Raw Cookie Dough Shops Like Unbaked Are About to Be Everywhere

Metro Phoenix’s first brick-and-mortar shop selling edible cookie dough has landed – and more are on the way. Following a national dessert trend, the local brand Unbaked brought its brand of guilty pleasure to Old Town Scottsdale with its grand opening on June 22, and the team plans to expand throughout the Valley. Another concept, Scoopwell’s Dough Bar, is slated to launch in central Phoenix in Uptown Plaza this fall.

The Phoenix arm of the raw dough craze was probably born in New York City, where Unbaked general manager McKenzie June got the idea. She visited in winter of 2017, during one of the most brutal blizzards the city had seen in years, and despite the storm, she couldn’t leave without trying the sweets at the popular shop Cookie DO. When she arrived, she was shocked to find a long line of fellow dough seekers waiting in the snow for their customized scoops.

“I thought if people would wait out there in a blizzard, they might wait here in the heat,” June says.

She told her father, Perry Peterson, about the idea, and they partnered to make their family-owned business. The father-daughter duo worked with two product developers to concoct original dough recipes, trying out various techniques and ingredients over eight months until they got their signature flavors just right.

Specialties at Unbaked include classic chocolate chip (and a vegan version), sugar cookie, gluten-free peanut butter, brownie batter, and four more varieties, as well as seasonal rotations like the current lemon cream crumble special. One scoop costs $4.50, or you can get two for $7 or three for $9, plus $1.50 for a waffle cone (they come in pink) and 50 cents for each topping. Unbaked also sells $15 pints of dough, which June says will keep for three weeks in the fridge before they start to dry out.

Unbaked uses heat-treated flour to avoid the bacteria that normally makes raw cookie dough unsafe to eat. Most flavors don’t have eggs in them. Since eggs function as a binding agent in traditional dough recipes, the chefs at Unbaked achieve a similar result by partially melting butter and whipping it with sugar. That also means that the sugar isn’t granulated and gritty, so you don’t feel crystals between your teeth like you might when you sneak a bite of dough at home.

Unbaked's chefs are experimenting with new recipes that have pasteurized eggs, still okay to eat raw but with the extra benefit of being bakeable. The idea is for guests to get a pint to go, take it home, and eat some dough while their cookies are in the oven.

In addition to the raw dough and actual cookies, Unbaked also serves eight flavors of homemade ice cream, which can be built into ice cream sandwiches. There’s also milk on tap, which can be mixed with chocolate and strawberry flavorings, as well as coffee.

The shop itself is a luxurious pink-and-teal playground, beckoning to Instagrammers with an obligatory neon wall and a mural with a series of puns such as “unabashed dough-getter” and “batch-chip crazy.” The Unbaked mascot, a cookie-meets-emoji character named Chip, smirks throughout the space. Convenient touches include phone charging stations at each of the four tables and bench seats.

In about a month, the store has already been tagged hundreds of times on social media, with hearts and sparkles and gushing reviews abounding. Though June expected Unbaked to be a hit, she has been surprised at her early popularity.

“We did some events before we opened, and it was crazy to me,” she says. “One girl cried. I mean, she was a little tipsy, but she shed tears, like wow.”

Unbaked. 3712 North Scottsdale Road, Building A, #101, Scottsdale; 480-912-5490.
Sunday to Thursday noon to 10 p.m.; Friday to Saturday noon to 11 p.m.