is really and truly creamed, leading to a grainier (and, after being refrigerated, harder) finished dough.

This is okay, but another two minutes would make it better.

Add 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Vanilla.

and 1 1/2 to 2 cups flour. I add a cup, mix it in, then add more until it's the consistency I like. When you're making dough to bake, you want to be careful not to overmix the flour, as this will make for tough cookies. But if you're just eating the dough, it doesn't matter as much.

Flour.

Once your dough is mixed and the consistency you like,

Dough!

add 1 to 2 cups chocolate chips. In other words, add chocolate chips to taste, or according to how big your chips are or how many you have left.

This is a bit less than a cup of chips.

Mix together and enjoy!

No need for baking.

The dough will keep in the fridge for a week or so, not that it's ever stuck around that long at my house. To help keep your leftovers soft, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the dough.

You can of course form this dough into balls, drizzle and coat with chocolate, and take them to a fancy party.

But I won't tell if you just eat it all with a spoon straight from the bowl. ;-)