Cookie Dough Frosting

Cookie Dough Frosting starts with luxuriously rich vanilla buttercream. Next, we whip up some cookie dough that gets mixed into the frosting to create a light, fluffy, and intensely cookie-dough-flavored frosting.

Cookie Dough Frosting

When you’ve got the dream Edible Cookie Dough recipe, you’ve got to find every excuse to use it again and again, right?! So why not add it to some Cookie Dough Oreos or add it in a delicious Vanilla Buttercream? Yes, we went there!

This frosting is sweet, smooth, light, and fluffy– the perfect addition to so many treats (more on this later). And one of my favorite things about this frosting is there is no gritty or graininess like you’ll often find in cookie dough frostings. Since we make the cookie dough and frosting separately and then combine the two, it ensures we don’t have any unpleasant textures.

Ingredients

• Cookie Dough Dry Ingredients: Flour, brown sugar, white granulated sugar, fine sea salt, and miniature chocolate chips. Make sure to heat treat the flour to eliminate any bacteria, ensuring the cookie dough is safe to eat.
• Cookie Dough Wet Ingredients: Unsalted butter, pure vanilla extract, and whole milk or heavy cream. Cool melted butter to room temperature before mixing to keep the dough from becoming greasy.
• Frosting Ingredients: Unsalted butter, pure vanilla extract, heavy cream, fine sea salt, and powdered sugar. Beat the butter until fluffy before adding other ingredients for a smoother and fluffier frosting.

Let’s talk edible cookie dough

We start this frosting by making edible cookie dough that we then mix into the buttercream. What do I mean by edible? Well, technically, regular cookie dough (like you’d get in chewy chocolate chip cookies) is not food-safe to eat.

There are food safety concerns revolving around both the flour and uncooked eggs. So the edible cookie dough portion of this cookie dough frosting is specially formulated to be safe while also tasting just like regular cookie dough. There are no eggs in this recipe and we heat treat the flour to ensure everything is up to safety standards for consumption.

What is heat treating flour?

A lot of people are surprised to find flour is responsible for sickness in unbaked cookie dough. While flour doesn’t look like raw food, it actually is. It may contain germs and bacteria that can cause food poisoning.  When you bake with flour, the oven’s heat accomplishes that sterilization process, but uncooked foods don’t get that same heat factor. So, we actually cook (heat treat) the flour before using it, to ensure we kill any potential bacteria. There are three options for heat-treating your flour.

• Purchase flour that has already been heat-treated.
• Heat treat it in the microwave.
• Heat treat it in the oven.

I outline the full extent of these methods for heat-treating the flour in the recipe card, but here are a few quick tips about heating treating flour:

• Let the flour cool completely before using it in the recipe; you can speed up the process by placing the tray in the fridge or freezer.
• Break up any clumps of flour and discard any discolored sections — this part of the flour is burnt and will give the cookie dough an “off” flavor.
• Heat treat more flour than you’ll need to compensate for any flour that gets burned in the process of heat treating.
• Heat-treated flour should look just like regular flour (light, fluffy, and white).

How To Use Cookie Dough Frosting

We love this frosting straight from the bowl, honestly. 🙂 Here are some other ways to use it:

• Frost cupcakes. We love these chocolate cake mix cupcakes.
• Use as a dip. This frosting is so great as a dip; we love dipping honey graham crackers, Oreo® cookies, fresh strawberries, and bananas in it.
• Frost a cake. Cookie Dough Frosting would be divine on this chocolate cake recipe!
• Top sugar cookies with it. Cookie dough frosted cookies? I mean, it seems like a lot, but YOLO!
• Make a graham cracker sandwich. Frost a graham cracker, then add another graham cracker on top. And if you want to get even fancier, dip that cookie-dough-frosting-loaded graham cracker sandwich in melted chocolate.
• Pipe it into hulled strawberries.
• Blend a few spoonfuls into a milkshake.
• Spread it over this cooled Brownie Recipe.
• Add to a bowl of oatmeal. Make breakfast more fun by jazzing up some oats with this frosting.

Cookie Dough Frosting Tips

• Set out the butter an hour before making this frosting. If the butter isn’t at room temperature, it won’t mix and whip up as smoothly. Here are some tips for how to bring butter to room temperature quickly. We also want to make sure the butter isn’t at all melted; again, it won’t whip up how we want it to.
• Use miniature chocolate chips. Larger chocolate chips are too overwhelming in the frosting — they also won’t pipe through smaller piping tips.
• Chill edible cookie dough. Once the cookie dough has been made, pop it in the fridge while preparing the frosting. This gives a chance for the cookie dough to firm up a bit, the sugar granules to dissolve, and the flavors to slightly intensify.
• The edible cookie dough portion can even be made ahead — store it in an airtight container in the fridge if making in advance. If making the cookie dough in advance, it will need to sit out at room temperature for about 30 minutes before being added into the frosting (it gets very firm being chilled for any length of time).

