The Edible Cookie Dough Cookbook

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So this might be a bit random, but I feel like 'cookie dough' should be one word. It's a common enough phrase anyway, at least in my head. Cookiedough just looks like it belongs together. Anyway, when I saw The Edible Cookie Dough Cookbook pop up on Netgalley I knew I just had to give it a shot. Who doesn't like eating cookie dough? One of the reasons I usually bake vegan is because I don't want to have to remotely worry about salmonella when eating that stuff off my hands. Here, Hops has managed to compile a whopping 75 different totally edible cookie dough recipes, even coming with instructions on how to heat treat flour for safety (although I can't say I bothered with it.)

This book comes with 3 major sections:

The obligatory introductory basic how to stuff was about as interesting as it ever is. I did enjoy the author's writing style and personal notes about how she fell into the cookie dough business, but as usual my focus was on the glorious tasty treats themselves.

Cookie dough recipes: There were SO many awesome sounding recipes in here, from your classic double choc to a lemon cardamom dough that looked amazing. Every recipe started pretty much the same way, beating a ton of butter and sugar into the fluffy goodness we all know and love. One thing I will say about these recipes is that they seem to rely on premade flavourings, such as cake or brownie mix. And while that does make for a short ingredient list, I think that it would have been nice to get some less artificial flavouring going.

Recipes using the cookie dough: these were pretty cool, including cookie dough layer cake, cookie dough stuffed cupcakes, and cookie dough party dip. Am I going to make any of these? Probably not. But there are certainly plenty of ideas that I think would be great for kids birthday parties, or barbecues and picnics.

The recipes are all formatted well, and easily understandable. Most people with basic baking experience should be able to make them once they work out how to cream butter and sugar. The problem, for me anyway, is that this book recommends a paddle beater, which I do not have, and resulted in some pretty sugar-grainy dough. Not every recipe in this book has a photo, which I personally like, because you can never be misled by how something looks, only how it sounds, but if you're a photo fiend, this probably isn't for you. There isn't anything incredibly exciting about the photography that is there, nor is there anything particularly exciting about the formatting, so if you're looking for an average kind of cookbook with inventive recipes, go for it.

I made two recipes with this book to varying degrees of success. The birthday cake cookie dough tasted fine, but I did not beat the butter and sugar nearly long enough and it was a dry, crumbly mess. Thankfully I forgot to take pictures of that monstrosity. The taste was only ok, maybe because I used cheap cake mix, or maybe because the flavour was supposed to come entirely from cake mix.

The second recipe I tried was the White Chocolate Chai Cookie Dough, minus the white chocolate, because I was too lazy to go to the shops. This turned out much better but the taste was again kind of bland, and tasted basically just like chai tea powder, the basis of its flavouring. It just left me feeling like there was something missing (maybe the white chocolate.) The texture was better, getting to a cookie dough consistency, and not being too dry, but I could still feel the individual sugar granules.

Overall I gave this a 3.5/5 stars, because there was a huge variety of recipes, they just could have been better.