This may shock you…

I do not care for raw cookie dough.

There, it’s out.

Sure, I’ll taste a little from time to time to make sure the flavor is just right before I put my cookies in the oven. But as far as eating raw cookie dough just for the sake of eating raw cookie dough… no thanks.

My son on the other hand, loves it. Possibly a little too much.

It’s the only ice cream flavor he ever picks. And on the rare occasion that I buy packaged cookie dough, I have to hide it from him or he will eat all of it before I get the chance to bake it.

This has happened more than once. It’s a problem.

So as I was perusing the Food & Drink section of Pinterest the other day, I came across several recipes for cookie dough bites. I hadn’t planned on making any but the promise of cookie dough that you could eat with wild abandon because it was egg-free, vegan, raw, gluten-free, and supposedly healthy seemed too good to pass up.

Fast forward about five minutes past all of that excitement to me in my kitchen not making anything because I didn’t have the right ingredients for ANY of them.

Figures.

So I pretty much just worked with what I had and figured it out as I went along (what else is new?) and the end result turned out to be delicious.

My cookie dough bites aren’t raw because of the addition of the roasted peanuts but they are gluten-free (make sure you get GF oats) and vegan if you use vegan chocolate chips. Or you could just leave them out all together.

You could also fold in some dried fruit or sprinkles if you’re making these for little ones.

As is, these cookie dough bites taste just like peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough. My super picky teenager loved these. He thought they were actually balls of peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dough so nobody tell him, k?

They’re picky teenager approved, but they’re also much better for you than munching on the real thing.

I should also mention that these are crazy simple to make because there’s no baking involved, you only need a handful of ingredients, and they can be in your mouth in way less time than it would take you to make an actual batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

I’m not sure that you need any more convincing at this point but just in case… your blender or food processor pretty much does all of the work for you.

There. That should do it.

Ingredients

3/4 cup dry roasted peanuts

1/4 cup any combination of flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, and/or sunflower seeds (use one or all – just make sure you have 1/4 cup)

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats (make sure you’re using GF oats if you’re GF)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3 tablespoons maple syrup (use the real stuff here please)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions

Toss the peanuts, the seeds, the oats, and the cinnamon into your blender or food processor and blend until everything is chopped very fine.

Add the maple syrup and vanilla and blend again until everything is incorporated.

Dump the mixture into a bowl and fold in the chocolate chips, dried fruit, sprinkles, whatever.

Roll into balls and store in your refrigerator.

I used a tablespoon measure so that all of my bites would be exactly the same because I have issues, but you can just pinch off whatever amount of dough you’re comfortable with and roll it on up.

* For GF make sure that there are no wheat ingredients listed on the back of the dry roasted peanuts. If you’re not sure, use the same amount of regular peanuts, toast them in your oven for a few minutes on a dry sheet pan at 350 degrees, and add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the peanuts, oats, and cinnamon before blending.