As a thank you for helping her land a new job last year, an acquaintance dropped off a small but game-changing gift: a mason jar of raw cookie dough. It disappeared remarkably fast — it worked as a pre-morning run snack, a dessert after lunch or dinner, and all points before, after, and in between.
When I needed a refill, I took a recipe from The Kitchn and adopted it to my bulk-friendly format, using weights rather than conventional cooking measurements so that the recipe can be more easily scaled.
Raw cookie dough is an excellent backpacking snack. It is shelf-stable and made of only a few easy-to-find ingredients. It’s not paleo, but it’s cashew-based and uses maple syrup as a sweetener, not sugar. Prep is minimal, and entails no cooking; however, you’ll need a food processor, and you’ll want a mixer for big batches.
I recommend forming 3-oz snack bars and storing them in plastic bags. Unless it is a communal dessert or treat, do NOT store an entire batch in a single freezer bag — you will almost certainly dig into tomorrow’s rations.
Ingredients
Directions
1. Place cashews, rolled oats, salt, and cinnamon into the processor. Chop the ingredients until you have a fine mixture, but don’t chop them for so long that you make cashew butter.
2. Blend in the maple syrup and vanilla extract. Beware: This step can be hard on a low-powered food processor. If the mixture is too dry for your tastes, add more syrup; if it’s too gooey, add more cashews or oats, and use less maple syrup next time.
3. Depending on the size of your batch, stir in the chocolate chips by hand, or put all ingredients into a mixer.
4. (Optional) Form 3-oz bars and store in plastic bags. Refer to the first photo.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Tags: Meal time: Backpacking breakfast & dinner recipes
Thanks for including the allergy info, I always appreciate that. Cashews would stop basically stop my breathing, so Im going to search for a good substitute. Looks tasty and I look forward to experimenting with this recipe.
you ever find a good substitute for the cashews?
I’ve been making something similar to this for years, but I use garbanzo beans instead of cashews.
These look yummy – I love cookie dough. I will be making them this weekend.
BTW: I make a protein bar that is very similar. To make them more portable. I will put each bar in a muffin liner. The way to make this work is put the muffin liners in a muffin pan and then press the dough into the liners. The pan helps them maintain their shape. I will then put them in the fridge for 30 minutes to harden up a bit. After 30 minutes I will then put the set of bars in a gallon zip lock bag. The muffin liners allow me to eat them without getting too sticky and isolate the germs from my fingers from transferring to the dough.
This is genius!! I prepped them this way and it work amazing. Thank you!
Andrew, I made some up and had problems getting the chocolate chips to incorporate into the mixture. Have you had that problem and what did you do?
There are two ways. If you made a big batch, use a food mixer like my beloved Kitchen Aid. With a smaller batch, spread the chips out evenly across the mixture, and then fold the mixture into itself with a spoon. This technique does not work quite as well, and it becomes really tiresome with a big batch.
Almonds, pistachios or peanuts (or any other nut) are great unless allergies are a problem. Flax or similar seeds are an option too. I love this recipe. You have many options.
Clean hands work great for mixing in the chips! I bake a lot of bread and am used to digging in, but folks who only use utensils never think of using their best tools – hands and fingers! 🙂
You can mix it in a large zip lock bag. Keeps the hands clean too.
Considering this for an upcoming trip. How long will it keep for?
A while. Everything is shelf stable; refrigeration is merely recommended for things like maple syrup, for freshness.
Just made up a batch, and hot damn it is true to its name. Thanks for sharing!
I experimented by just putting all the ingredients into the Cuisinart at once, and punching the button. The result is more granular (larger cashew pieces) than what’s in your photo above – wish I could upload a picture. The bars are rather crumbly, but delicious nonetheless.
When I’ve made them (twice now), the bars are a bit sticky. If you want to put them in one bag without having them glom together, you can put shredded coconut in the bag, and then shake it up. In no way does this disturb the eating enjoyment, IMHO.
My brother is really allergic to tree nuts and peanuts do you have any alternatives for the cashews in your recipe?
