This post was created by e.coli.

I love me some cookie dough, but if your cookies are dry and boring, try a different recipe. Cookies are awesome both baked and unbaked if they're made well.

Definitely an unpopular opinion, take the upvote

You are dead wrong. Upvoted for a truly controversial opinion though

Gotta respect the post, but holy shit is the take a difficult one.

Now,I hate food snobbery, and firmly believe all food preferences are relative. So if you like dough better than the baked cookies, good for you!

What I will say is that a baked cookie that's dry and boring means someone didn't understand the recipe. Even a plain sugar cookie should have a well developed flavor despite being limited in profile.

See, part of baking is leveraging the kind of reactions that give you browning via caramelization and the Maillard reaction (ignoring the exact degree of overlap there to keep things simple). So even something that's just flour, water, butter, leavener and sugar shouldn't be boring. If it is, then you borked something along the way.

Even shortbread cookies aren't completely without complexity of flavor brought about by heat, and they're as bland as it gets.

Dryness, again, goes back to recipe rather than cookieness. You do want dryness in some cookies. Can you imagine something like a ginger snap not snapping because it's moist? But in the usual cookie doughs that people eat in the raw, dry shouldn't be the primary descriptor.

Take your usual tollhouse recipe chocolate chip cookies. Those end up at the dry end of cookiedom, so that you get that crisp exterior and some nice chew underneath. But they still have a good amount of fats involved, which is directly contrary to "dry". Moistness in most baking isn't about water, it's fats. So a dry cookie of that type would mean the recipe isn't scaled right.

But as dry as tollhouse style cookies can get, they make up for it by the richness brought about as the sugars and proteins react. As the baking progresses, you get initial Maillard when the dough reaches temp, then caramelization once you cross over about 300F. That would be very unusual to classify as a boring flavor profile, particularly since you'd have vanilla, chocolate, and butter involved too.

That being said, if you're following good food safety protocols when making the dough, if you let them sit and chill in the fridge overnight, that dough will be a better experience! Those same ingredients have time to open up and become more available to the palate. You'll lack the development you get from heat, but it'll be more than just nomming from the bowl, and much more than the usual packaged dough from the store.

I agree with the first comment. What are you doing to your cookies that they taste worse than dough?

No

Occasional reminder that raw flour could be bad for you, so at least bake the flour..