BeReal Cookie Dough

There is finally a solution to late night—or otherwise—raw cookie dough cravings without taking your life in your hands. Mary Galvin has created a shelf-stable cookie dough—BeReal—that is safe to eat raw and tastes great baked, too.

Galvin, a pediatric nurse practitioner, was celebrated by friends and family for her delicious home-baked cookies delivered for holidays, neighborhood parties or just because. But when she was diagnosed with a severe gluten allergy in 2014, she could no longer eat her cookies or even handle the flour.

First, she set about finding a tasty gluten-free baking flour, with no success. It took her another 14 months to develop her own flour—a proprietary blend of rice, tapioca and potato flour—and six cookie recipes that contain no dairy or eggs. Her husband doesn’t even know the recipe. Everything in the hand-crafted dough is organic, plant-based, preservative-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, non- GMO and fair-trade certified. Instead of butter, there is a combination of sustainably sourced coconut and palm oils that makes these doughs shelf stable at room temperature for 60 days. That’s right! They can sit on your counter for up to 60 days just awaiting your spoon.

Galvin, now enrolled in a holistic nutritionist master’s program at Simmons College, strives to make BeReal cookie dough healthy as well as sustainable. There are only eight grams of sugar per two-cookie serving. Use a small ice cream scoop and then flatten the dough, a little for a softer cookie, or more for a crispier cookie. The blend of evaporated cane sugar and coconut sugar also bakes a darker cookie. The Cape Cod Cranberry Chocolate Chunk, Signature Chocolate Chunk and Cacao Fudge Chip contain 70% cacao chips, with the latter also containing 70% organic raw cacao powder. The higher the cacao content, the higher the antioxidants.

The Holiday Gingerbread dough tastes like real gingerbread and can be rolled out for gingerbread people. The Good Sugar Cookies dough can be rolled out as well, with no added flour necessary. The dough doesn’t spread, so it bakes to whatever thickness you make it. Galvin noted that they bake up much crispier in a convection oven. Each one-pound container makes 16-22 cookies.

In March of last year, Galvin attended the Boston Local & Specialty Crop Trade Show, where feedback from Northeastern University students convinced her to create a “single serving grab-and-go size” of her raw cookie dough. Galvin first introduced her cookie doughs locally at Yarmouth Seaside Festival last October where they were a big hit. She sent her doughs to a lab for testing and they were certified shelf stable by the Massachusetts Health Inspector who said, “In 27 years I haven’t ever seen anything like this. You should contact a patent attorney for the process.” Galvin did.

Personally, I keep my favorite—the Cacao Fudge Chip—thicker and slightly undercooked for a fudgy soft cookie. Since the dough is safely edible raw, you can undercook them to your heart’s delight. Because the dough is safe to eat as is, Galvin has partnered with the Local Scoop in Orleans to create, quite possibly, the first-ever gluten-free cookie dough ice cream, to be available this summer.

It is difficult to find a fresh gluten-free cookie outside of a gluten-free bakery. Having one, or six, of these full pound containers in your kitchen enables you to indulge in a tasty treat in 10-12 minutes, the time it takes to bake a batch. It doesn’t get more real than that.

508-737-5379 / berealdoughs.com