Cookie Doughn't You Wish There Were Eggs in This?

The title of this post is a reference to Coldstone Creamery's signature creation called "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some?". It's a delicious concoction of french vanilla ice cream, caramel, fudge, chocolate chips, and chunks of cookie dough. I'm not that bummed about missing out on Coldstone Creamery - their ice cream was always a bit too rich for me and I could never even make it though a "Like It" size - but cookie dough is another story.

In my pre-vegan days, whenever I was feeling particularly indulgent, I'd purchase a tube of cookie dough with my groceries. It might last a week... but that was only if it got hidden behind something else in the refrigerator and I forgot it was there.

I once babysat for a family that always had a 36 oz. tub of Toll House cookie dough in their refrigerator. Anyone who has ever babysat knows that the biggest perk is digging through the family's kitchen after the kids are asleep and finding new, strange snacks to nom on while you watch TV. This tub of cookie dough always haunted me. I wanted to eat a lot of it, but I felt embarrassed that the family might notice how much of it was gone each time they got home after I had been babysitting. I would try to scoop spoonfuls from places that had already been attacked, so the mound of cookie dough still in the tub didn't look markedly different.

After three heaping spoonfuls, I always felt kind of sick and had to stop eating it. It was the raw eggs. Those raw eggs! They'll also kill you with E. coli and salmonella. But cookie dough is worth the risk.

When I was shopping at the Isla Vista Coop yesterday, I spied with my little eye a tub of vegan cookie dough. It's made by the company Eat Pastry, whose website looks like a mix between Willy Wonka's most terrifying dream and a particularly colorful interpretation of the Book of Revelation. But their cookie dough looks pretty unremarkable.

I wanted to give the vegan cookie dough a fair shot, so I waited until last night when I had changed into my pajamas and was about to watch an episode of House Hunters International while pretending to do school work. The time was right for a heaping spoonful (or three) of cookie dough.

Unfortunately, it seems that in addition to E. coli and salmonella, raw eggs also contribute most of cookie dough's great taste. The vegan cookie dough wasn't disgusting tasting, it just wasn't satisfying. I guess I'll have to become one of those people who thinks of cookie dough as just a means to an end: cookies. So I baked some:

They were incredible. So yummy. And better even than the ones I baked from scratch a couple of weeks ago. I guess the moral of the story (the way the cookie crumbles, if you will) is that even though you don't have to be afraid of E. coli or salmonella when snacking on raw vegan cookie dough, it just doesn't measure up to the real stuff in taste. The Eat Pastry cookies themselves, though, are definitely something to write home about.

Luckily, I don't have to bother writing home because my mom and dad read this blog.