More dessert recipes

• Dessert Cheese Ball brownie batter-flavored
• Coconut Macaroons with a chocolate drizzle
• Edible Cake Batter with sprinkles
• Salted Caramel Cookies with a cream cheese frosting and caramel drizzle
• No-Bake Peanut Butter Cheesecake with an Oreo cookie crust

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Cookie Dough Frosting

By Chelsea Lords

Cookie Dough Frosting blends rich vanilla buttercream with edible cookie dough for a light, fluffy, and irresistibly cookie-dough-flavored treat!

Prep Time: 35 minutes minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes minutes

Servings: 8 servings

Equipment

• Stand mixer

Ingredients

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USMetric

Edible Cookie Dough

• ▢ 3/4 cup all-purpose flour spoon and level to measure
• ▢ 1/3 cup unsalted butter melted
• ▢ 1/3 cup brown sugar firmly packed; light or dark, I prefer dark
• ▢ 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ▢ 1 tablespoon whole milk or heavy cream
• ▢ 1/3 cup miniature chocolate chips

Frosting

• ▢ 8 tablespoons unsalted butter 1/2 cup, at room temperature
• ▢ 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ▢ 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• ▢ 1/4 teaspoon salt
• ▢ 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions 

• Heat Treat Flour: You can heat treat flour in the microwave or oven. See note 1. Test the flour to ensure it has reached a safe temperature of 165°F. Let flour cool completely to room temperature before using. Don’t use any burnt or clumpy flour (if it’s off-color or smells burnt, it is burnt). The flour should be light, white, and fluffy. Use a spoon to add the cooled flour to a measuring cup and level the top of the cup with the back of a table knife. Set aside in a separate bowl.
• Cookie Dough: Meanwhile, melt the butter and set it aside to cool back to room temperature—hot butter will melt the sugar and cause greasy or grainy cookie dough. In a medium bowl, add melted and cooled butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Briskly stir or whisk until smooth, about 1–2 minutes—the mixture should be fully integrated (butter shouldn’t rise or separate). Once the mixture is smooth, add salt, vanilla, and milk (or cream) and stir until integrated. Stir in the cooled flour and mini chocolate chips. Mix until combined and smooth. Place cookie dough in the fridge to chill while preparing the frosting.
• Frosting: In a stand mixer, add the room-temperature butter. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes, or until completely smooth and fluffy, scraping the sides with a spatula as needed. Add vanilla, cream, and salt; beat to combine. Add the powdered sugar and beat the mixture (on low speed) to combine. Once combined, increase the speed and beat until frosting is very light and fluffy, about 3–4 minutes. It should turn a lighter white.
• Remove cookie dough from the fridge and break/crumble it on top of the frosting. Beat on low speed for about 15–20 seconds, just to incorporate the cookie dough into the frosting; it’s okay if there are rippled chunks of dough—this makes the frosting have a fun texture! (If you’ll be piping this cookie dough through a smaller tip, you’ll want to beat until all the chunks are broken down and incorporated in the frosting.)
• Enjoy as a dip (I love dipping in graham crackers or Oreo cookies) or frost a cake or cupcakes. I often use this frosting in Cookie Dough Oreos! This frosting will store in the fridge, in an airtight container, for up to a week.

Video

Recipe Notes

Note 1: Here’s how to heat treat flour:

• Heat treat 1/2 cup more flour than you’ll need (in case edges burn).
• Microwave: Add flour to a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30-second bursts, stirring between each, to avoid burning or clumping. After each burst, check the temperature. It’s done when it has reached 165°F.
• Oven: Preheat the oven to 300°F and line a large sheet pan with a nonstick liner or parchment paper. Spread the flour on the pan. Bake, stirring and checking the temperature every 2 minutes until it reaches 165°F, about 3–6 minutes.

Storage: Store this frosting in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Nutrition

Serving: 1serving | Calories: 434kcal | Carbohydrates: 54g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 23g | Saturated Fat: 15g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 57mg | Sodium: 160mg | Potassium: 48mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 36g | Vitamin A: 668IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 33mg | Iron: 1mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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