National Cookie Dough Day Date in the current year: June 21, 2024

Cookie dough is just what its name suggests: a mixture of ingredients used to make cookies. Cookie-like baked treats have existed for as long as baking itself, but modern cookies became widespread sometime between the 17th and 18th century. Common cookie dough ingredients include flour, butter, eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract.

Although cookies have been around for quite some time, the concept of edible cookie dough is relatively recent. It was inspired by the practice of tasting the dough when baking cookies at home to ensure it is sweet enough. Some people liked the taste of uncooked cookie dough so much that they enjoyed eating it raw.

It should be noted that the consumption of raw cookie dough comes with a number of health risks because of the presence of raw flour and raw eggs. Raw flour and eggs may contain bacteria that cause food poisoning, such as Salmonella and E. coli; these germs are killed by heat during baking but can thrive in uncooked cookie dough. That’s why it took some time for cookie dough desserts and edible cookie dough to become commercially available.

One of the first food companies to jump on the cookie dough train was Ben & Jerry’s. Inspired by an anonymous suggestion on their flavor suggestion board, they invented their chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in 1984 and began selling it in pint-sized jars in 1991. To this day, chocolate chip cookie dough is one of the company’s most popular ice cream flavors. In 1997, Taste of Nature presented Cookie Dough Bites, a brand of chocolate-covered candy with a cookie dough filling.

Edible cookie dough became a trend in the 2010s, which led to the emergence of several brands of edible cookie dough. Due to the aforementioned health risks, edible cookie dough intended to be eaten uncooked is slightly different from regular cookie dough. It is made with heat-treated flour and pasteurized eggs (or with no eggs at all). Pre-made edible cookie dough comes in different flavors and may contain various additions such as chocolate chips, sprinkles, crushed graham crackers or Oreo cookies, nuts, toasted marshmallows, Reese’s Pieces or M&M’s, and even sea salt.

National Cookie Dough Day was launched and is actively promoted by DŌ, Cookie Dough Confections, an edible cookie dough shop in New York City. Founded by Kristen Tomlan, it is the confectionery that claims to be responsible for starting the edible cookie dough trend back in the 2010s.

You can celebrate this amazing holiday by enjoying cookie dough as is, mixing it into ice cream, or baking a batch of cookies and sharing them with your friends, families, neighbors and coworkers. If you decide to celebrate by making edible cookie dough at home, don’t forget to heat-treat the flour before adding it to the dough and use milk instead of eggs. And make sure to spread the word about the holiday on social media with the hashtags #NationalCookieDoughDay and #CookieDoughDay!