I asked my wife, who knows a lot about food allergies. She says no. The nuts act like a paste and hold everything together. Ditto for the oats. You might also want to ask your brother if he has any ideas — usually the person with the allergy knows some alternates.
You might try sunflower seeds. We use sunbutter for kids who have nut allergies. Though not as creamy as cashews, I believe it would work. Maybe hemp seeds, but it would be rather pricey. Sesame seeds could also be used, though with a different flavor profile. Imagine the flavor of tahini paste…which maybe could be used in some way.
The idea being look to seeds rather than nuts.
Im allergic to almost all nuts, except cashews .. did he ever try em ?
Dear Andrew,
I just gladly copy-pasted your recipe, except for shamelessly changing the tough-to-get and expensive vanilla extract with vanilla aroma. I know, not quite the same thing. Still, it tastes great! Thank you so much for the recipe. I normally eat about everything and anything, but when hiking I can get very picky. I am looking forward to the cookie dough!
Great recipe Andrew! I just made it for an upcoming trip to Mammoth Lakes and I’m debating between sharing them with my group (my original intent) or saving them all for myself 🙂
Best luck in UTMB
Just made this for the first time. I love cashews & chocolate so it’s perfect. I did have a hard time incorporating the chocolate chips. I also added butterscotch chips! I ended up rolling the dough into balls and just pressing the chips into the surface. Might try th emuffin pan/liner/freeze for 30 min next time. Thanks!
Awesome recipe. Have to try it soon.
Any tips for subbing the food processor if on the trail..? Just toss it all in a bag together?
Thanks for all your insight and work with publishing it.
Without a food processor, it’d seem difficult to sufficiently crush the cashews and blend together the ingredients. I think the cashews would be the harder part. I suppose you could smash them in a plastic bag, but you might burn through a few bags before you’re done. Maybe better to crush them inside a bowl or pot.
Wow, these are really good. Made some to test the recipe out and I ended up eating it all in 24 hours with a little help from my family. Will definitely be making these again for my Colorado trip next month. I see what you mean about the 3oz portions being necessary!
Hey Andrew,
Do you have a nutritional breakdown; calorie, fats, proteins, for these 3oz portions? These look amazing!
I do not, sorry
I crunched some numbers. Using the recipe as stated, I divided into 4 servings of 4oz each. 532 cal (close to what Andrew shows) 33 g fat, 8.9 saturated fat, 0 Cholesterol, Sodium 12.1mg without added salt, fiber 4.2 g, Sugar 25.5 g, Protein 11.5 g, Ca 6.7%, Iron 29.2%, Potassium 375 mg
Love the idea for this recipe! It looks like the google docs link is broken, though 🙁
It’s working, but you may be having a page caching issue or just need a hard refresh (in Chrome, try Ctrl + F5).
It works! Thanks!
Riley, I entered this into MyFitnessPal and got the nutrition info. I split each batch into 8 bars of equal size. Here’s the nutrition info for 1 of those bars:
[img]https://i.imgur.com/cP77JOP.png[/img]
Summary of fat/carbs/protein:
17g Fat
28g Carbs
6g Protein
Multiply the above by 8 to get the totals for the entire batch.
Messed up with my scale and accidentally put .5 oz of salt 🙁 ruined… just putting a pinch next time.
Yucky
Where may I find the quantities for each ingredient? Google sheets won’t display the recipe ingredients list. I only see the directions.
Thanks.
I’m having a persistent issue with embedded sheets, and have been struggling to find a consistent solution.
You might try using incognito mode, clearing your browswer’s cache, or using another browser or device. Apologies for the inconvenience, this is on my radar.
Incognito mode worked! Thank you. Will be making it for this weekend’s trip. FYI – We love your Beans & Rice recipe.
tested these out last night to great success! did a half batch as noted, and another half with coconut instead of chocolate. Also added 1oz of milk powder to each half-batch to get some extra protein – which had the unexpected bonus effect of increasing the cookie-dough creaminess and reducing stickiness, which I think will be good for our remaining true summer trips
Do you use raw cashews or roasted?
You could use either. Adjust salt accordingly.
Great question. I bought large bag of roasted and thought I would have to go back and buy the raw version.